Teaching With American Factory: Illustrating Management Concepts in a Multinational Enterprise With a Documentary Film

Abstract

This article reviews the documentary film American Factory as a resource for undergraduate management courses, especially those with a global emphasis. The film illustrates several themes, including overcoming cross-cultural challenges with cultural intelligence; international labor relations; employee health, safety, and well-being; stereotypes; and power distance and collectivism. This article also details clips from the film that illustrate these themes and suggests instructors show them alongside class lectures (in person, online synchronous, and online asynchronous) as nonfictional demonstrations of the concepts covered in class. In addition, this article provides discussion questions and sample answers so that these clips can be used as springboards for further class analysis, application, and extension. In sum, American Factory is a tool that can increase engagement and multimodality teaching in the management curriculum.