Cross-Cultural Management Studies: State of the Field in the Four Research Paradigms*

Abstract

Cross-cultural management research is often confined to the positivist tradition, which is archetypically illustrated by the seminal work of Hofstede. However, this gives an incomplete overview of the field to which three additional research paradigms contribute: interpretivist, postmodern, and critical. Our ambition is to raise awareness of the presence of multiple paradigms in cross-cultural management research. This meta-theoretical positioning allows researchers to consider the insights and contributions from the different paradigms. We aim to achieve this by presenting a brief overview of the state of the field in each paradigm, thus, stressing areas of studies that enrich our understanding of the interaction between culture and management (at the national, organizational, interpersonal, and individual levels). We then highlight the specific contributions of these four paradigms, drawing especially upon the postmodern and critical works, as they have been repeatedly overlooked in reviews. The article concludes by mentioning how more interactions between the paradigms can be developed and can lead to further knowledge development.

Workforce diversity, diversity training and ethnic minorities: The case of the UK National Health Service

“…Therefore, service provider organizations, through their HR systems, should train and encourage their workforce to focus on the culture and needs of an individual, rather than treating a service user as a member of a generic ethnic group. This suggests managers to focus on recruiting and training staff with active negotiation and invention when it comes to promoting inter-cultural behaviour (Romani et al, 2018).…”

Ethnographic studies in international human resource management: Types and usefulness

“…Interpretive ethnography developed parallel to British and French structural-functionalism, mainly in the United States and Germany (Eriksen, 2010), and became particularly relevant in the 1970s with the work of Geertz (1972Geertz ( , 1973. It is the most influential strand of ethnography in management and organization studies (Bate, 1997;Weeks et al, 2017) and the major counter-paradigm in IHRM-related disciplines such as CCM (Romani et al, 2018) and IB (Doz, 2011).…”

Critical Cross-Cultural Management: Outline and Emerging Contributions

“…In speaking of a paradigm, we broadly refer to a research community's shared ontological assumptions and epistemology and its scientific production. Various taxonomies have attempted to develop meta-classifications of the available range of CCM studies (e.g., Sackmann and Phillips 2004;Lowe, Moore, and Carr 2007;Primecz, Romani, and Sackmann 2009;Patel 2016;Mahadevan 2017;Romani et al 2018). As part of the larger field of management and organization studies, CCM theories can be organized in the taxonomy of the Burrell and Morgan (1979) matrix, which appears to be the most cited despite different paradigmatic labels and delimitations (see Deetz 1996;Tsoukas and Knudsen 2003;Guba and Lincoln 2005).…”

“…The functionalist paradigm (labeled "objectivist" in Patel 2016 and "positivist" in Mahadevan 2017 and Romani et al 2018) combines an objectivist philosophy of science with theories of regulation that primarily study underlying unity and cohesiveness. Functionalist CCM studies tend to define culture as self-contained, separate, and stable phenomena comprised of distinct characteristics that can be observed, measured, and manipulated.…”

“…They also put cultural diversity, fluidity, and dynamism at the center of the investigation. These works are currently among the least visible in cross-cultural management (see Primecz et al 2009;Romani et al 2018).…”