Biculturals as natural bridges for intercultural communication and collaboration

Brannen, Mary Yoko; García, Dominie; Thomas, David C.

doi:10.1145/1499224.1499257

Cited by 34 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Cultural insiders are obvious assets to a multicultural team. Given their knowledge of and connections to other cultures present in the team, they are "natural bridges" (Brannen et al 2009) between cultures. 2 Across various contexts, researchers have found that individuals who have more connections to others are capable of shaping collective creative performance (e.g., Fleming et al 2007, Obstfeld 2005.…”

Section: Multicultural Individuals and Team Creative Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Brokerage and Creative Performance in Multicultural Teams

Jang

2017

Organization Science

152

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This paper presents a novel theoretical framework of how members of multicultural teams leverage their diverse knowledge to produce creative outcomes. I develop and test a model of cultural brokerage, which I define as the act of facilitating interactions between actors across cultural boundaries. I find that team members with multicultural backgrounds engage in cultural brokerage on behalf of monocultural team members. Among multiculturals, "cultural insiders" (those whose cultural background overlaps with other team members') brokered by integrating knowledge from different cultures, whereas "cultural outsiders" (those whose cultural background has no overlap with any other team members') brokered by eliciting knowledge from different cultures. Both integrating and eliciting significantly enhanced creative performance at the team level. These findings advance our understanding of the process of creativity in culturally diverse teams.

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Section: Multicultural Individuals and Team Creative Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Brokerage and Creative Performance in Multicultural Teams

Jang

2017

Organization Science

152

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“…Brannen, Moore and Mughan (2013) proposed that multiculturals can act as bridges across multicultural teams to reduce the impact of faultlines. Multiculturals' greater metacognition (Brannen, Garcia, & Thomas, 2009) enables them to act as cultural bridges and enhance communication and trust in multicultural organizations (Brannen & Thomas, 2010; Hong, 2010). Since communication, collaboration, and trust facilitate knowledge transfer, multiculturals enhance organizational performance (Brannen & Thomas, 2010).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance effects of interaction between multicultural managers and multicultural team members: Evidence from elite football competitions

Szymanski

Kalra

2020

Thunderbird Intl Bus Rev

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Multicultural employees are an important organizational demographic and a subject of increasing interest in the literature on international management; however, few studies assess how multiculturals affect team performance. We first collect individual performance data for 442 individuals from 20 teams led by monocultural and multicultural managers. We then collect team‐level performance data for 269 teams with varying proportions of multicultural individuals. The results confirm that multicultural individuals performed better in teams with multicultural managers and that teams led by multicultural managers outperformed teams with the same percentage of multicultural individuals led by monocultural managers.

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“…Within cross-cultural management, bi-or multiculturalism has traditionally been conceived of in categorical terms of dual cultural identities, focusing on questions such as how individuals with bicultural identity can manage or switch between their multiple identities. Research has advanced from considering bicultural identity as "either/or" to "both" or "neither" (e.g., Brannen, Garcia, and Thomas 2009), where Hong and colleagues' study (2000) provides support for the "both" identity categorization with individuals switching their cultural frames depending on cues (either/or). A relational and culture-cognitive conceptualization of multiculturalism adds to these insights by explicitly conceptualizing integration, mixing, or linking of multiple cultures (L€ ucke, Kostova, and Roth 2014).…”

Section: From Categories To Cultural and Social Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Desilencing Complexities: Addressing Categorization in Cross-Cultural Management with Intersectionality and Relationality

Lücke

Engstrand

Zander

2018

International Studies of Management & Organization

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A central focus of cross-cultural management research is how individuals and organizations differ across national cultures and how that fundamentally shapes their thoughts and actions and serves as a unit of identification. In this article, we critically reconsider the essential categorical nature of culture, problematizing categorization and questioning national culture as the primary basis of differentiation. We draw on intersectionality, an approach that helps understand how multiple categories are experienced by the individual, and on relationality, an approach that conceptualizes people, organizations, and their actions within dynamic patterns of relations and cultural meanings. Both approaches challenge the primacy, unity, and separateness of any given category, the a priori determination of categories (and associated boundaries) in research, and the nature and stability of boundaries. Based on this we advance notions of boundary work and boundary shifting that help explore how today's sociocultural groups and categories, and the boundaries that separate them, emerge and change. We conclude that, while the extant crosscultural literature has come far in identifying differences, relationality and intersectionality can enable cross-cultural scholars to engage in research practice that better reflects the complexities of sociocultural life. We contribute to theory by suggesting why and how these two approaches can be used to explore complex cross-cultural management phenomena.

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Biculturals as natural bridges for intercultural communication and collaboration

Cited by 34 publications

References 13 publications

Cultural Brokerage and Creative Performance in Multicultural Teams

Cultural Brokerage and Creative Performance in Multicultural Teams

Performance effects of interaction between multicultural managers and multicultural team members: Evidence from elite football competitions

Desilencing Complexities: Addressing Categorization in Cross-Cultural Management with Intersectionality and Relationality

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