Boundary work: An interpretive ethnographic perspective on negotiating and leveraging cross-cultural identity

Abstract

The complexity of global organizations highlights the importance of members' ability to span diverse boundaries that may be defined by organization structures, national borders, and/or a variety of cultures associated with organization, nation-based societal and work cultures, industries, and/or professions. Based on ethnographic research in a Japan-US binational firm, the paper describes and analyzes the boundary role performance of the firm's Japanese members. It contributes toward theory on boundary spanning by introducing a "cultural identity negotiation" conceptual framework. We show boundary spanning as a process shaped through the interplay of the contextual issues that make a boundary problematic; an individual's multiple repertoires of cultural knowledge; and the individual boundary spanner's "negotiation", through interaction with others, of his/her cultural identities -the sense of "who I am" as a cultural being that is fundamental to an individual's self-concept. At the same time, we make transparent the epistemological and methodological foundations of an interpretive ethnographic approach, demonstrating its value for understanding complex organizational processes. Research findings have practical implications for the selection and training of an organization's employees, particularly of persons who may be considered "bicultural".

Building professional discourse in emerging markets: Language, context and the challenge of sensemaking

“…Having scouted the literature, we came to the conclusion that discourse as a part of "lived experience" (Witte, 2012) of the members of the business community was best suited to be investigated through an interpretive ethnographic research process. This approach has been gaining ground in IB studies (e.g., Moore, 2011;Van Maanen, 2011;Westney & Van Maanen, 2011;Witt & Redding, 2008;Yagi & Kleinberg, 2011) in response to calls for a deeper contextualization of research and the use of innovative methods in the field of IB (Tsui, 2007). Its advantage is that it is not limited to one fact gathering procedure.…”

“…Instead, it encompasses a range of qualitative data generation techniques that produce accounts of research based on participants' experiences of events and phenomena in their natural setting including, importantly, the researcher's own experience (Botti, 1992;Wilkinson, 2012). Its objective is to connect insiders' subjective sensemaking to social theorising (Wilkinson, 2012;Yagi & Kleinberg, 2011).…”

Researching the multinational corporation: contributions of critical realist ethnography

“…The potential of a critical realist ethnographic approach to re-introduce structure into the ethnographic imagination Whilst ethnographic studies of MNC's in the hermeneutic tradition work with an ontology encouraging focus on agents' conceptualizations (Yagi and Kleinberg 2011), there is a relatively smaller number of studies in the field of organization studies and IB/IM premised on a critical realist ontology (for example Porter, 1993;Delbridge, 1998;Reed, 2001;Sharpe, 2006). The potential of a critical realist philosophical foundation to address methodological challenges in the IB/IM field has not been widely considered yet within conversations of philosophical assumptions informing methodological choices.…”

“…As noted by Burawoy (2000, p. 4) "even when our participants (ethnographers) do not themselves stretch across the globe, and it was only the participants imaginations that connected them to the global, our ethnography was no less multi-sited… we sought to understand the incessant movement of our subjects". As noted by Yagi and Kleinberg (2011) the complexity of global organizations highlights the ability of members to span diverse boundaries. Ethnographic approaches are well equipped to explore the nature of these boundaries and the ways these are constructed, contested and responded to.…”

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Social Capital in Pricing Strategy: a Case of Small Enterprises in East Java

“…Generally, the interpreter relies on some form of thematic, content-based analysis (Kleinberg and Easley 2010). The interpretive ethnographer tries to understand cultural knowledge through the "lived experience" of the observed community helps guide observed recurrent, patterned cultural behavior (Yagi and Kleinberg 2010). Furthermore, the steps conducted in qualitative analysis were storytelling, narrative and coding.…”