Transporting Management Training into Poland: Some Surprises and Disappointments

Culture has an effect on efforts at management training and development. Experiential exercises have cultural values embedded in them. Transporting training exercises across cultural boundaries represents a challenge full of opportunities and pitfalls. Two American‐made training exercises – a survival exercise and an inter‐unit conflict exercise – were used in a training session composed of Polish academics, who are preparing to enter management development, and training in post‐communist Poland. Polish culture presents both obstacles to experiential learning and opportunities for developing management skills. Comparative analysis is used to assess the match between training method and culture.