Some recently accepted articles to look out for

Is this the future of cross-national research on workplace bullying?

In their abstract Kathryn J. L. Jacobson, Jacqueline N. Hood and Harry J. Van Buren III say of their article Workplace Bullying Across Cultures: A Research Agenda:

Workplace bullying has increasingly become of interest to scholars and practicing managers due to its creation of dysfunctional intra-organizational conflict and its negative effects on employees and the workplace. Although studies have explored bullying in different cultural contexts, little research exists that provides a comparison of bullying behaviors across cultural dimensions. This paper describes a new research agenda that analyzes the impact of specific cultural dimensions—assertiveness, in-group collectivism, and power distance—on organizational bullying. An expanded categorization of bullying prevalence and form is also proposed, with implications for both future research and organizational practice provided.

I am sure this article will be well cited as the interest in workplace bullying increases, and will itself stimulate further research in this area. This also has major policy implications, particularly for organizations working internationally where, in different countries both the forms of bullying and the perception of bullying may differ considerably.

This article is scheduled to appear in issues 14(1) – April 2014. Look out for it on OnlineFirst.

Using Guanxi research methods in cross-cultural management research

This article is of particular interest to me in my work on the management and organizational implications of China in Africa, and I think anyone else planning or doing research with Chinese colleagues. Anton Kriz, Evert Gummesson and Ali Quazi summarise their innovative article Methodology Meets Culture: Guanxi-Oriented Research in China as follows:

Guanxi has been well documented for its critical business role in China but rarely has it been investigated for its important methodological implications. This paper focuses on the ways in which researchers can utilise the socio-cultural phenomenon of guanxi as a tool for more effective Chinese related data collection. This paper arose as an unanticipated methodological outcome of a preceding qualitative study of Chinese perceptions of interpersonal trust. The paper has empirical foundations but is largely conceptual in nature. One of the key aspects presented in the paper is the construction and illustration of a researcher developed guanxishu or tree of connections. Such insights are likely to prove invaluable to novice investigators interested in management research in Mainland China and overseas Chinese markets. Experienced researchers understand the importance in Chinese markets of accessing and utilising connections in the process of data collection. However, seldom has this process been discussed or comprehensively documented. The paper identifies some of the important intricacies around using guanxi in management research.

This is another article scheduled for publication in issue 14(1) – April 2014, and will be appearing soon on OnlineFirst

How can we combine qualitative and quantitative methods in new interactionist approaches to cross-cultural management research?

Jean-Pierre Dupuis of HEC Montréal provides us with an innovative and exciting approach to doing cross-cultural management research in his article New approaches in cross-cultural management research: the importance of context and meaning in the perception of management styles. His abstract tells us that:

The field of cross-cultural management is expanding rapidly. Traditional approaches are being critiqued and new approaches put forward. The latter mainly adopt an interactionist perspective, pay more attention to context and different levels of analysis (local, regional, national, etc.) and propose more qualitative methods as well as a more dynamic definition of culture. Our research is in keeping with this new shift and contributes to this renewal in two ways. First, it shows the variability of the perceptions of individuals from a given culture regarding the management practices existing in another culture when they find themselves working in that other culture. This variability is based on contextual elements that we have identified: duration of work experience in the country of origin, occupation of the respondent, quality of the relations with locals, etc. Then, the research reveals the link that exists between the quality of the respondents' integration into this culture and their interpretation of the others' management practices. These findings were obtained by combining a qualitative approach (some forty semi-directed interviews) and a quantitative approach (a questionnaire administered to a population of more than 1000 respondents) among a population of French nationals working in Quebec and Quebecers working in France.

Look out for this article in issue 14(1) – April 2014, and on OnlineFirst over the coming months.

Culturalists versus Institutionalists: A False Debate?

Recently published as the Editorial in IJCCM 13(1) April 2013

Do please contribute to the discussion by leaving a comment.

 

There appears to be a continuing debate between ‘culturists’ and ‘institutionalists’. Differences across nations are either attributed to institutional arrangements, which are seen as fundament; or, differences are attributed to cultural factors or, in Hofstedian parlance, to differences in the ‘software of the mind’. Sorge (2004) believes that the two approaches should be complementary. He cites Giddens (1986) in saying that individual behaviour and social structure are reciprocally constituted: that is, normative customs that are instituted to be binding are kept in place by acting individuals. Sorge (2004) believes that such an integrative approach will consider both the construction of actors, that is people with values, preferences and knowledge, and the construction of social and societal systems as reciprocally related to an extent that they cannot be separated from each other. However, to see culturalist approaches as focusing ‘on the mind of the individual as the place where differences reside’, and institutionalist approaches focusing ‘on wider norms and standards supported or enforced by institutional machineries’ (p.119) may in itself be seeing the issue from an institutionalist perspective.

Jack Goody (1994), a prominent British social anthropologist, points to the dichotomy in the American tradition of cultural anthropology between ‘cultural studies’ concerned with symbols and meaning, and the social (social structures, organizations). He maintains that in the European tradition, of social anthropology this dichotomy is not readily accepted, and has tended to treat these two categories as virtually synonymous. Certainly this is reflected in Tylor’s (1871) classic definition of culture constituting: ‘that complex whole which involves knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’, and for example Firth’s (1951) view where culture is seen as the content of social relations, not as some distinct entity. Hence the institutional context both shapes meaning, and is shaped by it. Both are what can be described as culture. Institutions are cultural constructs with rules that are applied in society, and they also shape and are shaped by values, which are part of the meaning systems of society. This is different, for example, from the conceptualization of the American cultural anthropologist Geertz (1973:89) who sees culture as ‘an historically transmitted pattern of meaning embodied in symbols of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means which men communicate’, and distinguishes between cultural symbols as ‘vehicles of thought’ and social structure as ‘forms of human association’ with a ‘reciprocal interplay’ occurring between them. Goody (1994: 252) therefore maintains that ‘..attempts to differentiate the cultural from the social, or the symbolic from other forms of human interaction, seem open to question. The terms may serve as general signposts to areas of interest within a wider field of social action..’ In terms of this debate Hofstede seems to be firmly in the American camp, distinguishing ‘the software of the mind’ as meaning/value systems and juxtaposing himself to the institutionalists.

However, integrating the cultural and the institutional is not as straightforward as that. In societies that were colonized by Europeans, there appears to be a clear distinction between imposed institutions and local cultures. For example, Dia (1996) takes the view that institutions were imposed on African societies during the colonial period. They have largely remained and evolved through the post-colonial period, and mostly are seen as still inappropriate to African societies and their context. Here, rules seem to be at odds with values; institutions appear to be at odds with symbolic culture.

The introduction of colonial institutions into Africa appear to involve a number of elements: firstly the (cultural) background of the colonizing countries; secondly the interaction of colonizers with colonized societies and institutions (for example African institutions such as chiefdoms were integrated into colonial administrations to enlist the help of local chiefs to keep law and order and to collect taxes: Gluckman, 1956/1970); and thirdly the wielding of (economic, military and then ideological) power by the colonizers within the interactions with local communities. There is no doubt also that these institutions have an influence on African communities today, and that they have helped to shape modern and urban African cultures. Through interactions these institutions have also been shaped by African cultural influences that include African institutions (Ayitter, 1991). This does not just apply to Africa, as so much of the Globe had interactions with colonial powers, including today’s emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil; and indeed continue to have interactions with global powers that may be imposing ‘global’ institutions on local communities.

So, is this a false debate? Is there really a distinction between institutions and culture? Anyone schooled in British social anthropology may perhaps argue, as Goody, that there is not. Yet my main point would be that as cross-cultural management scholars we perhaps do not spend as much time as we ought in thinking about and conceptualizing the ideas that we work with. The growing literature in the area of international management appears to accentuate this dichotomy between ‘institutions’ and ‘culture’, to the extent that we appear almost afraid of treading on each other’s toes, that we feel we cannot borrow from each other’s literature. This dichotomizing might itself have a cultural (and/or indeed an institutional) root, in the way subject disciplines have evolved slightly differently in Western Europe and in North America, and cross-cultural management may have taken, from the beginning, a distinctly North America turn.

References

Ayittey, G. B. N. (1991) Indigenous African Institutions, New York: Transnational Publishers.

Dia, M. (1996) Africa’s Management in the 1990s and Beyond, Washington DC: World Bank.

Firth, R (1951) Elements of Social Organization, London:Watts

Geertz, C (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books.

Giddens, A (1986) The Constitution of Society,Berkeley and Los Angeles:University of California Press.

Gluckman, M. (1956/1970) Custom and Conflict in Africa, Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Goody, J. (1994) Culture and its boundaries: a European perspective, in R. Borofsky (ed) Assessing Cultural Anthropology,New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 250-61.

Jackson, T. (2011) From Cultural Values to Cross-cultural Interfaces: Hofstede Goes to Africa, Journal of Organization Change Management, 24(4): 532-58

Sorge, A (2004) Cross-national differences in human resources and organization, Chapter 5 in  A-W Harzing and J Van Ruysseveldt, International Human Resource Management, London: Sage, 2004, pp.117-140.

Tylor, E B (1871) Primitive Culture, cited in C Levi-Strauss (1963) (Trans. Jacobson, C and B G Schoel), Structural Anthropology, Harmondsworth: Penguin

A lack of Activity?

You may have noticed a decided lack of activity on this blog of late. If there is an excuse, it is that we have been focusing on how we can streamline our submissions systems so that we can create a far more efficient service for our authors. If you have recently submitted an article, you will have noticed a fairly quick response. We are determined to maintain this. We have been trying very hard to clear up our backlog. We have always enjoyed a healthly submission rate, which helps us keep up our high academic standards, but because sometimes it may be difficult to locate the right reviewer, or reviewers often have other pressing tasks, it is not always possible to get back to authors quickly. We are trying our best to give authors as quick a response as possible.

But do please give us your feedback on how we are doing, and of course any suggestions.

Above all, watch this space, and if you would like to, contribute to the ongoing discussions on developing cross-cultural management scholarship. We are all not looking to follow these developments, but to lead them.

Our Special Issue on Caribbean Metaphors

A Guest Blog by Betty Jane (BJ) Punnett, University of the West Indies

“Editing this special issue of IJCCM was lots of fun for us. Reading our authors’ insights on the Caribbean was fascinating for us (and we thought we knew the Caribbean!). We hope you will enjoy these metaphors that help understand management in the Caribbean. Please visit us in the Caribbean and help further research in the region – we are here to help anytime – contact BJ at eureka@caribsurf.com.”

Nyzinga Onifa (Joint Special Editor)

Betty Jane Punnett, left & Akhentoolove Corbin, right (Philmore Alleyne, middle) at book launch of Management: A Developing Country Perspective (Routledge, 2012)

IJCCM is a journal that intrigues many people because of its innovative approaches that have practical consequences. The articles in the journal are clearly organized, easy to read and provide fresh, illuminating powerful, thought-provoking and informative ideas. The Special Issue on Cultural Metaphors in the Caribbean is a good example of IJCCM’s approach.

Many social scientists have devoted themselves to the study of culture.  In this special issue there is a thought –provoking and informative set of articles on “using cultural metaphors to understand management in the Caribbean”. The papers are based on exploring Caribbean cultural metaphors and how they relate to management. There is a lack of management research on the Caribbean and this special issue begins to fill this gap.

Cultural metaphors, based on Gannon’s (1994, 2001, 2004, 2008, 2010) seminal work in the field, offer an approach that encourages probing into a society’s culture, while anchoring national characteristics within dimensional frameworks where possible.  This approach is useful for providing broad, cross-cultural comparisons of value systems, attitudes and behaviours among cultures.

It is our hope to spark enthusiastic discussion, self introspection and awareness and change of management styles of our own cultural roots and to deepen cross-cultural understanding.  Cross-national managers and leaders in the world and throughout the Caribbean can utilize this information to come to a more profound understanding as to what motivates their business partners and how best to forge effective leadership and personal ties with them. 

The aim here is to encourage managers to have a “geo-centric” perspective of how he or she will search for the best approaches, management styles, motivational techniques, strategies and solutions independent of where these ideas originate.  Whether we are talking about No ball – ethical management and social capital in the West Indian society, Calypso in the Caribbean – a musical metaphor for Barbados, Caribbean liming a metaphor for building social capital, Carry mi ackee go a Jamaican market – using ackee as metaphor for the organization and environment of Jamaican business or Yoruba proverbs as cultural metaphor for understanding management in the Caribbean, our purpose is to show how international managers can work with employees and managers from other cultures to help them understand why in a particular case, doing things with a new approach and a different way makes sense. 

We hope you will enjoy reading IJCCM and our special issue with its unique insights into the Caribbean. BJ Punnett, University of the West Indies, Barbados

The Special Issues: Using Cultural Metaphors to Understand Management in the Caribbean  - IJCCM 12(3) December 2012

Special Editors: Akhentoolove Corbin, Betty Jane Punnett, Nyzinga Onifa

• Editorial : Akhentoolove Corbin, Betty Jane Punnett, Nyzinga Onifa
• Carry mi ackee go a Jamaican market: Ackee as a metaphor for the organization and environment of Jamaican business,  Margaret E Phillips, Andrea D Scott, Claire E Sutherland, Marisa P Gerla and Annette M Gilzene
• Caribbean Liming: A Metaphor for Building Social Capital, Reccia N. Charles & Ruth Clarke
• Calypso in the Caribbean: A musical metaphor for Barbados, Asha Rao and Yvonne Sedlaczek
• Yoruba proverbs as cultural metaphor for understanding management in the Caribbean, April Bernard and Adonis Diaz Fernandez
• No ball! Ethical management and social capital in West Indian society, Hercules Grant

Whither Academia, Whither Cross Cultural Management Studies?

(To be published as the Editorial in IJCCM 12(2) August 2012)

 

 

It appears that the nature of scholarship has been shaped over the last decade or two by the now extensive use of academic journal lists.  Willmott (2011: 428) argues their effect is to ‘..stifle diversity and constrict scholarly innovation’ . He goes on to say that a  ‘…monoculture is fostered in which a preoccupation with shoehorning research into a form prized by elite, US-oriented journals overrides a concern to maintain and enrich the diversity of topics, the range of methods and the plurality of perspectives engaged in business and management research’. Adler and Harzing (2009: 80), who Willmott quotes, also suggest that the use of such lists ‘..dramatically skews scholarship as it implicitly encourages conservative research that asks familiar questions using accepted methodologies rather than research addressing new, often controversial questions that are investigated using innovative methodologies.’

Yet it would be wrong to blame academia’s increasing reliance on rank-ordering and such metrics that cast out some and venerate others per se. This must surely be an effect rather than the cause. The nature of scholarship is part of culture. What is regarded as legitimate scholarship and scientific knowledge has evolved over the centuries into what we behold today. Along with this has been the evolution of ranking and rating of journals. Yet this tendency, Willmott argues, has turned into a form of control, in his case in point, for university managers to better and more effectively, and time-effectively, control academic performance through a vicarious use of journal rankings rather than looking at the quality of individual scholarly work: the journal rank becomes the measure rather than the ‘quality’ of the work – which of course has always been difficult to assess and measure. Yet control has always been a factor in cultural generation. This is the point of, for example, Said’s (1978) work on Orientalism, right through to Jack and Westwood’s (2009) excellent synthesis of Postcolonial Theory in international and cross-cultural management studies. Empires of various sorts have always dominated internationally the means of cultural production. Similarly, dominant groups in countries have always heavily influenced the legitimacy of cultural values and institutions. The work on whiteness studies in the United States has shown how the cultural privileges of whiteness has rendered ‘American’ culture invisible (McDermott and Sansom, 2005). Perhaps this is so much so even in cross-cultural management research where American culture is assumed, and this can be used in comparison with other countries.

In 2001 when International Journal of Cross Cultural Management (IJCCM) was first published, it was with the intention of challenging paradigms and soliciting contributions from around the world that did not just reflect western logics and scholarship. In some ways we may have been naïve when we said:

‘Power relations may be an important component of any cross-cultural interaction. This should be more recognized in the decisions made about what is and what is not good international scholarship. We do not claim to have all the answers. Many scholars working in non-western cultures and educated in the ‘western’ tradition may seek to emulate western approaches, and denigrate ‘indigenous’ knowledge. Our search for contributions that reflect culturally diverse concepts of scholarship is therefore an active process…’ (Jackson and Aycan, 2001: 5-6).

Particularly the expectation that ‘indigenous’ scholarship would miraculously manifest itself and turn up on our doorstep may have shown our naivety. It is only when one starts to look beyond the embryonic attempts of international and cross-cultural management studies to look at ‘indigenousness’ and indigenous knowledge to the wider social sciences that one is thrust again into the stark reality of global power dynamics where, for example Wiessner (1999) sees indigenousness as a function of marginalization. Indigenous people are seen as part of a globalized world through their exclusion from it. Rather than indigenousness simply being related to localness as for example Tsui (2004) contends, indigenousness is inexorable linked to the global, from which it is marginalized. Work on indigenousness in international and cross-cultural management studies unfortunately does not yet recognize this power relatedness to colonization and globalization. Nor did we in 2001.

Porsager (2004: 108) remarks that ‘Any research is indissolubly related to power and control, and indigenous scholars take these issues seriously nowadays, making indigenous research part of the decolonization process, which implies an assignment to indigenous peoples of the right to self-determination, not only from a political or economical point of view, but also with respect to research …... For indigenous peoples, this means being able to make decisions about the research agenda and methodologies for themselves without any outside influence.’ It is not so much that the new obsession with ranking and rating journals dictates research agendas and the nature of scholarship. This is simply part of an evolving and dominant academic culture that excludes non-dominant forms of knowledge, as is our acceptance of the scientific journal article as the appropriate means of scholarly dissemination.

I am not sure to what extent publishing the results of research on and about indigenous forms of knowledge actually furthers the interests of indigenous (that is marginalized) groups. It certainly may further the career aspirations of western (and possibly non-western) scholars. We should be mindful that reporting research findings in western scientific journals serves only one set of very narrow interests. In the general scheme of things, the extent to which journal editors and their contributors make a real difference to knowledge production has to be questioned. Fortunately it is much easier to extend the range and nature of influence of academic journals where electronic forms of worldwide communication are becoming more accessible, where the form of control is more financial and technical (witness the recent sale of Facebook) rather than cultural: the means rather than the message (or perhaps some scholars may disagree with this separation).

Hence eleven years later we are reasserting our mission to be different, and to not try to emulate the ‘big boys’ of management scholarly publication. Our slightly revised published aims are ‘…..to be the first choice for scholarship that develops critical advances in knowledge, which challenges orthodoxy in international and cross-cultural research, which critically reviews current knowledge taking it to the next level, which presents new and exciting approaches, alternative paradigms, alternative cultural perspectives, and challenges the hegemony of Western management knowledge’. Yet I am not sure we can do this by ourselves. The debate has to be taken to a wider academic public and not debated simply within the confines of our journal. We only have limited space within the journal but we need to make best use of this, while also giving voice to those least likely to be heard in the ‘top’ journals. We need to do this both within and outside the printed pages of our journal. Hence we are developing and extending our social networking and media capability to be more inclusive of those voices. We want to know how we can develop alternative forms of knowledge, yet also we want to hear from the cross-cultural scholars and ‘indigenous’ scholars who do not submit their work to us. We want to help those who have an idea, but not sure how to develop it. We want to encourage a new generation of cross-cultural management scholars. We have begun to identify some of these and have invited some of the most talented and dynamic onto our editorial team. We have also maintained continuity with more experienced colleagues who have worked so hard to set the tone and shape the sub-discipline we now know as cross-cultural management studies. This current journal issue, like most others, represents a mixture of more established scholarship, ground-breaking work, and new developments.

Academia has changed over the years. New forms of control have been introduced into our institutions, but merely to supplement or replace those that were there before. Academics, as ever, ‘play the game’ and learn to use this game to their career advantage. In Britain, as we approach the culmination of our REF (Research Excellence Framework) process, the jobs market becomes like the football transfer season, as universities eagerly try to attract those who are most REF-able. Yet this should only be regarded as part of the cultural context of academia. It certainly is not the cause of changes to academia, it is the change. And part of this change is what scholars produce and what they submit. Scholars are rewarded not for innovation but for conformity. As I look back over the last eleven years at the submissions to IJCCM, I see mainly conformity (albeit extremely well crafted, scientifically excellent and contributing significantly to our dominant modes of scholarship) rather than innovation, with some remarkable exceptions. Over the next few months we will be listing the top ten of these on our website and Sage will make them freely available for download. We will also be opening a blog and a Facebook page, so we welcome suggestions, comments and contributions.

Cross-cultural management studies will change over the next ten years. It has to. It also has to make a bigger contribution to the wider social sciences, and integrate more into on-going debates within the social and behavioural sciences. It needs to engage in new dynamics. China (as India) and its international activity is really beginning to change the geopolitical dynamics that influence knowledge production and transfer. This has little affected debate within international and cross-cultural management studies, yet has been the focus of scholarship in other social science disciplines (Jackson, 2012). Similarly, as above, cross-cultural management scholars have barely scratched the surface in studying indigenous knowledge. This has to be better incorporated into what we study.

Cross-cultural management studies will also have to become more useful. We have tended to focus on making MNEs manage more effectively across countries, but have neglected vast areas of international activity such as the development and aid industry which not only is worth some 100 billion US dollars, also has a tremendous influence on our perception of the so called ‘developing countries’ that make up the majority of the Earth’s landmass (e.g. babies with distended bellies, famine, war and natural and human disasters generally). Our discipline has always challenged stereotyping, yet has barely said a word about the types of stereotypes this engenders. The development sector is grappling with major concerns of managing across cultural boundaries, yet has largely eschewed cross-cultural management studies.

That our discipline is naturally conservative also goes hand-in-hand with the tendency to conform, and scholars are sometimes reluctant to confront the political nature of research and knowledge creation. The aspects that cross-cultural management studies has tended to stay clear of  including power and geopolitics, tend to be political in nature. That our discipline does not confront this in a way that contributes to our scientific endeavour is missing a great opportunity to make real strides towards developing a discipline that can make an impact on the wider social sciences, and on the real world. I believe our journal is poised to make significant contributions to this endeavour.

References

Adler, N. J. and Harzing, A-W. (2009) ‘When Knowledge Wins: Transcending the Sense of and Nonsense of Academic Rankings’, Academy of Management Learning and Education 8(1): 72–95., Organization, 18(4) 429–442

Jack, G. and Westwood, R. (2009) International and Cross-Cultural Management Studies: A Postcolonial Reading, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jackson, T. (2012) Postcolonialism and Organizational Knowledge in the Wake of China’s Presence in Africa: Interrogating South-South relations, Organization. 19(2): 181-204.

Jackson, T. and Aycan, Z. (2001) International Journal of Cross Cultural Management: towards the future, ) International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 1(1): 5-9

McDermott, M. & Samson, F. L. (2005)  White racial and ethnic identity in the United States, Annual Review of Sociology, 31:245–61

Porsanger, J. (2004) An Essay about Indigenous Methodology, accessed at http://munin.uit.no/munin/bitstream/handle/10037/906/article.pdf?sequence=1, 1/07/11.

Said, Edward (1978/1995) Orientalism, London: Penguin

Tsui, A S (2004) Contributing to Global Management Knowledge: A Case for High Quality Indigenous Research, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 21, 491–513.

Wiessner, S. (1999). “Rights and Status of Indigenous Peoples: A Global and Comparative and International Legal Analysis” Harvard Human Rights Journal, Vol. 12, Spring.

Willmott, H. (2011) Journal list fetishism and the perversion of scholarship: reactivity and the ABS list, Organization, 18(4), 429–442.