Earl Honeycutt, professor of marketing in the Department of Business Administration, was recently notified that his co-authored article “Utilizing Activity Theory to Plan Cross-Cultural Training Programs” was accepted for presentation and publication in the Proceedings of the National Conference in Sales Management (NCSM). The article was co-authored with Jim Marken at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. The NCSM is a national conference that meets in Dallas from March 26-30, 2008, in conjunction with the Pi Sigma Epsilon National Conference. This article is a continuation of Honeycutt’s research into areas of cross-cultural sales management. An abstract for the article is provided below:
Sales Managers who plan and conduct cross-cultural sales training programs often fail to understand cultural differences. This paper details how activity theory helped uncover two contradictions that allowed the successful planning and performance of a Japanese sales manager’s training program. That is, Japanese trainees will not respond to questions unless they are called upon and trainers who are younger than the trainees are deemed inappropriate to train more senior managers. As a result of activity theory, trainers decided to call upon trainees and a senior manager informed the trainees that the firm’s upper management had approved the training program and expected their full cooperation,