Critical Cross-Cultural Management: Outline and Emerging Contributions

Abstract

Critical perspectives on cross-cultural management (CCM) are increasingly present in our research community; however, they are spread over multiple research fields (e.g., international business, International Human Resource Management (IHRM), diversity, and gender and/or race studies). Critical researchers tend to have agendas and foci that address topics others consider beyond CCM's scope, such as gender in intercultural training, religion in the multi-cultural workplace, or the relationship between CCM knowledge and the military. We intend to sketch here the contours of this stream of research we call critical CCM and to clarify the broadly shared research studies' agenda. By using Burrell and Morgan (1979) matrix and stressing critical studies' inspirations in two paradigms, radical structuralism and radical humanism, we propose a paradigmatic positioning of the studies. Subsequently, we articulate Critical CCM research agenda around denaturalization, reflexivity, and emancipation. We conclude by asserting a critical performative agenda in a dialog with practitioners. In brief, our ambition is to specifically outline Critical CCM research and show its emergent contribution to CCM research.

Positivist, constructivist and critical approaches to international human resource management and some future directions

“…The third wave of IHRM research includes new themes -postcolonial analysis (Boussebaa and Morgan, 2014;Mahadevan, 2015) and gender discrimination in foreign assignments (Adler, 1984(Adler, , 1987Altman and Shorthand, 2001;Janssens et al, 2006;Mayrhofer and Scullion, 2002;Metcalfe, 2006;Tung, 2004) -while the dominance of positivism is inevitable and can be identified in perhaps the most influential textbook in the field, that of Dowling et al (1999). There is a growing number of publications in cross-cultural management, which intentionally apply critical approaches (Mahadevan et al, 2020;Primecz et al, 2016;Romani et al, 2018bRomani et al, , 2020, and these studies can inspire further critical IHRM studies in the future.…”

An empirical analysis of research paradigms within international human resource management: The need for more diversity

“…Hence, given that our main interest was to cover a diverse set of studies, including those with a more critical theoretical perspective, those addressing social problems and those conducted in non-Western contexts, we considered this search strategy the best possible solution. In future research, reviews could adopt a clearer, single focus on critical studies (as did Romani et al, 2018, for the subfield of cross-cultural management) and, for instance, explicitly search within journals welcoming critical perspectives and/or include 'critical' as a search term. This would allow for a more thorough analysis of critical perspectives and their contributions to IHRM.…”

“…As a result, theory building may be enhanced by providing ‘multidimensional representation of the topic area’ (Gioia and Pitre, 1990: 596), and more innovative empirical insights are generated (Hassard, 1991; Lewis and Grimes, 1999; Patel, 2017; Romani et al, 2011). In addition, a field that allows for balancing different perspectives does not run the risk of overlooking important research questions, such as ethical and social issues that may otherwise be neglected for more dominant managerial concerns (Romani et al, 2018; Williams, 2017).…”

Exploring culture as a paradox: complementary QUEUE analysis of cultural values and practices

“…The controversy around crosscultural research has also raised questions regarding level of analysis (country level vs individual level), research paradigms (universalist versus contextual, etic versus emic; objectivist versus subjectivist; functionalist versus interpretivist) and methodologies appropriate for measuring culture (quantitative versus qualitative or mixed methods). For a more detailed discussion see Kirkman et al, 2006;Caprar et al 2015, Patel, 2017Romani et al 2018) The emphasis within the 'national cultural model' upon nomothetic macro-level values resulted, before GLOBE, in little focus upon social practices, which tend to involve more local, 'emic' and embodied action. The incorporation of social practice questions in the GLOBE questionnaire resulted in an unexpected negative correlation between social values and social practices and a convincing explanation of this still remains elusive.…”

“…Cultural subjectivities have largely been explored in international management research through a dualistic, objectivist prism (Sackmann and Phillips, 2004;Caprar et al, 2015;Patel, 2017;Romani et al, 2018 In furtherance of this idea, mixed methods research has been described as a third research 'paradigm' to complement quantitative objectivism and qualitative subjectivism (Johnson et al, 2007;Creswell and Creswell, 2017). In 'pure' mixed methodology, equality is afforded to both objective and subjective criteria for research design, operation and analysis.…”