The hidden side of Cross-Cultural Management.

This research project aimed to investigate the limitations voiced by critical, post-colonial and gender/power perspectives against cross-cultural management research and education, in order to constructively contribute to further developments.

Cross-cultural management investigates the influence of culture on management across countries. The discipline is well established; cross-cultural management is a mandatory topic for elite students in Europe’s top business schools, and large organisations are appointing “diversity managers”. However, in this successful development, it seems that only a certain range of perspectives were taken into consideration, and this is now viewed by some as a lethal limitation.

Cross-cultural management is accused by critical and post-colonial researchers of setting, in disguise, western norms as the normality, leading to normative solutions. In practice, cross-cultural management is said to implicitly favour western perspectives, leading to reproduce the power inequalities between for example, developed and developing countries.

The project core investigation were two communities that participate in the developemnt of views on culture: influencial international teachers in management disciplines and the community SIETAR, consultants, trainers and more, who work for better understanding of cultural differences.

Results from the project show the lack of awareness of alternative positons to the mainstream one (see Szkudlarek et al 2013) in cross-cultural management, and the marginalisation of critical voices, mostly due to their lack of visibility. To address this lack of visibility, most of the publication effort of the project has centred on presenting the multi-paradigmatic nature of the field of cross-cultural management, in textbooks, journal articles, editorial of special issues. The impact of these publications on the field of Cross-cultural management is tangible in the Sage Handbook of Contemporary Cross-Cultural Management, which is the first Handbook in cross-cultural management that explicitly builds on several research paradigms, including the critical one (post-colonial and critical studies). As for addressing the limitations voiced by critical perspectives on cross-cultural management, this led to the development of a new stream of research in cross-cultural management: critical CCM (see Romani et al, 2018).

Project leader:
Laurence Romani

Research team:
Laurence Romani with Charlotte Holgersson and Pia Höök, both at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

Status:
Financed by Vetenskapsrådet 2010-2013.

Publications related to the project

Romani, Laurence and Holgersson, Charlotte (2020) Global Diversity Management: when diversity and cross-cultural management meet, in B. Szkudlarek, L. Romani, D. Caprar and J. Osland, The Sage Handbook of Contemporary Cross-Cultural Management, London: Sage, pp. 255-269.

Romani, L. Szkudlarek, B. (2019) Beyond imperialism: a new agenda for cross-cultural training, paper presented at the SIETAR Europa annual conference, Leeuwen, Belgium.

Romani, L.; Barmeyer, C.; Primecz, H. and Pilhofer, K. (2018) Cross-Cultural Management
Studies: State of the Field in the Four Research Paradigms. International Studies of
Management & Organization, 48(3): 247-263.

Romani, L., Mahadevan, J., Primecz, H., (2018) Critical Cross-Cultural Management: outline and emerging contributions, International Studies of Management and Organization, 48 (4): 403-418.

Romani, L & Szkudlarek, B (2014) The struggles of the Interculturalists: professional ethical identity and early stages of code of ethics development. Journal of Business Ethics, 119, 173-191.

Romani, L. (2014) Culture and cross-cultural management, in A. W. Harzing and A.
Pinnington (Eds.) International Human Resource Management, (4th Ed.), London:Sage, 11-44.

Romani, L., Primecz, H. and Bell, R. (2014) There is nothing so practical as four good theories, in B. Gehrke and M.T. Claes (Eds) Global Leadership practices: a cross-cultural management perspective, Basingstoke, Palgrave McMillan, 13-47.

Szkudlarek, B, McNett, J.; Romani, L and Lane, H. (2013) The past, present and future of cross-cultural management education: the educators’ perspectives, Academy of Management Learning and Education, special issue on cross-cultural management, 12(3):477-493.

Primecz Henriett, Romani Laurence and Sackmann Sonja (Eds.), (2011), Cross-Cultural Management in practice: culture and negotiated meanings, Edward Elgar.

Romani, Laurence (2010) Culture in IHRM: three perspectives, in Ann-Wil Harzing (Ed.) International Human resource Management (3rd Ed.) London: Sage, pp. 79-118.

Laurence Romani and Pia Höök, (2010), “The hidden side of cross-cultural management:A study agenda on absent perspectives in cross-cultural management research, education and management training”, International Association of Cross Cultural Competence and Management, 2010 conference proceedings.

Primecz, Henriett, Romani, Laurence and Sackmann, Sonja (2009), “Cross-Cultural Management Research: Contributions from Various Paradigms”, International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, 9(3), 267-274.