The competing influences of national identity on the negotiation of ideal worker expectations: Insights from the Sri Lankan knowledge work industry

Croft, Charlotte; Fernando, Weerahannadige Dulini Anuvinda

doi:10.1177/0018726717733530

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…As others have recommended, expatriate managers need to be cognizant of the cultures in which they are working. To the best they can, these managers should accommodate locals who wish to succeed in the organization (Chandrakumara and Sparrow, 2004; Croft and Fernando, 2017). When fit is high between an organization’s and a society’s values, there is a direct (non-mediated) relationship between those values and positive employee attitudes and behaviors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Values congruence, organization-based self-esteem, and employee responses: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Gardner

Wickramasinghe

Pierce

2018

Int'l Jnl of Cross Cultural Management

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Expatriate managers are often advised to adapt their leadership styles and organizational cultures to the culture of the country in which they operate. This advice appears to be reasonable, but it has rarely been empirically tested. In this study, we examine the degree to which congruence of organization and individual cultural values affect employees. We collected data from business managers and executives in Sri Lanka, a country that has not been well studied by international management scholars. We hypothesized that personally embraced values that are consistent with broader cultural values would have relationships with self-esteem. Further, because people are also motivated to verify and enhance their levels of self-esteem in culturally consistent ways, we hypothesized that self-esteem at work would mediate relationships of values with prosocial motivation and intent to maintain membership in the organization. We found that culturally consistent, self-transcendence personal values did relate uniquely to organization-based selfesteem (OBSE). In addition, OBSE mediated the relationships between self-transcendence values, and work-based prosocial motivation and intent to stay. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that strong values fit weakened the mediating effect of OBSE on self-transcendenceoutcomes and conservation-outcome relationships, contrary to our hypotheses. It appears that the advice to modify organizational culture to fit local culture should be qualified by also recommending that such changes are not conflict with the organization's existing, successful culture. Our study also sheds some light on the cultural values of Sri Lanka. This is the first study to

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Values congruence, organization-based self-esteem, and employee responses: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Gardner

Wickramasinghe

Pierce

2018

Int'l Jnl of Cross Cultural Management

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“…De Alwis (2002, p. 675) notes that women are the "reproducers, nurturers and disseminators" of these gendered identities. Women identities are built on motherhood, family and nurturing over career (Croft and Fernando, 2018;Kodagoda and Duncan, 2010). Men are breadwinners and providers of security to women and children (Cho et al, 2015).…”

Section: Research Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although Nelly is from a minority ethnic group in Sri Lanka, the name “Nelly” projects a Western sentiment in the Sri Lankan culture. Due to popular social media, public discourse and political voice supporting anti-Western sentiments, Sri Lankan people associate Westernisation as a force challenging their national identity (Croft and Fernando, 2018; Simon and Oakes, 2006). As a Sri Lankan woman with a Sri Lankan name, Nelly is closer to the respondents.I introduced myself as Nelly to respondents from higher levels of the organisation.…”

Section: Tales From the Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identity work by a young petite female academic home comer: quest for social power in masculine settings

Liyanagamage

Fernando

2022

QROM

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PurposeHow do females with multiple sources of identity deal with intersectional identity tensions and perceived lack of access to social power? The study focuses on how social relationships form and develop in masculinised settings between construction workers and a petite female researcher through perceived notions of equality and inequality. Through autoethnographic tales, the study examines how an academic home comer navigates between conflicting professional and cultural identities, in their native country.Design/methodology/approachUsing collaborative autoethnography, the study examines how the intersections of being a young petite female and a “partial” insider in a male-dominated construction industry influences the researcher's identity work process and her quest for social power.FindingsThe findings suggest that to access referent social power, the researcher covers stigmatised intersectional attributes and reveals a more favourable identity. The fieldwork journey of the young petite female researcher highlights that identity work is a situational process that evolves with respondent relationships, respondent assigned roles, perceived notion of access to power and struggles of cultural versus professional identity. The reader is also taken through the collaborative autoethnographic journey of a female researcher and her doctoral studies supervisor.Originality/valueThis paper makes several contributions. First, it contributes to the academic literature on intersectionality of identity, especially concentrating on the intersectional attributes of petite physical stature, gender and perceived lack of access to social power. Second, this paper theorises identity work processes as an indirect strategy of social power in researcher-and-researched relationships. Last, through collaborative autoethnography of female researchers' fieldwork journey, this study contributes to the body of knowledge on academic home comers as “partial” insiders in their native country.

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“…By building on its high literacy rates, English language proficiency and skillsets in information technology and accounting, Sri Lanka is keen to become a global knowledge hub. Although Sri Lanka fully intends to reap the benefits of globalisation, many citizens do not wish to wholly embrace Westernisation, on the grounds that it may compromise traditional values (Ozra, 2001) and conflict with established patterns of work, which are characterised by informal cooperation (Croft and Fernando, 2018) and personal discretion. From this perspective, Sri Lanka is an extremely interesting context in which to study how diversity management discourses and practices transferred by foreign parent companies play out in local subsidiaries.…”

Section: The Sri Lankan Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenging the cross-national transfer of diversity management in MNCs: Exploring the ‘identity effects’ of diversity discourses

Fernando

2020

Human Relations

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I develop a critique of the cross-national transfer of diversity management in multinational companies. Adopting a critical approach to diversity management, and considering diversity as a discourse, I examine how and why employees in an overseas subsidiary challenged the diversity practices transferred by their foreign parent company. Drawing on a case study of a Sri Lankan knowledge work firm that was in the process of implementing its Western parent company’s Diversity Management agenda, which they had had little input in shaping, I highlight how challenge is triggered by a desire to reject unfavourable subject positions attributed to individuals in transferred discourses of diversity and to reposition the self more favourably. My contribution involves showing how dynamic power relations between parents and subsidiaries shape the global transfer of diversity across MNCs, depicting subsidiary employees as agentic subjects as opposed to passive recipients.

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The competing influences of national identity on the negotiation of ideal worker expectations: Insights from the Sri Lankan knowledge work industry

Cited by 8 publications

References 69 publications

Values congruence, organization-based self-esteem, and employee responses: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Values congruence, organization-based self-esteem, and employee responses: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Identity work by a young petite female academic home comer: quest for social power in masculine settings

Challenging the cross-national transfer of diversity management in MNCs: Exploring the ‘identity effects’ of diversity discourses

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