Conceptualizing and measuring culture in international business and management: From challenges to potential solutions

Abstract

Understanding the influence of culture on business operations has been one of the most enduring components of international business (IB) and international management (IM) theorizing and empirical investigation. While several critiques and debates questioned the significant progress made in this domain, the special issue we introduce here is meant to demonstrate that further advancement on how we conceptualize and measure culture is not only needed, but also possible. We provide an overview of past and current approaches in the measurement of culture in IB/IM and the challenges associated with these approaches, and emphasize the important, yet insufficiently acknowledged, link between the theoretical conceptualization of culture and its measurement. We then introduce the four articles included in the special issue and highlight how they break away from the "addiction" to approaches that have been very useful in getting where we are today, but that might not always be useful in advancing knowledge beyond what we already know. Last but not the least, we offer our own perspective on promising directions in conceptually and methodologically rethinking the study of culture in IB and IM.

An overview of Hofstede-inspired country-level culture research in international business since 2006

“…While recognizing that many of these issues are valid and should be of concern, and despite the occasional pessimism that more of the same cultural distance research will not lead us to important novel insights (Caprar et al, 2015;KLG, 2016), we think that overall this literature has made some important steps forward over the last decade, facilitated to a large extent by KLG's practical recommendations. Given the volume of cultural distance papers since 2006, our review of this work is not meant to be exhaustive or complete.…”

“…This leads them to ''urge future researchers to move beyond national geographic boundaries in the search for cultural entities'' (KLG, 2016). Since KLG's article was published in this journal in 2006, Hofstede-inspired research has continued to blossom (Caprar, Devinney, Kirkman & Caliguri, 2015). The cultural distance literature in particular has grown at a remarkable speed (Beugelsdijk & Mudambi, 2013).…”

Multiculturalism within individuals: A review, critique, and agenda for future research

“…Simultaneous immersion can occur among the children of immigrants, referred to as second-generation immigrants (Anderson, 1999); multiracial children who grow up in a multicultural household (Lou & Lalonde, 2015); third culture individuals who spend their formative years outside their passport country (Moore & Barker, 2012); and individuals living within polycultural societies , meaning the mainstream culture is not defined by a single majority group (Caprar et al, 2015).…”

Global Social Tolerance Index and multi-method country rankings sensitivity

“…While we contend that our tests produce a highly valid measure, future research could nonetheless develop these validations in further detail -in relation to the validation measures we examine along with other measures that should be theoretically similar or distinct, such as the related construct of acceptance. Additionally, newly identified cultural dimensions (e.g., Minkov & Hofstede, 2012) and/or approaches to conceptualizing and measuring culture (e.g., Caprar, Devinney, Kirkman, & Caligiuri, 2015) could be used for further validation. These might include relating social tolerance to culture at the transnational or subnational levels (e.g., Venaik & Midgley, 2015) or to culture conceptualized in terms of schemas or norms as opposed to the more commonly used values approach (e.g., Leung & Morris, 2015).…”