National culture and international business: A path forward
- PDF / 327,518 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 75 Downloads / 199 Views
POINT
National culture and international business: A path forward Oded Shenkar1, Stephen B Tallman2, Hao Wang3 and Jie Wu4 1
Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, 2100 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; 2 Robins School of Business, University of Richmond, 102 UR Drive, Richmond, VA 23173, USA; 3 Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, Plantage Muidergracht 12, 1001 NL Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 4 Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macau, China Correspondence: J Wu, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macau, China e-mail: [email protected]
Received: 13 May 2019 Revised: 11 June 2020 Accepted: 28 June 2020
Abstract The anniversary of Kogut and Singh’s construct of ‘‘cultural distance’’ is a good time to reflect on this immensely popular but flawed construct, assess the efficacy of the remedies offered for its reform and refinement, and chart an alternative approach that represents a departure from distance as the dominant paradigm with which to view and analyze the impact of national culture on cross-border business. The proposed alternative, a contact-based framework shifts attention from what sets cultures apart towards the actual cultural interface that firms and their executives experience when participating in an international transaction. With this lens, the cultural exchange is regarded as an evolving interactional process of engagement, which commences prior to a transaction and proceeds through the life of the inter-party arrangement and beyond, and whose potential to yield negative – or positive – outcome is subject to specific contingencies. Implications for theory, methodology, and practice are delineated. Journal of International Business Studies (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-020-00365-3 Keywords: cultural distance; cultural friction; paradigm shift; contact-based framework; national culture
INTRODUCTION Cuypers, Ertug, Heugens, Kogut, and Zou (2018) and Maseland, Dow, and Steel (2018) commemorated 30 years to the publication of Kogut and Singh’s (1988) paper that coined the term ‘‘cultural distance’’ (CD) and generated a stream of research that was to form the dominant perspective on national culture in international business (IB). Together with an Editorial by Beugelsdijk, Ambos, and Nell (2018a), the papers assessed the contribution of the Kogut and Singh’s (1988) article and offered ideas for improvement and refinement of a construct whose popularity has not dimmed in the face of ongoing criticism. Not only does the construct remain ‘‘much loved’’ (Zaheer, Schomaker, & Nachum, 2012: 18), but it has engendered the view that ‘‘almost…no international business (IB) can be complete unless there is an explicit variable controlling for cultural distance’’ (Cho & Padmanabhan, 2005: 309) and, even more broadly, that ‘‘international management is management of distance’’ (Zaheer et al., 2012: 19).
National culture and international business
At the same time,
Data Loading...
