What you will study
This course supports your development as a confident, effective leader or manager in international and intercultural environments. You’ll reflect on your own practice, engage with real-world challenges, and develop strategies for navigating cultural and institutional differences in global business.
You’ll study three main themes, organised into three units:
Unit 1: A cultural perspective
You’ll begin by exploring different ways of understanding culture and how it influences leadership and management. You’ll engage critically with a range of frameworks, using them as a starting point to develop your own insights into cultural variation. This unit encourages you to go beyond textbook definitions and think deeply about the complexities of cultural settings.
Unit 2: Institutions and the business environment
In this unit, you’ll examine how national business environments are shaped not only by culture but by institutional structures, such as labour markets, corporate governance, legal systems, and regulatory frameworks. You’ll compare how these elements vary across countries and consider how they impact leadership practice, organisational strategy, and business conduct.
Unit 3: Developing a global mindset
The final unit brings your learning into focus by encouraging you to apply insights to your own leadership context. You’ll reflect on your identity and leadership style, assess your strengths and development needs, and begin crafting a personal action plan to grow as an intercultural leader. You will also consider what it means to develop a global mindset – an increasingly essential capability in today’s connected world.
You will learn
By the end of your learning, you’ll be able to:
- demonstrate an increased critical understanding of cultural and institutional differences between countries and regions and their implications for leadership and management
- apply the skills of perspective-taking and reframing that enable you to recast ideas and challenges in ways that work in different countries and regions
- use cultural and institutional perspectives as a lens to think critically about your own context and your own management and leadership practice
- critically interpret information about different countries and regions and draw implications for the effective practice of management and leadership in those settings.
Skills you will gain
By the end of this course, you’ll have the skills to lead and collaborate more effectively across cultures and national business environments. You’ll develop your cultural intelligence, improve your ability to build relationships and networks, and learn how to adapt your leadership style to local expectations.
You’ll also be able to think critically about your own leadership practice and apply new perspectives to real-world challenges. As part of the course, you’ll create a personal action plan to continue developing your global mindset and intercultural competence beyond the classroom.
Created by leading experts and practitioners from The Open University
- Mark Fenton-O’Creevy is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour at The Open University Business School. Before moving to The Open University, he was a faculty member at London Business School and has over thirty years of experience researching and advising on decision-making in international organisations.
- Caroline Clarke is a Professor of Organisation Studies at The Open University Business School. She previously worked at Bristol Business School and spent five years as a researcher on the Change Management Consortium. Her experience teaching students from many different cultures provoked her curiosity about the relevance of multiple identities – an extremely relevant topic for those working in organisations.
Additional contributions were made by Björn Claes, Fahri Karakas, Nceku Nyathi, Angela Lilley, and Fidele Mutwarasibo.
Entry
As this microcredential is at postgraduate level, you should preferably hold a UK undergraduate degree or equivalent qualification.
Please note
- If you don’t have a degree or equivalent level qualification, you may find the postgraduate level assessment challenging.
- All teaching is in English, and your English proficiency needs to be adequate for postgraduate study. As a guide, this corresponds to Level 7 of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). However, you won’t need to provide a formal English language score to enrol.
Course length
This 12-week course requires approximately 12.5 hours of self-paced learning per week, totalling around 150 hours for completion.
Teaching and assessment
Assessment
You’ll take part in weekly tasks and discussions with co-learners to support and consolidate your learning. These activities and discussions build towards the assessment. Towards the end of the course, you’ll submit an assessment demonstrating the skills you’ve acquired. In this assessment you will demonstrate how you have applied your learning to your own experiences and challenges, and create an action plan to support your continued learning. This will be marked and graded by subject matter experts and make up 100% of your final mark.
Study support
- Learn 100% online on the OU’s learning platform with a mix of video, audio and written materials
- Engage in interactive learning through self-assessment questions, tasks and reflection
- Share ideas and experiences in discussion with other learners, building skills, confidence and knowledge
- Receive support from mentors who guide discussions and answer questions
- Study at a time that suits you with the flexibility to access the course from your desktop, tablet or mobile device
What you will gain
15 UK credits at postgraduate level from The Open University*. Academic credits are awarded on passing the final assessment. These will be at postgraduate level 7 of the Framework for Higher Education (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) / level 11 of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework.
*Academic credit may be used towards selected OU qualifications. For more details, including eligible qualifications, visit Counting microcredentials towards OU qualifications. The credit awarded may also be used at another university, subject to the agreement of the receiving institution.