The Routledge Companion to Cross-Cultural Management

Nigel Holden, Snejina Michailova, Susanne Tietze, Nigel Holden, Snejina Michailova, Susanne Tietze

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781135105778
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This Routledge Companion provides a timely and authoritative overview of cross-cultural management as an academic domain and field of practice for academics and students. With contributions from over 60 authors from 20 countries, the book is organised in to five thematic areas:

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• Review, survey and critique

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• Language and languages: moving from the periphery to the core

• Cross-cultural management research and education

• 
  
  

• The new international business landscape

• Rethinking a multidisciplinary paradigm.

Edited by an international team of scholars and featuring contributions from a range of leading cross-cultural management experts, this prestigious volume represents the most comprehensive guide to the development and scope of cross-cultural management as an academic discipline.

Section 1
Review, survey and critique

Editor: Sonja Sackmann

1
Introduction: taking stock of critical issues and relevant topics in the field of cross-cultural management

Sonja Sackmann

Business conducted across cultures dates back many centuries. Early examples are the trading of goods along the Silk Road from the Han Dynasty in 200 BC, extended over the centuries across Asia to Arabian and Western countries. Accompanied by the interchange of religious ideas and knowledge, this had far-reaching effects on the world (Liu 1997). Later examples are the expansion of the Portuguese empire, the Hanseatic League, and the Fugger family businesses (Häberlein 2006), all dating from the fourteenth century. With its headquarters based in Augsburg, Germany, Fugger von der Lilie’s various businesses in trading, banking, and mining operated in many countries of Europe and financed, for example, political leaders such as Emperor Charles V, Ferdinand I of Bohemia, and Henry VIII of England, as well as the royal houses of Portugal and Denmark. Knowledge of customs and local preferences certainly helped in these activities. This kind of knowledge for conducting business across cultures had to be acquired through experience and oral history, since the scientific exploration of culture did not begin until the late nineteenth century (e.g., Tylor 1871) as a result of the Age of Enlightenment. Early research on the specifics and comparison of cultures was predominantly conducted in the developing field of anthropology (e.g., Benedict 1934; Kroeber & Kluckhohn 1952; Hall 1959).

Increasing opportunities to invest abroad raised questions about how to transact business with people from different cultures. Hence, the field of international business emerged, focusing on business activities across national borders and necessarily taking into account differences in the spheres of politics, economics, and society as described by the first contribution in this section. To be effective in conducting business in and with other countries, firms had to know about and consider different political systems and economic policies, different languages and dialects, differences in accounting standards, in living and environmental standards, different currencies and their exchange rates. They had to know about local tariffs, import and export regulations, trade agreements, climate differences, and climate changes, as well as educational systems. In response to these many questions, scholars started to investigate systematically these differences across nations in their various disciplines, such as economics, finance, and politics. Increasing internationalization of the business world also required knowledge about local cultures and their specific customs, ways of thinking and behaving. These topics were initially explored in the disciplines of anthropology, sociology (e.g., Durkheim 1964; Parsons 1949; Simmel et al. 1998) and psychology (e.g., Triandis 1989) with their insights on culture being adopted into the emerging field of international cross-cultural management (Boyacigiller et al. 2004).

With accelerating levels of internationalization and globalization of the business world, interest in issues of cross-cultural management (CCM) rose, seeking knowledge and insights regarding work, interactions and especially management and leadership in international and cross-cultural settings. These interests have been met by a growing body of research and an expanded range of activity and publications in the field during the last 35 years (e.g., Hofstede 1980; Primecz et al. 2011; Punnett & Shenkar 2007; Thomas & Peterson 2014). In addition, workshops, seminars, and entire university programs have been offered to help prepare leaders, managers, employees, and scholars to work with and live in different cultures.

Are these efforts of generating knowledge and informing practitioners still sufficient for working and conducting business effectively in our globalized world? Are our currently available insights and recommendations regarding cross-cultural interactions and management still adequate for working in our increasingly information-based, networked societies of the twenty-first century? Are they still appropriate for working with, managing, and leading an increasingly diverse and hence multicultural workforce? Does our currently available knowledge still apply in work settings in which people with diverse cultural backgrounds are more frequently interacting on a virtual basis and decreasingly face-to-face? Are we going to need CCM relevant knowledge, education, and training at all for working with and managing people who were born into and raised in a multicultural society?

With this section, we want to take stock of the current state of knowledge regarding different facets of CCM, discuss some of the existing blind spots, and point to some promising ways to move CCM forward into yet uncharted territory. Due to the amount of existing works and the limited space in this volume, such a stock-taking cannot claim to be all-embracing and comprehensive. Hence, this section provides an overview of the development of CCM, its current state and potential future directions with a focus on influential works and important streams of thought that have shaped the field of CCM. The section also addresses critical topics that need to be addressed in the future. While seven of the eight contributions of this section reflect the perspectives and outlooks of scholars based in the academic world, interviews with two executives who have extensive work experience with and across different cultures validate several of the aforementioned issues regarding cross-cultural management and ground them in the practitioners’ world.

The resulting picture resembles a mosaic highlighting specific areas rather than rendering a complete masterpiece. The contributions of this section review and survey different aspects of the field – each one with a specific focus. They also voice critique and point to areas worthwhile for further exploration – both theoretically and in terms of research. In addition, they also discuss implications for practice. Common to the eight contributions’ unique focus is the viewpoint that the business context has substantially changed during the past decades and that these changes need to be considered when conceptualizing the field, in choosing topics for research and research methodologies, as well as when identifying practical implications for working and managing in today’s globalized and networked business context.

The contributions to this section

This section starts with an overview of the evolution of CCM. Phillips and Sackmann (Chapter 2) review the development of the discipline of cross-cultural management from 1960 to the present, differentiating four developmental eras. For each one of these four eras, the authors identify key contextual drivers that triggered practitioner needs, prompted certain academic forces and responses, and fostered a specific focus and framing of the key concept of culture. The authors argue that, due to the contextual forces and habitual use of the term, the first three eras held “nation-state” as the defining synonym of culture. Given the contextual changes that our world has experienced in the past decades, they suggest – along with several other authors in this section – that the time has come to go beyond national boundaries by truly acknowledging the multifaceted, multilayered and dynamic nature of culture.

Ybema and Nyíri (Chapter 5) address the prominent influence of Geert Hofstede’s research approach and dimensions on the field of CCM and its focus on national culture. The authors conduct an appreciative review of Hofstede’s contribution to understanding, researching, and dealing with national/cultural differences; they also address some of the major criticism that has been voiced in recent years regarding his work. By introducing and explicating the term culture work, the authors suggest a paradigmatic alternative to Hofstede’s principles, models, and methods based on opposing ontological and epistemological stands.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, the Western world and especially the US experienced a “Japan shock.” Managers and researchers alike went on a pilgrimage to Japan trying to learn from Japanese management and Japan’s success story. Even though the Japanese economy has shown difficulties for over a decade, its influence on Western management theory and practice still exists today. Ahmadjian and Schaede (Chapter 6) discuss some of these influences with a focus on organizational behavior and human resource management highlighting those influences that affected the actual management practices of many companies, from multinationals to startups, in developed and developing countries.

While the dominant approach to most CCM research is comparative in nature conducted from an outsider’s or etic perspective, Moore (Chapter 3) explores the application of the “native category” approach to the study of cross-cultural management. She conceptualizes national cultures as social categories through which managers define their worlds. Her study of Taiwanese management illustrates the superficiality of the dimensional approaches of CCM research on the one hand and how much more knowledge, detail, and depth of understanding can be gained by learning about native categories and native knowledge. In line with other authors, Moore suggests that successful cross-cultural managers should become ethnographers of their own organizations, learning about the existing cultures and being aware of native categories while at the same time critically reflecting them.

Vaiman and Holden (Chapter 7) take a different perspective by exploring four influencing factors on culture as a dependent variable and the respective impact on the field of CCM. The four “non-cultural” factors are globalization, country impacts, institutional approaches, and the USA with its “unique” default position in CCM studies. The authors argue that CCM needs to find alternative or at least companion paradigms to the traditional values-based ones in studying culture. In line with Phillips and Sackmann, Ybema and Nyíri as well as Mayrhofer and Pernkopf criticize the pervasive use of nation as a proxy for culture and national cultural values. Based on their analysis, they suggest five different paradigmatic stands for future research in the field of CCM.

What kind of new phenomena need to be considered in the field? Given the emergence of a world society, the dominance of English as lingua franca, and the reaction of different age groups to effects of virtualization, Mayrhofer and Pernkopf (Chapter 4) point to significant progress in the world of science that may provide new opportunities for CCM. Among them is the development of grand social theories focusing on the interplay between society and the actor as well as advances in knowledge about the functioning of the human brain. In addition, they suggest that big data and the pervasiveness of digital realities provide opportunities for different kinds for research.

The section closes with the voices, experiences, insights, and reflections of two executives both working for international firms. Despite the different cultural contexts and associated experiences, both reiterate and illustrate several issues addressed by the academic contributions in the prior sections. They underline the changing nature of the business context as discussed by Phillips and Sackmann, Ybema and Nyíri as well as Mayrhofer and Pernkopf, the challenge of getting to and learning the underlying meanings of a specific culture setting as suggested by Moore and the role of language as discussed by Mayrhofer and Pernkopf. Despite their different experiences, both executives’ recommendations are similar in that they consider important proper preparation, true efforts in both trying to understand, and appreciating otherness – as suggested by Moore – which may require more time and patience than initially expected.

Conclusion

Despite the growing body of empirically generated knowledge that is helpful for practitioners in their business conduct with and across cultures, many blind spots still exist in the field of CCM that call for attention in future research efforts. One of them points to the nature of its core concept culture, which is rather complex and multifaceted going beyond national culture. Given our globalized world and its increasingly multicultural workforce, the various facets and levels of culture can no longer be ignored. As most recent empirical research suggests, culture at the national level is found to be of much lesser importance when, in addition to Hofstede’s dimensions, data is collected allowing for other levels of culture to emerge (e.g., Taras et al. 2014). This poses not only many challenges for any kind of research, conceptually and regarding all aspects of the research process and its methodology, but also for practitioners. First of all, the worlds of research and of practice need to acknowledge that culture cannot be compressed into one, three, five, or six dimensions. Dimensional research and insights gained from these dimensions is only a scratching on the surface of a much richer but also much more dynamic, context specific, and complex phenomenon. Future research as well as educational efforts will need to focus on different facets and contexts of culture, including a broader theoretical base with concepts and ideas also developed in different parts of the globe and published in languages other than English using different kinds of research approaches and research paradigms. As pointed out by Moore and supported by the two executives Porksen and Kragelund, learning about and appreciating native categories may be one avenue to be more mindful and sensitive to the multifaceted culture context relevant to the increasingly important field of CCM. This implies appreciating the true nature of culture as suggested by Phillips and Sackmann in research efforts using various kinds of methods and their triangulation. The use of big data, social networks, and theories developed in other disciplines may also be worthwhile sources for future research efforts as suggested by Mayrhofer and Pernkopf. The bold combination of these kinds of efforts will eventually lead to more differentiated and culture-appreciative knowledge for people acting as responsible citizens in various roles and functions in our global, networked, and culture-rich business world.

References

Benedict, R. (1934) Patterns of Culture. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Boyacigiller, N.A., Kleinberg, M.J., Phillips, M.E., and Sackmann, S.A. (2004) Conceptualizing culture: Elucidating the streams of research in international cross-c...