Abstract
The purpose of the field of cross-cultural management, amongst others, is to aid managers in dealing with new issues stemming from international encounters and employees from culturally diverse backgrounds. With today's businesses operating on the global market, exacerbated cross-cultural management challenges are more than ever in need of successful managers. Yet, it appears that the originally introduced approaches to successfully manage across cultures have undergone only little development. For this purpose, this chapter highlights the backlog demand of the field by discussing key issues with Hofstedean approaches and subsequentially identifying potential methodological approaches to advance the theoretical field and aiding practitioners. In this line, it will be argued that emic approaches, taking an ontological position of constructivism and epistemological stances of interpretivism through hermeneutics, could facilitate closing the gap between practice and academe. Recommendations for future research and relevant stakeholders are provided.
TopIntroduction
The pursuit of enhancing organizational performance has been a key driver for management research in finding new ways to elevate employees’ productivity. With increasingly rapid changes in the business environment, successful management practice is not only an advantage for businesses anymore but rather an absolute necessity in maintaining a competitive edge.
With organizations increasingly gaining in size and operating on the global market, the composition of personnel has changed from a homogeneous workforce to a diverse mixture of employees of different backgrounds. Yet, it appears that cross-cultural approaches popular during the rise of globalization have prevailed, despite obvious flaws and a lack of adaptation to the current business environment. In other words, the field of cross-cultural management (CCM) seems to have stagnated, and scholars increasingly call upon fellow researchers to find new, innovative ways of enhancing organizational performance through effective cross-cultural management.
Therefore, the overall aim of this chapter is to highlight alternative approaches to cross-cultural management with the potential for future research. These recommendations are specifically aimed at the lack of connection between practice and academia to remedy the resulting issues for practitioners.
For this purpose, firstly a summary of Hofstedean approaches to cross-cultural management will be provided, so as to point out general drawbacks of the approaches. Secondly, the etic and emic perspective will be contrasted to provide an additional framework for cultural studies. This is followed by a discussion of the prevalent methodologies in CCM research. To circumvent issues arising from etic such approaches, alternative post-Hofstedean approaches are discussed. To further advance the field. recommendations are provided, and conclusions are drawn for relevant stakeholders.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Hofstedean Models: Dimensional frameworks of cross-cultural studies conducted from an objectivist position, mostly employing quantitative methods.
Semiotics: Epistemological position concerned with the study of signs and symbols for the creation and communication of meaning.
Ontology: Study of being and its nature.
Epistemology: Theory of knowledge and relevant methods for its creation.
Constructivism: Ontological position that assumes that social phenomena and their meanings are constructed by social actors.
Emic: Approach to studying social phenomena based on its internal elements and individual characteristics.
Hermeneutics: Epistemological position concerned with the theory and method of interpretation.