Individual learning within a collectivistic culture: lessons from corporate executive development in South Korea

This study examines how an international executive development programme enabled South Korean leaders from a collectivistic culture to engage in individual learning safely in a new environment. Drawing on a redesigned U.S. module of a Korean corporate programme conducted in Seattle and Silicon Valley, the case documents how culturally responsive design reconciled individual learning with collectivistic norms. The redesign replaced a lecture-centric, interpreter-mediated format with conditions that strengthened cultural resonance and psychological safety, including Korean-language dialogue with bicultural hosts, cross-company peer teams that minimised hierarchy, and structured autonomy that supported self-directed inquiry. Programme outcomes reflected higher engagement and improved participant reactions and Net Promoter Scores relative to prior cohorts. Qualitative observations indicated reduced face-saving pressures and greater candour, initiative, and reflective meaning-making, while participants remained anchored in collective values. The study advances two theoretical implications: collectivism and individualism can coexist as complementary orientations activated by context, and psychological safety can be understood as a designed, situated condition emerging from interactional architecture rather than a generalised team attribute. In practice, the findings suggest that cultural adaptation in international HRD is achieved less through content modification than through the design of dignity-protecting conditions that expand learners’ capacity for authentic voice.