Making Sense of Gender Equality Across Cultures: Applying a global programme in Argentina

The Routledge Companion to Cross-Cultural

Management

Edited by Nigel Holden, Snejina Michailova and Susanne Tietze

Copyrighted Material-Taylor & Francis Mariana Ines Paludi,Saint Mary's University,13/05/2015

First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2015 Nigel Holden, Snejina Michailova and Susanne Tietze

The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-415-85868-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-79870-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC


ix

Contents

List of fi gures xv List of tables xvii Notes on contributors xix Keynote foreword: the power of richness: revitalizing cross-cultural management xxxvMARY YOKO BRANNEN

Editorial introduction: philosophy, aims and composition xlvNIGEL HOLDEN, SNEJINA MICHAILOVA AND SUSANNE TIETZE

SECTION 1 Review, survey and critique 1Editor: Sonja Sackmann

1 Introduction: taking stock of critical issues and relevant topics in the fi eld of cross-cultural management 3Sonja Sackmann

2 Cross-cultural management rising 8Margaret Phillips and Sonja Sackmann

3 Towards a complex view of culture: cross-cultural management, ‘native categories’, and their impact on concepts of management and organisation 19Fiona Moore

4 Cross-cultural management at a cross-roads? 28Wolfgang Mayrhofer and Katharina Pernkopf

5 The Hofstede factor: the consequences of Culture’s Consequences 37Sierk Ybema and Pál Nyíri

6 The impact of Japan on Western management: theory and practice 49Christina L. Ahmadjian and Ulrike Schaede


Contents

x

7 Cross-cultural management: arguing the case for non-cultural explanations 58Vlad Vaiman and Nigel Holden

8 Challenges in working across cultures: refl ections of two executives 68Mikael Søndergaard and Sonja Sackmann

SECTION 2 Language and languages: moving from the periphery to the core 77Editor: Terry Mughan

9 Introduction: language and languages: moving from the periphery to the core 79Terry Mughan

10 Cross-cultural management and language studies within international business research: past and present paradigms and suggestions for future research 85Markus Pudelko, Helene Tenzer and Anne-Wil Harzing

11 Researching supra- and sub-national contexts: multi-sited and extended ethnographic methodologies for language research 95Anders Klitmøller, Jakob Lauring and Toke Bjerregaard

12 Multicultural and multilingual: workplace communication in Dubai 103Valerie Priscilla Goby and Catherine Nickerson

13 Multilinguaculturing: making an asset of multilingual human resources in organizations 112Patchareerat Yanaprasart

14 Translation in cross-cultural management: a matter of voice 131Chris Steyaert and Maddy Janssens

15 What do bicultural-bilinguals do in multinational corporations? 142Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen

16 Language diversity in management education: towards a multilingual turn 151Linda Cohen, Jane Kassis-Henderson and Philippe Lecomte

17 Language-oriented human resource management practices in multinational companies 161Vesa Peltokorpi


Contents

xi

18 Company linguistic identity and its metaphorical dimensions: purchasers, personnel and products through the perspective of metaphors 170Magdalena Bielenia-Grajewska

SECTION 3 Cross-cultural management research and education 181Editor: Gavin Jack

19 Introduction: cross-cultural management research and education 183Gavin Jack

20 Bridging etic and emic approaches in cross-cultural management research 189Jia He and Fons J. R. van de Vijver

21 Beyond positivism: towards paradigm pluralism in cross-cultural management research 198Ajnesh Prasad

22 Beyond West-centrism: the way forward for cross-cultural management in Latin America 208Alfredo Behrens

23 The present and future of cross-cultural management education in China: towards an integrated etic–emic approach 218Yunxia Zhu and Zhaohui Wang

24 The evolution of a cross-cultural perspective in Russian business education 227 Sheila M. Puffer, Daniel J. McCarthy, Anna Gryaznova and Vyacheslav Boltrukevich

25 Intercultural encounters as socially constructed experiences: Which concepts? Which pedagogies? 237Prue Holmes

26 In search of an international experience: towards a ‘Bildung’ understanding of MBA learning 248Sarah Robinson

SECTION 4 The new international business landscape 259Editor: Fiona Moore

27 Introduction: the new business landscape: transformational perspectives 261Fiona Moore


Contents

xii

28 Global innovation through cross-cultural collaboration 265Karina R. Jensen

29 Culture in the audit fi le: an empirical refl ection on the cross-national cultural ‘native categories’ used by auditors in a ‘Big 4’ professional services fi rm 275Olof P. G. Bik

30 Cyber-threats and cybersecurity challenges: a cross-cultural perspective 285Nir Kshetri and Lailani Laynesa Alcantara

31 A nation of money and sheep 294Már Wolfgang Mixa

32 The evolving world of the cross-cultural manager as a corporate and socio-political actor 304Ödül Bozkurt

33 Under construction but open for business: women entrepreneurs negotiating shifting socio-economic realities in the Arab Gulf 313Leila DeVriese

34 Transformational leadership: contextually dependent on individual and cultural values 322Gregory Bott

35 Indian boundary spanners in cross-cultural and inter-organizational teamwork: an account from a global software development project 334Anne-Marie Søderberg

36 ‘Looking forward by looking back’: a transdisciplinary self/other perspective on intercultural expatriate research 344David Guttormsen

SECTION 5 Rethinking a multidisciplinary paradigm 355Editor: Janne Tienari

37 Introduction: rethinking a multidisciplinary paradigm in cross-cultural management research? 357Janne Tienari

38 Interdisciplinary research of cultural diversity 362Slawomir Magala


Contents

xiii

39 Postcolonial feminist contributions to cross-cultural management 371Banu Özkazanç-Pan

40 What cross-cultural management doesn’t tell us: history of generational dynamics in Chinese society 380Matti Nojonen

41 Making sense of gender equality: applying a global programme in Argentina 389Mariana I. Paludi and Jean Helms Mills

42 Reproducing self and the other: the role of cross-cultural management discourse and training in shaping Israeli–Korean collaborations 399Michal Frenkel, Irina Lyan and Gili S. Drori

43 Finns, Russians, and the smokescreen of ‘culture’: a micro-political perspective on managerial struggles in multinationals 409Alexei Koveshnikov

44 Management is back! Cross-cultural encounters in virtual teams 420Johanna Saarinen and Rebecca Piekkari

45 A multi-paradigm analysis of cross-cultural encounters 431Henriett Primecz, Laurence Romani and Katalin Topcu

Author index 441Subject index 447


Figures

2.1 Evolution of the discipline of cross-cultural management 9 10.1 Paradigmatic development of international business, cross-cultural

management and language studies within international business (dominating paradigm in bold) 89

18.1 3P’s model of company linguistic identity and its metaphorical dimension 174

22.1 Abandoning the West-centric ship 209 22.2 Uruguay’s net yearly migration 210 22.3 Share of population dead or disappeared during a Latin American

‘dirty war’ or a drug related one 213 28.1 Global innovation project cycle and launch process 268 28.2 Cross-cultural collaboration model 271 31.1 Highest individualism scores using the Hofstede cross-cultural

method 300 31.2 Savings ratio in highest scoring individualistic countries

1990–2012 301 36.1 ‘Difference’ and ‘distance’ 346 36.2 Conceptual boundary-markers 350

xv


Tables

8.1 Niels Porksen’s cross-cultural work experiences 69 8.2 Lotte Kragelund’s cross-cultural experiences 73 10.1 Idealized comparison between the “reductionist culture-specifi c”

and the “differentiated culture-specifi c paradigm” 87 20.1 Non-statistical strategies to deal with various types of bias 193 20.2 Nested models in multigroup confi rmatory factor analysis 194 26.1 Summary of suggested learning activities 254 30.1 Some examples of boundaries that separate perpetrators and potential

victims and make cyberattacks more justifi able and acceptable 288 39.1 New concepts and directions for cross-cultural management:

insights from feminist postcolonial perspectives 377 43.1 The four views on cross-cultural management in the multinational 413 45.1 Cultural dimension scores for Hungary and Turkey 435

xvii


xix

Contributors

Christina L. Ahmadjian is Professor in the Graduate School of Commerce and Management at Hitotsubashi University. She received an AB, magna cum laude , from Harvard University, an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a PhD at the Haas School at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research interests include Japanese management, comparative corporate governance, inter-organizational networks, institutional theory and orga-nizational change. She has published articles in journals including American Sociological Review, Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Science . She serves as a non-executive director at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and JPX Holdings.

Lailani L. Alcantara is an associate professor at the College of International Management and Graduate School of Management in Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. Her research interests include innovation, entrepreneurship, international expansion and social network. As a Japanese government Mombusho scholar, she received her PhD in Management from the University of Tsukuba. She has published articles in Journal of International Management , Best Proceedings Acad-emy of Management , Japanese Journal of Administrative Science , Management Research Review , Journal of Transnational Management and Asian Business and Management . Her research works have been funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan.

Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen (PhD) is affiliated to the Department of Management and Organ-isation at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. Language in international man-agement is a key theme of his research; within this area he takes a particular interest in the individual-level implications of varying levels of language skills. He has published on this topic in practitioner-oriented outlets as well as in academic ones, the latter including journals such as Corporate Communications: An International Journal , Journal of International Business Studies , Journal of World Business and Management and Organization Review . Since 2009, Barner-Rasmussen has also acted as co-organizer and co-chair of a number of language-related workshops, including stand-alone events as well as tracks and symposia at international conferences such as Academy of Management and EGOS.

Alfredo Behrens holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is Professor of Cross-Cultural Leadership with FIA Business School, Brazil, and prior to that he lectured at the London Business School and Princeton University. Alfredo Behrens is the author of Culture and Manage-ment in the Americas (2009) published by Stanford University Press, Palo Alto and Saraiva, São Paulo. His most recent book is Shooting Heroes and Rewarding Cowards published by Winvest in English and Bei in Portuguese, both in São Paulo.


Contributors

xx

Magdalena Bielenia-Grajewska , PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Transla-tion Studies and Head of the Intercultural Communication and Neurolinguistics Laboratory at the Faculty of Languages, University of Gdansk. She is a linguist (MA in English Studies, PhD in Humanities, University of Gdansk), an economist (MA in Economics, Gdansk Univer-sity of Technology), a specialist in managing scientific projects (postgraduate studies, Gdansk University of Technology) and a specialist in the mechanisms of the Eurozone (postgradu-ate studies, University of Gdansk). Her PhD thesis was of an interdisciplinary character, being devoted to intercultural communication, translation and investment banking. She is an associate editor at the Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a member of the editorial board of International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation and Inter-national Journal of Human Rights and Constitutional Studies as well as serving as a reviewer in other international journals. Her scientific interests include organizational discourse, neuromanagement, online social networks, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, ANT and symbolism in management studies. She is an author of over 100 publications on, among others, corporate identity, business communication and the discursive dimension of organizations.

Olof P. G. Bik is Associate Professor in Behavioural and Cultural Governance at Nyenrode Busi-ness University in the Netherlands. He received his PhD in Economics and Business Administra-tion from the University of Groningen. With his 20 years of practice and academic experience, his teaching and research focuses on Organizational Culture, Climate and Behaviour. More specifically, his research interests include the dynamic interaction of the mutually influencing and reinforcing bundle of culture attributes and embedding mechanisms of organizational context; the strength thereof or alignment with espoused values; the association thereof with external or strategic contingencies; and its joint meaning for organizational behaviour, change, governance and performance. Olof is a much-invited speaker, lecturer and facilitator in both scholarly and executive programs and regularly publishes (internationally) academic and professional articles and thought leadership pieces.

Toke Bjerregaard is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Business Administration, School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University. His research lies at the intersec-tion of organization studies and international management research. His academic interest is in the strategies and practices mobilized by organizations and their multiple actors in managing institutional/cultural complexity and the global mobility of professionals. He has published in journals such as British Journal of Management , Critical Perspectives on International Business , European Management Journal and Organization Studies .

Vyacheslav Boltrukevich is an associate professor at Moscow State University Business School. His research and publications centre on lean management, improving production systems and developing continuous improvement culture in different business environments with a focus on the initial stage of the transformation process. Since 2011 he has led the MBA program with a concentration in Operational Excellence at Moscow State University Business School. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics from Novosibirsk State University and a Mas-ter’s degree in Sociology from the Higher School of Economics, Russia. He received his PhD in Economics from Moscow State University.

Gregory Bott holds an MSc in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Alberta, Canada. He has also completed executive education courses in municipal management,


Contributors

xxi

leadership, and governance from the University of Alberta and the Institute of Corporate Direc-tors. Mr Bott has held lecturing positions at the University of Alberta on topics including stra-tegic positioning, economic theory, value chain development and small business management in both private and nonprofit sectors. Mr Bott’s current research interests are in nonprofit board governance and numerous facets of leadership.

Ödül Bozkurt (PhD Sociology, UCLA) is Senior Lecturer in International Management at the University of Sussex, Department of Business and Management. Ödül’s research interests revolve around the organization and transformation of contemporary work and workplaces, especially within the context of globalization and within the confines of multinational corporations. She has published articles about the experience of professional careers, high-skilled work and par-ticularly mobility on multinational corporate jobs, employment practices of supermarket retailers in the UK, foreign employers’ employment practices facilitating women’s managerial careers in Japan and migrant academics in British higher education. She has published some of this work in journals including Gender Work and Organization , International Journal of Human Resource Manage-ment , Human Resource Management Journal and The International Journal of Management Reviews , as well as in a number of edited volumes.

Mary Yoko Brannen is the Jarislowsky East Asia (Japan) Chair of Cross-Cultural Manage-ment, Professor of International Business and Research Director at the University of Victoria Gustavson School of Business. She is also Deputy Editor of the Journal of International Business Studies. She received her MBA with emphasis in International Business and PhD in Organiza-tional Behavior with a minor in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. She has taught at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, the Haas Business School at the University of California at Berkeley, Smith College and Stanford University in the United States; Keio Business School in Tokyo, Japan; and Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Professor Brannen’s expertise in multinational affairs is evident in her research, consulting, teach-ing and personal background. Born and raised in Japan, having studied in France and Spain, and having worked as a cross-cultural consultant for over 25 years to various Fortune 100 companies, she brings a multi-faceted, deep knowledge of today’s complex cultural business environment.

Linda Cohen is a professor of International Business Communication and Chair of the Language and Culture Department at ESCP Europe, Paris campus. She received a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of California at Berkeley within the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies: Sociology and Political Philosophy. She then studied law in the Juris Doctor program at the University of California–Hastings School of Law. In Paris, she continued her studies in sociology at Université Paris VIII. She has taught in French universities and business schools. Her current research areas include the use of English as a working language in international busi-ness, managing language diversity in organizations and teaching and learning in multicultural/multilingual contexts. She is a founding member of GEM&L, an international think tank on management and language.

Leila DeVriese , PhD, is Associate Professor of Global Studies and Director of the Middle East Studies program at Hamline University in Saint Paul, MN. Prior to joining Hamline University, DeVriese taught Politics and Women’s Studies at Texas Tech University (2007–8). From 2004 to 2007, DeVriese was a professor in the International Studies program at Zayed University in Dubai, where she also headed the university-wide and interdisciplinary Women, Youth and


Contributors

xxii

Development program. Before joining Zayed University, DeVriese taught Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal. DeVriese’s research explores alternative strategies for mobi-lization by civil society actors in the Middle East, focusing most recently on social media and contentious politics leading up to and following the ‘Arab Spring’ protests. DeVriese’s forth-coming book is titled Virtual Democracies: Social Media and Democratization of the Public Sphere (Ashgate).

Gili S. Drori is a professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusa-lem, Israel. She was awarded a PhD in Sociology by Stanford University in 1997. Before joining HUJI in 2011, she served as Lecturer and Director of International Relations Honors Program at Stanford University and also taught at the University of California Berkeley, the Technion (Israel) and University of Bergamo (Italy); in 2010 she was a guest scholar at Uppsala University (Sweden). Gili’s books, journal articles and book chapters speak to her research interests in global-ization and glocalization; science, innovation and higher education; governance and rationaliza-tion; culture and policy regimes; and technology divides.

Michal Frenkel is a senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She holds a PhD from Tel-Aviv University (2001). She was a Fulbright fellow at Princeton University and a visiting at fellow at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, at Brandeis University and at Smith College. Her research focuses on the transformation of local and transnational social orders, in the context of the ‘globalization’ of management practices. Her empirical and theoretical publications, which appeared in top international and Israeli journals, have looked at the role of geopolitical and center–periphery power relations in the cross-national transfer and translation of management practices within multinational corporations and across national boundaries and at the role of organizations and organizational discourses and practices in shaping gender, ethnic and class identities.

Valerie Priscilla Goby , PhD, is a professor in the College of Business, Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She has published widely in the fields of communication, IT and edu-cation, in journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics , Cyberpsychology and Behavior , Journal of Business and Technical Communication and Journal of Small Business Management . She is on the editorial board of Journal of Business and Technical Communication (USA), Business and Professional Communication Quarterly (USA), Management Convergence: An International Journal of Management (India) and is the reviews editor of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives (UAE). She has taught Organizational Communication, Intercultural Communication and Orga-nizational Behavior for 25 years at universities in Singapore, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland and Australia.

Anna Gryaznova is an associate professor at Moscow State University Business School. Her research focuses on psychological contracts, leadership in various cultural environments, use of social media in the organizational context and performance lessons from the arts. The results of her research have been published in Russia and abroad. Since 2008 she has served as an Academy of Management HR Ambassador in Russia. She received her undergraduate degree in Psychology from St Petersburg University and her Master’s degree in International Relations and Political Science from Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO) and Sciences Po Paris. She earned her doctoral degree in Economics from Moscow State University.


Contributors

xxiii

David Guttormsen joined the Exeter University Business School as a lecturer in International Business in 2014. He earned a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick. David specializes in cultural issues in international business and management, social anthropological analysis of expatriates and qualitative research methodology. He has been a visit-ing researcher at Hong Kong Baptist University, Peace Research Institute Oslo and Leeds Univer-sity Business School. David is currently a guest editor for International Studies of Management & Organization (with Jakob Lauring, Aarhus). He serves as a review panel member for International Journal of Social Research Methodology and has reviewed for International Business Review and Journal of Global Mobility . David has published on expatriates and think tanks, and his work has been presented at the Academy of International Business and European Academy of Management annual conferences. David is former President and Chair of the British International Studies Association’s Postgraduate Network.

Anne-Wil Harzing is Research Professor and Research Development Advisor at ESCP Europe, London. Her research interests include international HRM, expatriate management, HQ–subsidiary relationships, the role of language in international business, the international research process and the quality and impact of academic research. She has published or presented more than 160 books, book chapters and academic papers about these topics in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies , Management International Review , International Business Review , Jour-nal of World Business , Journal of Organizational Behaviour , Human Resource Management , Organization Studies , Strategic Management Journal and Academy of Management Learning and Education . Anne-Wil also has a keen interest in issues relating to journal quality and research performance metrics. In this context she is the editor of the Journal Quality List, the provider of Publish or Perish, a software program that retrieves and analyses academic citations and the author of The Publish or Perish Book: Your Guide to Effective and Responsible Citation Analysis .

Jia He is a PhD researcher in the Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University, the Neth-erlands. She obtained her MA degree in Intercultural Communication from Shanghai Interna-tional Studies University, China. Her current research includes the psychological meaning of survey response styles, values, social desirability and other methodological aspects of cross-cultural studies. She is also interested in contemporary research methods including structural equation modelling and multilevel analysis.

Jean Helms Mills is a professor of Management at the Sobey School of Business, St. Mary’s Uni-versity in Halifax Nova Scotia and a professor (2.0) at Jyväskylä University’s School of Business and Economics in Finland from 2012 to 2014. She has also been a visiting senior research fel-low at Hanken in Helsinki, Finland since 2008. Her research interests are in the areas of gender, historiography and critical sensemaking, from a critical management perspective and she has published in journals including Organization , Organizational Research Methods , Culture and Organi-zation , Gender, Work and Organization , Equality, Diversity and Inclusion , Canadian Journal of Admin-istrative Sciences , Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management , Journal of Management History and Management and Organizational History . Jean is the author of seven books and a number of book chapters and edited collections, including Making Sense of Organizational Change (Routledge, 2003) and co-author of Workplace Learning: A Critical Perspective (Garamond Press, 2003) and Understanding Organizational Change (Routledge, 2009). She is a past associate editor (the Ameri-cas) of Culture and Organization and she is an associate editor for Gender, Work and Organization, as well as serving on the editorial boards of a number of journals. Jean is past Co-Chair of the Critical Management Studies Division of the Academy of Management.


Contributors

xxiv

Nigel Holden obtained his PhD at Manchester Business School in 1986 and has been a visiting research fellow at the Centre of International Business of Leeds University Business School (UK) since 2011. He has held professorships at business schools in the UK, Denmark and Germany as well as visiting professorships in Austria, Denmark and Thailand. A widely travelled management researcher, educator and keynote speaker, he has published extensively in a wide range of inter-national management fields with special reference to cross-cultural management in the global knowledge economy, language and translation in international business, global talent manage-ment and business history. He is an associate editor and co-founder of the European Journal of International Management.

Prue Holmes, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education, Durham University, UK. She leads the MA in Intercultural Education and Internationalisation, and researches and publishes in the area of intercultural (language) education, and intercultural communication/dialogue/competence. In addition to co-developing the teaching and learning activities within IEREST, she leads the Researching Multilingually strand of the large AHRC-funded project ‘Researching multilingually at the borders of language, the body, law, and the state’ (http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/). Prue is the chairperson of the International Asso-ciation of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC, http://ialic.net/?page_id=15). Prue has taught at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and in English language and teacher education in Italy, China and Hong Kong.

Gavin Jack is Professor of Management in the Business School at Monash University, Australia. His research interests include postcolonial theory and its application to the critical study of man-agement and marketing, and gender and diversity in organizations. He has published in journals including Sociology , Organization , Management International Review , British Journal of Management and the Academy of Management Review . He is Past Chair of the Critical Management Studies Division of the Academy of Management.

Maddy Janssens is Professor of Organization Studies at the Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, Belgium. She has served as the scientific lead of SUS.DIV, a European Network of Excellence on Sustainable Development in a Diverse World, and the director of LUCIDE, the Leuven University Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Diversity and Equality. Her research interest centres on the relationship between ‘difference’ and emancipatory practices in organiza-tions. Key areas of inquiry have been expatriate management, global teams, language and transla-tion, diversity management and inter-organizational collaborations. Her current research works with cosmopolitanism in order to consider how global connectivity is translated into ethical and political issues in global organizations. Recent publications have appeared in Journal of Interna-tional Business Studies , Organization , Scandinavian Journal of Management , Journal of Business Ethics , Journal of Management Studies and Academy of Management Journal .

Karina Jensen is Professor of Global Innovation and Leadership at NEOMA Business School in the Champagne region of France. She is an educator, international management consultant and change facilitator with substantial experience in launching business and education initia-tives across cultures. She has successfully launched and managed global products and education programs across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas for multinational organizations such as Adobe, Hyperion (now Oracle), NEC and Symantec. Karina is also the founder and managing director of Global Minds Network, a firm that provides management consulting and training services for facilitating organizational innovation and collaboration worldwide. In addition to


Contributors

xxv

earning a PhD from ESCP Europe Business School, Karina holds an MBA in International Busi-ness and a BA in Public Relations. Originally from San Francisco, California, Karina is currently based in Paris where she conducts research on global innovation management, cross-cultural collaboration and leadership development.

Jane Kassis-Henderson is Professor of International Business Communication at ESCP Europe Business School, Paris campus. She is a graduate in Modern Languages, MA Honours, PhD, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. She has taught in higher education in France in univer-sities and business schools and was Chair of the Department of Language and Culture at ESCP Europe for several years. Her current research interests and recent publications are on the follow-ing themes: the use of English as a working language in international business and management education; teaching multicultural audiences and learning in multicultural/multilingual student groups; language diversity and building trust in multilingual teams. She is a member of the ESCP Europe Research Centre, Teams in International Business and a founding member of GEM&L, an international think tank on Management and Language.

Anders Klitmøller is Assistant Professor at the Department of Language and Communication, Uni-versity of Southern Denmark. His research lies in the nexus between international management and cross-cultural communication with particular focus on different aspects of common lan-guage use in multinational corporations. His work has been published in national and interna-tional journals including Journal of World Business , Critical Perspectives on International Business and International Journal of Public Administration .

Alexei Koveshnikov is a post-doctoral researcher at Aalto University, School of Business, Finland. His research and teaching interests include diverse issues related to power and legitimacy in orga-nizations and, more specifically, critical perspectives on managing a multinational corporation, in terms of cultural stereotyping, nationalism and gender. He has published in journals such as Strategic Management Journal , Journal of World Business , Journal of International Management , Manage-ment International Review and Journal of International Business Studies .

Nir Kshetri is a professor at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and a research fellow at Kobe University. He is the author of Cybercrime and Cybersecurity in the Global South (Palgrave 2013), The Global Cyber-Crime Industry: Economic, Institutional and Strategic Perspectives (Springer-Verlag 2010) and two other books. Nir has published 75 journal articles and two dozen book chapters and has given lectures or presented research papers (over 150) at national/international con-ferences in 44 countries. A 2012 study ranked him second in terms of the number of articles published in Journal of International Management over a 13-year period (1998–2010). Nir received the Emerald Literati Network Award for Excellence in 2013 and 2010. He has won the Pacific Telecommunication Council’s Meheroo Jussawalla Research Paper Prize twice (2010 and 2008). Nir participated as lead discussant at the peer review meeting of the UN’s Information Economy Report 2013.

Jakob Lauring is Professor in the Department of Business Administration, Aarhus University. His research is on international management with particular focus on language use and communica-tion. Jakob Lauring has published more than 100 articles in outlets such as Journal of World Busi-ness , International Business Review , British Journal of Management , Human Resource Management Journal and International Journal of Human Resource Management as well as Journal of Business Communication and Corporate Communication . Jakob Lauring is an associate editor of Journal of Global Mobility .


Contributors

xxvi

Philippe Lecomte holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University Paris X, France and an ‘Agrégation’ of German (High-level Diploma permitting teaching in University). He has lectured in France, Belgium and Germany and has been a member of the faculty of Toulouse Business School (TBS), France for over 30 years. He was Head of the Language Department of TBS for seven years. He is now in charge of a Major in International Management at TBS. He is a member of the HR Department and of the Management Research Center of TBS, as well as president and founding member of GEM&L, an international think tank on Management and Language. In this position, he has organized eight annual conferences so far. His current research interest is on language in international business and management education.

Irina Lyan is a doctoral student at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is writing her dissertation on the cross-cultural encounters in international collaborations between Israeli firms and Korean business groups. Her main research interests are national and global cultures and their impact on inter-organizational dynamics. Irina is a recipient of the Hebrew University Presidential Scholarship (2013–17) and she is an associate doctoral fellow at the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace.

Slawomir J. Magala , Professor of Cross-Cultural Management, Rotterdam School of Manage-ment, Erasmus University. Educated in Poland, Germany and the United States. Involved in global consulting, research and training in China, Egypt, India, Singapore, Estonia and Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Italy, Kazakhstan, United Kingdom, USA and Namibia. He has written books including Class Struggle in Classless Poland (1982, 2011), Cross Cultural Competence (2005) and The Management of Meaning in Organizations (2009) and chapters for books, e.g. ‘Social Life of Val-ues: Cross-cultural Construction of Realities’ (Barry, Hansen, ed., Sage Handbook of New and Emerg-ing Theories in Management and Organization , 2008); ‘Cultural Change: Complexity and Diversity in Institutional Tempospaces’ (Boje, Burnes, Hassard, eds., The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change , 2012). He has also written over 400 papers, e.g. ‘Ethical Control and Cultural Change: In Cultural Dreams Begin Organizational Responsibilities’, Journal of Public Affairs , 10/3, 2010; ‘Organizing Change: Testing Cultural Limits of Sustainability’, Management Decision , 50/5, 2012.

Wolfgang Mayrhofer is Full Professor and Head of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Manage-ment and Organisational Behaviour, WU Vienna, Austria. He previously has held full-time positions at the University of Paderborn, Germany, and at Dresden University of Technology, Germany. He conducts research in comparative international human resource management and leadership, work careers and systems theory and management and has received national and international rewards for outstanding research and service to the academic community. He has authored, co-authored and co-edited 27 books, more than 110 book chapters and 70 peer-reviewed articles. Wolfgang Mayrhofer is a member of the editorial or advisory board of several international journals and research centres. His teaching assignments at the doctoral, graduate and executive level and his role as visiting scholar have led him to many universities around the globe. He regularly consults to both private and public sector organizations and conducts training in the areas of HRM, leadership, teams and self-development by outdoor training/sailing.

Daniel J. McCarthy is the Alan S. McKim and Richard A. D’Amore Distinguished Professor of Global Management and Innovation at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeast-ern University, and is a fellow at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University. His research and publications centre on strategic management, entrepreneurship and corporate governance, particularly in Russia’s transitioning economy. He has more than 100 publications,


Contributors

xxvii

including numerous articles in journals including Academy of Management Review , Academy of Management Perspectives , California Management Review , Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice , Man-agement International Review and Journal of Business Ethics . His books include four editions of Business Policy and Strategy , as well as Business and Management in Russia , The Russian Capitalist Experiment and Corporate Governance in Russia . He is also the lead director of Clean Harbors, Inc., a multibillion-dollar NYSE-listed company. He earned his AB and MBA degrees from Dartmouth College and his DBA from Harvard University.

Snejina Michailova (PhD from Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) is Professor of Inter-national Business at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand. Her research areas are International Management and Knowledge Management. Her work has appeared in Academy of Management Review , Academy of Management Executive , Journal of Management Studies , Journal of International Business Studies , Journal of World Business , Management International Review , International Business Review , International Journal of Human Resource Management , Advances in Inter-national Management , Journal of International Management , Critical Perspectives on International Busi-ness , California Management Review , Long Range Planning , Management Learning , Journal of Knowledge Management , Organizational Dynamics , Technovation , Employee Relations , European Management Journal , Business Strategy Review and other journals. Snejina has co-edited books on knowledge governance (Oxford University Press), women in international management (Edward Elgar), HRM in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge) and research methodologies in non-Western contexts (Palgrave Macmillan). She serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals.

Már Wolfgang Mixa is a PhD candidate at Reykjavik University School of Business. Már gradu-ated with an MA in Corporate Finance from the University of Iceland in 2009, a BSBA in Finance and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Arizona in 1994. He has had extensive experience in the financial banking industry in positions ranging from trading, FX, proprietary trading, asset management, establishing and managing mutual funds, money market desk, pension funds and being head of department and CEO of a brokerage firm. In recent years Már has been a lecturer at Reykjavík University. Már also worked full-time in 2013 and 2014 as a researcher for the Parliamentary Special Investigation Commission looking into the causes and events that eventually led to the fall of the Icelandic savings banks system in 2008. His main research interests are investments, cultural finance, behavioral finance and financial history.

Fiona Moore is a business anthropologist and reader in Management Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She received her doctorate from Oxford University’s Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology. Her research on German multinational corporations, chiefly BMW UK, was published in the Journal of International Business Studies , Management International Review and Thunderbird International Business Review. She has written a monograph, Transnational Business Cultures , on German expatriates in London and conducted research on Korean entrepreneurs in the UK and on cross-cultural management in Tesco plc, in collaboration with researchers at Kingston University and Victoria University. Her current research focuses on the development of international knowledge networks by Taiwanese professionals in the UK.

Terry Mughan (PhD) is Associate Fellow at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria in Canada. His research interests have revolved around the place of language and cultural skills in business internationalisation strategies, including a 1,200 company study of SMEs in the East of England. He has authored several research reports for policy bodies such as UK Trade and Investment and the OECD. He has published articles in The Language Learning Journal, European


Contributors

xxviii

Business Review and International Marketing Management. In 1999, Terry was the Founding President of the UK arm of SIETAR, the leading world professional society for interculturalists, a post he occupied for three years. He is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of GEM+L, the society dedicated to languages in international business. He taught the first MBA intercultural management module in the UK when at the University of Wolverhampton in 1991. At Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, he led the validation of degree programmes in Intercultural Studies at postgraduate level in 1995 and undergraduate in 1999. He is currently co-authoring a book with Mary Yoko Brannen entitled Language Strategies for Global Business to be published by Palgrave McMillan in 2015.

Catherine Nickerson is a professor in the College of Business at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. She has held senior positions in India and in the Netherlands, and she has also lived and worked in the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2008 she received the Association for Business Communication’s Distinguished Publication Award and in 2009 the Association’s Outstanding Researcher Award. Dr Nickerson’s work has been published widely and she has given numerous international conference papers and guest lectures at institutions around the world. Her current research interests include the use of English as an international language in business contexts, the use of English as a lingua franca in the Gulf Region and the communication of corporate social responsibility.

Matti Nojonen received his MA in Sinology at Stockholm University and doctorate from the Helsinki School of Economics. Nojonen is currently working as Professor of Chinese Society and Culture at University of Lapland, Finland. Previously he has been a Professor of Practice at Aalto School of Business, Finland and an executive vice director at the Sino-Finnish Center at Tongji University in Shanghai. Nojonen has spent several years working in China; as a professor at Tongji University, board member and as a research fellow at the Nordic Center, Fudan Univer-sity in Shanghai. Nojonen has also been working as research fellow and program director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, a think tank of the Parliament of Finland. Nojonen’s research interests and publications cover Chinese foreign and security policies, traditional Chi-nese strategic thinking, guanxi in commercializing China and regional business systems of China. Nojonen can be reached at [email protected].

Pál Nyíri is the Professor of Global History from an Anthropological Perspective at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. He is the author, most recently, of Mobility and Cultural Authority in Con-temporary China (2009) and, with Joana Breidenbach, Seeing Culture Everywhere … from Genocide to Consumer Habits (2010, both University of Washington Press). His current research focuses on foreign correspondents for Chinese media.

Banu Özkazanç-Pan received her PhD in Organization Studies from the University of Massachu-setts, Amherst. Currently, she is an assistant professor and the director for the newly launched doc-toral program on Organizations and Social Change at the College of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Banu’s research interests include examining diversity, equality and inclu-sion in organizations using postcolonial, transnational and feminist perspectives. Her recent work focuses on assessing the inclusivity and impact of technology and social innovation incubators for various groups of people and communities. She is also pursuing research examining the impact of urban entrepreneurship activities on the economic and social development of various cities. Banu’s work has been published in the Academy of Management Review , Scandinavian Journal of Management, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research.


Contributors

xxix

Mariana Ines Paludi is a PhD candidate at the Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s Uni-versity, Canada and a teaching and research assistant at Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Argentina. Her areas of research include critical management perspective, gender, culture, Latin America and postcolonialism. She has published in journals such as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and recently she co-authored a chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organizations . In 2011 she was awarded with the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship to pursue her PhD programme.

Vesa Peltokorpi is Associate Professor at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Tech-nology (JAIST) in Nomi, Japan. He received his PhD at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. His research interests include international HRM-related issues, such as expatriation, recruitment and language policies and practices, especially in foreign subsidiar-ies in Japan.

Katharina Pernkopf is Assistant Professor at WU Vienna. Her work is in the field of organiza-tional institutionalism, particularly in the area of comparative human resource management and organizational behavior. She is interested in how today’s employment relationship is affected by changing organizational demands and institutional environments. Through the study of how institutional logics or more generally cultural values play out in real organizations, she analyses coordination situations at the intersection of person and organization, the employee and work or more specifically contemporary HR/talent management systems. Besides her interest in neo-institutional theory, she applies concepts from French schools of thought (e.g. convention theory) to comparative HRM studies. In a current project, she examines legitimation processes in the course of the establishment or adjustment of work time arrangements in organizations between the poles of individual career paths and labour law policies. In 2014, she was SCANCOR visiting scholar at Stanford.

Margaret E. Phillips is Associate Professor of International Business at the Graziadio School of Pepperdine University. A teacher, researcher and consultant, she works primarily in the US, the Caribbean and Latin America. Her special interests are in cultural influences on behaviour in and of organizations, management development in multicultural contexts, the application of multiple theoretical perspectives to organization diagnosis, design for organizational sustainabil-ity, and qualitative research methods. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of several organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit, with culturally diverse stakeholders. With multi-national, multidisciplinary teams of colleagues, she has co-authored Crossing Cultures: Insights from Master Teachers (Routledge, 2004) and the comprehensive chapter on ‘Conceptualizing cul-ture’ for two editions of the Handbook for International Management Research . Professor Phillips received her PhD in Management from the Anderson School at UCLA, an MS in Administra-tion from the Merage School at UC Irvine and a BA in Psychology from UCLA’s College of Letters and Science.

Rebecca Piekkari is Professor of International Business at Aalto University, School of Business, Finland. Her research focuses on the challenges of managing people in multinational corpora-tions. More specifically, she has contributed to two main research streams: language in interna-tional business and the use of qualitative methods in international business and management research. Her work has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Review , Journal of Management Studies and Journal of International Business Studies as well as in several hand-books in the area.


Contributors

xxx

Ajnesh Prasad is Research Associate Professor at EGADE Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. His research has appeared in the Advances in Consumer Research , Human Relations , Industrial and Organizational Psychology , International Journal of Cross Cultural Manage-ment , Journal of Business Ethics , Journal of Business Research , Management Learning , Organization , Scandinavian Journal of Management and elsewhere. He has guest edited special issues of the Journal of Business Ethics (with A. J. Mills) and Critical Perspectives on International Business (with G. Durepos). He has previously held research appointments at the Hebrew University of Jeru-salem, Rutgers University and Yale University. Prior to assuming his current position, Ajnesh was a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales’ Australian School of Business. He completed his PhD in Organization Studies from York University’s Schulich School of Business in October 2012.

Henriett Primecz , PhD, is Associate Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest. Her main research area covers organization theory, cross-cultural management, gender and diversity. She has published several papers analysing intercultural and organizational phenomena from different paradigmic perspectives. She has conveyed several conference tracks (EGOS 2007, CMS 2007, CMS 2013), edited a special issue (IJCCM in 2009) and a book (2011) and authored several papers together with Laurence Romani and Katalin Topcu, which investigated different para-digms in the field of cross-cultural management.

Markus Pudelko is Director of the Department of International Business at Tübingen Uni-versity School of Business and Economics and Vice Dean as well as Associate Dean for Inter-national Affairs of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences. He earned Masters degrees in Business Studies (University of Cologne), Economics (Sorbonne University) and International Management (Community of European Management Schools – CEMS) and a PhD (Univer-sity of Cologne). His current research is on headquarters–subsidiary relationships, multinational teams, the impact of language on international business, Japanese HRM and gender issues, com-parative HRM and cross-cultural management. He has published on these topics in books, book chapters and journals such as Journal of International Business Studies , Human Resource Management , Long Range Planning , Journal of World Business , Organizational Dynamics and International Journal of Human Resource Management . He received several research awards, from the Academy of Manage-ment and the Academy of International Business, among others.

Sheila M. Puffer is University Distinguished Professor at the D’Amore-McKim School of Busi-ness, Northeastern University and a Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University. She is a former editor of The Academy of Management Executive and member of the board of governors. Her research and publications focus primarily on corporate governance, entrepreneurship and management in Russia’s transitioning economy. She has more than 150 publications, including numerous articles in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly , Academy of Management Review , Academy of Management Perspectives , California Management Review , Journal of Business Ethics and Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice . Her books include The Russian Management Revolution , Business and Management in Russia , The Russian Capitalist Experiment and Corporate Governance in Russia . She holds BA and MBA degrees from the University of Ottawa, Canada, a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and a diploma from Moscow’s Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy.

Sarah Robinson is Senior Lecturer in Management and Organisation Studies at Leicester Uni-versity School of Management. She has worked at the Open University Business School and


Contributors

xxxi

Lancaster University School of Management, UK where she also completed her PhD. Her interests include the internationalisation of management education, cross-cultural management and international management learning. She has a background in education development and worked on the management and development of education projects in several countries before joining academia.

Laurence Romani , PhD, is Associate Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden). Her work focuses on issues of representation and interaction with the cultural Other in respectful and enriching ways. She currently considers contributions from critical management, feminist and postcolonial organization studies to further cross-cultural management research and teach-ing. She co-edited Cross-Cultural Management in Practice: Culture and Negotiated Meanings (Edward Elgar, 2011) with Henriett Primecz and Sonja Sackmann.

Johanna Saarinen is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Management Studies in Aalto University, School of Business, Finland. Prior to her PhD studies she has had a career of 20 years in human resources within industrial companies – as an executive and as a manager, currently deeply involved in competence and talent management of a multinational organization. The focus of her PhD is leadership in global virtual teams.

Sonja Sackmann holds a chair in Organizational Behavior, University Bw Munich, Department of Economics, Management and Organization Sciences, Germany and is Director of the Institute for Developing Viable Organizations. She is also a visiting professor, University St Gallen, Swit-zerland and has taught mostly executives at EBS, RWTH Aachen, WU Vienna, Jao Tong Univer-sity in Shanghai and UCLA, USA. She was Managing Partner at a major research and consulting firm in Switzerland. Her research, teaching, executive development and consulting focus on issues of intercultural management, corporate/organizational culture, leadership, personal-, team- and organizational competence and development in national and multinational/multicultural con-texts. She has published several books, numerous articles in reviewed and professional journals and contributed to several handbooks. Professor Sackmann received her PhD in Management from the Graduate School of Management at UCLA, USA, and her MS and BS in Psychology from the Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg, Germany.

Ulrike Schaede is Professor of Japanese Business at the University of California, San Diego, School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. She earned her MA and PhD in Japan Studies and Economics from Bonn University and the Marburg University, Germany. She is trilingual and has spent a total of more than eight years of research and study in Japan. Areas of research include Japan’s corporate strategy, business organization and management, regulation, financial markets, corporate restructuring, changing employment practices and entrepreneurship.

Anne-Marie Søderberg is Professor of Cross-Cultural Communication and Management at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. With a research focus on cultures, identity construc-tions, communication and learning processes, she has created a bridge between her educational background in the humanities and her present position as an international business scholar. She is currently principal investigator of longitudinal ethnographic studies of global software devel-opment teams in an interdisciplinary and inter-organizational project (www.nexgsd.org). She was director of the research programme ‘Cultural Intelligence as a Strategic Resource’ (2008–11), based on which she co-authored the book Global Collaboration: Intercultural Experiences and


Contributors

xxxii

Learning (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). She has (co-)authored books, book chapters and journal articles (e.g. Journal of International Business Studies , Journal of International Management, Man-agement International Review ) on cross-cultural communication and management issues and has written about how managers and employees make sense of and give sense to complex change processes in international mergers and acquisitions.

Mikael Søndergaard is Associate Professor at Aarhus University, where he is Head of the Busi-ness Section for the Department of Economics and Business. He teaches graduate level courses on International Management, Internationalization of the Firm and Transnational Management. He organized and taught in nine week-long PhD workshops in Cross Cultural Organizational Research with participants from all continents (2004–14) at Aarhus University, Koc Univer-sity and Maastricht University. He has published in Management International Review , Thunderbird International Business Review , Organization Studies , International Journal of Cross Cultural Manage-ment , Academy of Management Executive and The Case Journal and co-edited for Foundations of Cross Cultural Management for Sage Publications. Mikael has contributed a number of book chapters, reviews ad hoc for a number of journals and serves on the editorial boards of journals. With Mark F. Peterson, he is focused special issue editor of Nations, Within-Nation Regions, and Multiple Nation Regions: How Are Societal Boundaries Significant for International Management Today?

Chris Steyaert is Professor of Organizational Psychology and Director of the Research Institute for Organizational Psychology at the University of Sankt Gallen, Switzerland. He has published in international journals and edited books in the area of organizational theory and entrepre-neurship. His main thematic interests concern creativity, multiplicity and reflexivity in organiz-ing change, intervention, and entrepreneurship. Key areas of inquiry have been entrepreneurial startups and social-entrepreneurial change, urban creativity and new museums, diversity and cosmopolitanism, creative pedagogies and dialogical intervention, and language and translation. Currently, he is interested in conceiving performative, conceptual approaches to language, affect, space and method. Recent publications have appeared in Journal of International Business Studies , Organization Studies , Organization , Journal of Business Ethics , Journal of Management Studies , Entrepre-neurship and Regional Development and the Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration .

Helene Tenzer (PhD, University of Passau) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Inter-national Business at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Prior to joining the department, she earned a Masters in International Cultural and Business Studies and a PhD in Inter-cultural Communication. Helene’s research focuses on the impact of language barriers on international business. Specific topics include the influence of language on trust building, shared cognition and power relations in multinational teams, language-based choice of com-munication media in virtual teams or the management of language-induced emotions in a multinational workforce. The overall goal of her research is to extend international business and organizational behavior theory to multilingual contexts. Helene’s research interests also include multinational team processes, cross-cultural management, foreign subsidiary manage-ment and Japanese management. Her research has been published in journals such as the Journal of International Business Studies , Schmalenbach Business Review , Asian Business and Man-agement and Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft .

Janne Tienari is Professor of Organizations and Management at Aalto University, School of Business, Finland. He also works as Guest Professor at Stockholm University, School of Busi-ness, Sweden. Tienari’s research and teaching interests include gender and diversity, managing


Contributors

xxxiii

multinational corporations, strategy work and cross-cultural management and communication. His latest passion is to understand management, new generations and the future. He has published in journals such as the Academy of Management Review , Organization Science , Organization Studies , Journal of Management Studies , Human Relations , British Journal of Management , Organization and Journal of Management Inquiry .

Susanne Tietze , PhD, is Professor of Management at Keele Management School, Keele Univer-sity, UK. She holds a degree in Linguistics and Language from Heidelberg University, Germany and her research is informed by discursive and linguistic approaches through which she theorizes organizations as ‘talk and text’. Her work has a distinct international dimension and focuses in particular on the relationship between culture and language and their nexus of ties with the generation and dissemination of knowledge in international work contexts. In particular her work includes the impact of English-only publication policies on the generation of management knowledge and on the career and well-being of management academics. Current research draws on translation theory as a conceptual trajectory to understand multilingual knowledge transfer and the role of translators and interpreters as active and influential knowledge agents. She has written two books on language, international management and organization and has language-related publications in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies , Journal of World Business , Intercultural Communication and Language and Management Learning .

Katalin Topcu , PhD, is Assistant Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest. Her main research area is cross-cultural management and decision sciences, her preferred research paradigm is inter-pretive and she pursues qualitative research analysing narratives. She has published several papers and book chapters on intercultural encounters in Hungarian, in English and in German. Her teaching covers decision methods and cross-cultural management.

Vlad Vaiman is Associate Dean and Professor of International Management at the School of Management of California Lutheran University and visiting professor at several premier universities around the world. Dr Vaiman has published three books on managing talent in organizations – Smart Talent Management: Building Knowledge Assets for Competitive Advantage (with C. Vance); Talent Management of Knowledge Workers: Embracing the Non-Traditional Work-force ; and Talent Management of Self-initiated Expatriates: A Neglected Source of the Global Talent Flow (with A. Haslberger) – as well as a number of academic and practitioner-oriented articles in the fields of talent management and international HRM. His work has appeared in top academic journals including Academy of Management Learning & Education, Academy of Manage-ment Perspectives , Human Resource Management , International Journal of Human Resource Management and others. He is a co-founder and editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Management (EJIM), an ISI/SSCI indexed publication.

Fons J. R. van de Vijver is Professor of Cultural Psychology at Tilburg University, the Nether-lands, and Professor Extraordinary at North-West University, South Africa and the University of Queensland, Australia. He obtained a PhD from Tilburg University in 1991. The study dealt with cross-cultural differences and similarities in inductive reasoning in Zambia, Turkey and the Neth-erlands. He has written over 350 publications, mainly on cognition, acculturation, multiculturalism and methodological aspects of cross-cultural studies (how can we design and analyse cross-cultural studies so as to maximize their validity?). With Kwok Leung from Hong Kong, he wrote a book on cross-cultural research methods (Sage, 1997). He is a former editor of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology . He is the current president of the European Association of Psychological Assessment.


Contributors

xxxiv

Zhaohui Wang , PhD, is Professor in the School of Management, Shanghai University of Interna-tional Business and Economics, China. His research interests include cross-cultural management and human resource management. He has published extensively in these areas and his works appear in books such as Cross-Cultural Management, International Enterprise Management: Theory and Practice and Talents Localization of Transnational Corporations. He serves as a TV show host of Talent Capital Operations. He also has extensive consulting experience with companies and government agencies in China.

Patchareerat Yanaprasart , PhD, holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master’s degree in French Studies from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. After obtaining her PhD in Applied Lin-guistics from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland and her intercollegiate Franco-Swiss postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Fribourg in partnership with the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in France, she began her teaching experience at the Center for Teaching and Research in a Foreign Language, University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Thereafter, she worked as a deputy director for the EU Project at the University of Basel. Currently, she is a teacher–researcher attached to the Faculty of Arts (SLSI) of the University of Lausanne. She is a substitute lecturer at the Faculty of Arts (ELCF) at the University of Geneva, and provides courses at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Western Switzer-land (HEG Arc Neuchâtel, HEIG-VD), and at the Business School of Management, Angers, France. Her publications, fields of teaching and research focus on the intercultural approach to multilingual teaching; language policy and diversity management; exolingual interactions and intercultural communication; multilingualism, interpreting and interculturality; and mobility and expatriation – integration and competences.

Sierk Ybema is Associate Professor, Department of Organization Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam. His research centers on processes of politics, identity and sensemaking, with empiri-cal settings ranging from amusement parks to newspaper offices and multinational corporations. He has published on culture and conflict, relational and temporal identity talk, managerial dis-course and ‘postalgia’, intercultural communications, inter-organizational relationships, organiza-tional change and crisis in journals such as Human Relations , International Journal of Cross Cultural Management , Organization , Organization Studies and Journal of Business Ethics . He is co-editor of Organizational Ethnography: Studying the Complexities of Everyday Life (2009, with Dvora Yanow, Harry Wels and Frans Kamsteeg) and Organizational Culture (2011, with Dvora Yanow and Ida Sabelis). E-mail: [email protected].

Yunxia Zhu , PhD, is Associate Professor at UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Aus-tralia. Her research interests include cross-cultural communications and management. She has published extensively in these areas and her works have appeared in books, book chapters and prestigious international journals such as Academy of Management Learning and Education , Manage-ment International Review , Journal of Business Ethics , Journal of Management Inquiry , Public Relations Review , Discourse & Communication , Discourse Studies , Discourse & Society , Text and Journal of Business and Technical Communication , to name a few. She also has extensive consulting experience with companies and government agencies in Australia and China.


389

41

Making sense of gender equality Applying a global programme in Argentina

Mariana I. Paludi and Jean Helms Mills

Introduction

The motivation for this research relates to the experiences of one of the authors, Mariana, who participated in the 2009 initiative between Argentina and the World Bank called the Argen-tine Gender Equity Model or Modelo de Equidad de Genero para Argentina (MEGA), which was implemented to promote gender equality in the private sector. As a trainer, Mariana had to teach Human Resources and Work–Life Balance practices in twelve multinationals and medium business organizations. An absence of literature addressing gender in organizations, in an Argentine con-text, meant that the training material for MEGA consisted of mainstream US Human Resources Management literature, with a North American focus on examples, reactions and potential solu-tions (e.g. Recruiting and Retaining Women [Harrington, 2000] or Women and Men in U.S. Corporate Leadership: Same Workplace, Different Realities? [Catalyst, 2004]), which ignored local context and history, including pre-existing gender initiatives already in place, and cultural differences.

At first, this didn’t seem problematic to Mariana, but when participants contested the exam-ples given regarding issues such as Work–Life Balance programmes and gender equality policies from US multinationals (e.g. Johnson and Johnson’s Balancing Work and Family programme, or Avon’s Managing Diversity programme), it raised questions for Mariana. What did the failure to include local examples mean in terms of employee understandings and acceptance of the training? Specifically, Mariana felt that the training examples were ignoring the particularities of Argentine society historically (Barrancos, 2008), culturally (Stobbe, 2005) and economically (Novick et al ., 2008) and were ‘othering’ Argentine employees.

Ultimately Mariana’s experiences raised questions concerning the use of standardized North American biased solutions to address the complexity of the social phenomenon of gender issues between North and Latin America and a reliance by researchers on explaining these common occurrences through traditional mainstream cross-cultural literature. Using a decolonial lens, we suggest that CSM offers an alternative way to make sense of the factors that shape differ-ent meanings, which, in this case, contribute to local understandings of gender equality in an Argentine context. We use decolonialism (Mignolo, 2000, 2007, 2011) to situate Argentina in a Latin American context. We then use CSM as a heuristic to show how different meanings were constructed around HR policies in organizations using the MEGA programme, how these


390

M. I. Paludi and J. Helms Mills

‘misunderstandings’ affected the implementation of MEGA and what the implications of this were in terms of the power of those in the training and the context in which it was carried out.

Five interviews were conducted in an Argentine company that participated in MEGA in the year 2012 by Mariana. Additionally, we analysed ethnographic field notes (Van Maanen, 1988) taken by Mariana while doing participant observation and documents based on activities (e.g. seminars, talks) in which MEGA members had been participating.

Mainstream cross-cultural management tends to focus either on surfacing cultural and value differences (Bird & Fang, 2009; Hofstede et al ., 2010) or managing cross-cultural conflict (Mayer & Louw, 2012). We contend that a combination of decolonialism, which offers a way to make sense of the Latin American context, and CSM, which provides a framework to understand how different understandings and meanings are formed, takes into account context and meaning (Dupuis, 2013) and offers a deeper level of analysis that considers the socio-psychological pro-cesses that contribute to these various meanings. This approach focuses more on understanding and less on management.

Decolonization, context and Latin America

In order to understand how MEGA was introduced and made sense of, we first need to contex-tualize what is meant by ‘Latin America’. To do this, we turn to Mignolo (2000, 2007, 2011), whose contribution to the postcolonial literature offers an alternative approach to Said (1978) and is specific to Latin America and focused more on local history, knowledge and identity. Thus, decolonialization provides a framework to make sense of MEGA in the Argentine context and to show the influences of local histories and identities in the shaping of different understandings.

According to Mignolo, differences between the two Americas (‘North America’ and ‘Latin’ America) can be traced back to their origins. Latin America, according to Mignolo (2000), is a term imposed on a number of countries in South America and Mexico in the North 1 by Northern colonial powers (specifically Great Britain and the United States) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By 1950, the economic and political crisis that affected ‘Latin’ America reinforced the sense of inferiority that was felt by most ‘Latin’ Americans and ended any expec-tation of becoming a rising region. Mignolo (2009) critiques the assumed contrast between the first world (the ‘North’) as the creators of knowledge and the so-called third world, or the ‘South’ (including Latin America) as having culture, but not creating knowledge.

Mignolo (1993, 2000, 2005) focuses on Spanish imperialism across Latin America and looks at the intersections of local histories and global designs. His notion of ‘border thinking’ (Mignolo, 2009) that sees ‘the other’ as inferior is particularly important in helping us make sense of what happened in Argentina during the MEGA project. Specifically, the emphasis on local histories, combined with placing a higher value on knowledge from the first world, highlights the problems associated with implementing a gender programme in Argentina, designed from a Northern perspective.

Critical sensemaking: an alternative approach to cross-cultural management

Sensemaking (Weick, 1995) uncovers the social-psychological processes that lead to different out-comes and occurs when an ambiguous or uncertain situation creates a shock that forces us to give that situation meaning. According to Weick (1995), sensemaking involves seven interdependent properties, which include: i. grounded in identity construction (the multiple identities that make up who we are influence how we understand a particular situation or event); ii. retrospection (our past experiences help us make sense of the present); iii. enactive of environments (we are


391

Gender equality across cultures

influenced by the environment we have created and operate within); iv. social (our understand-ing is based on and negotiated by our interactions with others); v. ongoing (we never stop the sensemaking process); vi. driven by plausibility rather than accuracy (we look for what seems plausible, even if it is not accurate); vii. focused on extracted cues (we seek cues that support our notion of plausibility and discard anything that doesn’t support this). Weick (1995) initially argued that all properties are interdependent and while some might be more relevant than others, depending on the situation, they are all necessary in the sensemaking process. More recently, Mills and Helms Mills (2004) have suggested that plausibility is central to the sensemaking process and without plausibility, we will lose interest and move on to a new event or situation, which can be understood as plausible (see also Carroll et al. , 2008).

CSM (Helms Mills et al., 2010), on the other hand, extends Weick’s sensemaking frame-work by shifting focus to how organizational power and dominant assumptions privilege some identities over others and create them as meaningful for individuals. Through the addition of organizational rules (Mills, 1988), which offer an understanding of the influence of structure on the process of sensemaking; discourse (Foucault, 1979), which provides an understanding of how sensemaking is informed and grounded in power and knowledge and formative contexts (Unger, 1987), which draw attention, explain the broader context where events occur and how sense-making is operationalized, CSM takes into account how some voices are privileged and some are overlooked, which is ignored in Weick’s model.

We argue that CSM is particularly relevant because it offers a way to explain the social–psychological processes involved in giving meaning to a global initiative, demonstrates postcolo-nial power dynamics and demonstrates how a discourse can obscure local discourses on gender and equality. Unlike more mainstream cross-cultural management approaches, CSM gives us the tools to show how meaning was constructed both by the creators of MEGA and by local employees of organizations that participated in MEGA.

MEGA

MEGA, a World Bank initiative, within a greater project called the Gender Equity Model, was designed to introduce international standards on gender equality in Argentina. It was a one-year programme, consisting of six stages: i. establishment of a Gender Equity Committee, ii. self-diagnosis, iii. establishment of an action plan, iv. training, v. audit and vi. certification (Pérez Esquivel & Hernández, 2013). It was first introduced to Mexico in 2001, Egypt in 2007 and Argentina in 2009.

By 2010, the World Bank acknowledged the widespread use of these types of initiatives and the cultural differences that affected them:

International experience indicates that in order to achieve gender equality, it is necessary to address cultural barriers, which are sometimes hidden in business practices, affecting female development in labor activities.

(World Bank, 2010: 9)

That is, the World Bank would create knowledge for the less privileged countries:

The World Bank brings its international experience and knowledge to the process and helps building in country capacity. By providing technical assistance and training to the imple-menting agency and bringing in international experts, the Bank helps to build local capacity to make the certification process sustainable. This support has been particularly valuable in


392


helping gender specialists adopt a business perspective and in teaching business specialists about gender equity.

(World Bank, 2010: 39)

In 2012, Mariana conducted open-ended interviews at one of the eleven participating companies. The data was originally collected in Spanish and later translated into English. We also analysed ethnographic notes from the training sessions conducted in 2009 and a talk she attended in 2013. On the basis of the analysis of these original empirical data, we will argue that MEGA failed to critically address the Westernization of global management (Hartt et al ., 2011) and used an Anglo-American understanding of equality and gender, which was disconnected from the cul-ture of Argentina and failed to take into account, local history, knowledge and identity.

In sensemaking terms, MEGA served as a shock, forcing participants to rethink their percep-tions of gender roles and equality. While the interchange between trainers and members of the organization allowed a space for sensemaking, confusion, doubts and ambiguity confronted the participants and this led to different meanings of MEGA and expectations about what it was trying to achieve.

For example, it didn’t take into account the identity construction or past experience of local employees. As one local manager said:

we wanted to be involved in MEGA because we already have a pro-equity culture … we wanted to certify something that was already natural to our organization because of the history of the company.

(Marketing Manager)

Another interviewee made the point that what MEGA was offering wasn’t entirely new but this wasn’t acknowledged:

we always have a lot of women, several in top positions, also the Regional Manager is a woman, that’s why I don’t notice a before/after MEGA. Maybe the fact that it is a family oriented organization and that the Director is a woman is what makes a difference.

(Employee)

Failure to take into account local context, identity, Argentina’s strong history of feminism (Bar-rancos, 2007) and a large body of research done on women in the labour market and the house-hold (Esquivel, 2009; Novick et al ., 2008; Wainerman & Guitiérrez, 2007) suggests that MEGA was enacting gender equality based on a powerful North American identity construct that sees ‘third’ world countries, in this case Latin America, as the receivers of knowledge, not the creators. Despite work–life balance initiatives being in place for some time, the training being provided at the local level demonstrates a lack of awareness on the part of those designing the global initiatives, as to how they applied to local realities. MEGA made certain assumptions and ascribed certain meaning about Latin American women and men, which may or may not have been accurate but seemed plausible to the World Bank in terms of how they designed and implemented MEGA .

Making sense of employee reactions to MEGA

As we have suggested, MEGA offers an empirical study of the root causes of the problems that can be encountered in applying a universalist approach to equality and imposing North Ameri-can values on Latin American organizations. In this section, we will show how CSM can be used,


393


as an alternative to mainstream cross-cultural management approaches, to explain why local reali-ties were ignored, how individuals involved in MEGA made sense of the programme and why local HR policies clashed with global initiatives in the sensemaking process.

We will use sensemaking to show how power struggles underscored how these global initia-tives were understood and enacted by employees and managers and what this means in terms of future implementation and problems that may be encountered when doing so. We believe that this approach offers a layer of analysis that provides insights into a deeper understanding of the social–psychological processes that lead to the formation of different cross-cultural values. Rather than managing cross-cultural management, the insights we get from this combined approach of decolonization and CSM helps work with local realities and context and creates an awareness of power imbalances.

Making MEGA plausible

We concur that plausibility is a pivotal property in the sensemaking process (Carroll et al. , 2008; Mills & Helms Mills, 2004). In this case, we argue that it was a key factor in how MEGA was diametrically understood and how plausibility, or the lack of plausibility, determined the enact-ment of or resistance to MEGA.

In selecting MEGA, we would argue that the organizations in Latin American countries that adopted it did so because it was part of the ongoing and social nature of sensemaking to address current management issues and enact the discourse of change that has forced many CEOs to feel that if they aren’t constantly engaged in some sort of change process, they aren’t on the cut-ting edge. In addition, a US-based training initiative was coherent with their understandings of equality and training and reflected how they wanted to portray themselves as multinationals (identity construction). What the decision makers in these Latin American companies knew about equality training (retrospection) suggested that programmes, such as MEGA, were a nor-mal part of HR initiatives in (North) America and, as such, were plausible because they offered legitimacy through the certification of practising and training gender-neutral policies in both large multinationals and small and medium sized organizations. MEGA seemed plausible because it signified ways to formalize procedures in the organization. Unfortunately, the cues that were drawn upon to create this plausibility failed to take into account the local contexts, history and identity that Mignolo (2000) says must be considered. This means that the history of Argentina in the context of Latin American colonization has certain characteristics such as a predominance of the Catholic faith and a history of creolization between aboriginal and Spanish people, which entails a particular design of any instrument to encourage social change. So, despite having an equality programme that worked well in a North American context, we shall see in the next section how very different understandings of these HR policies led to different enactments of them and, in some cases, resistance.

MEGA in the local context of Argentina

Whereas MEGA was deemed plausible by the leader of the programme who has the power to determine the gender policy, based on observations and our interviews, we found that many of the participants did not share the same view and were uncomfortable with some of the HR practices that seemingly contradicted local values. We argue that this was because it was not a training programme that was consistent with their understandings of equality and it failed to take into account the history and national identity of Argentine companies. In these cases, the ‘misunderstandings’ not only contradicted some of MEGA’s training programme, but also led to


394


employee confusion about the purpose of MEGA. In some cases, this included what could be considered forms of resistance.

When making sense of the new policies, a number of people we interviewed were confused about why they were being given gender equality training. They felt that equality was already part of their culture and something very familiar to them, not a new concept (retrospective sensemaking). They interpreted MEGA as more of a formalization of existing/past experiences and practices, rather than a learning process, around gender issues. The manager of one such organization explained the rationalization of this formalization process:

we were sure that we had been doing everything [regarding gender equity] for 30 years but there was nothing written, not even the procedures, and actually the policies [they found out] were obsolete.

(Corporate Social Responsibility Manager)

The Manager of the Marketing Department also agreed that MEGA formalized what they have already been doing; however, he added:

Our department was already aware that our marketing material should mirror our male and female population. Nevertheless, we started thinking about it more and for those brochures where we have only one image […] we added two and we have equity in the back of our minds.

Related to gender equality another employee said:

I think this organization is more equal in many senses. It considers executive women’s opin-ion. Also people’s emotions regarding work and not so much the numbers. We have the [good] impression of being led by a woman who is always thinking of what to say, when, and how.

Another manager viewed equality as a linguistic distinction:

It called our attention the use of gerente/gerenta (in Spanish ‘manager’ can be feminine or masculine) since we realized that language matters and allows as to make that distinction. Also since MEGA, we began paying attention to age and sex when composing ads for recruitment.

(Manager of Human Capital)

The imposition of rules and their enactment contradicted local culture and suggested that differ-ent meanings encouraged resistance, as an adherence to rules is not part of Argentina’s culture.

A popular saying in Argentina is ‘hecha la ley, hecha la trampa’ or ‘rules are meant to be bro-ken’. This served as a powerful sensemaking device in Argentine workplaces and led to what could be interpreted as overt resistance. The following case offers an example of first, the failure to report and second, to minimalize a sexual harassment incident and, subsequently, try to make it seem plausible:

the company doesn’t allow us to account for it as a sexual harassment case although it does appear in the report like that [that is delivered to headquarters every three months]. But within the company [Argentine branch] we just called it irregularities […] to protect those who are being laid off from the company .

(Employee)


395


At a lesser level, MEGA’s training programme was causing confusion and employees were unsure of how to react to them. The recommendation not to ask personal questions in job interviews, in order to avoid making biased decisions that might disadvantage certain employees, while the norm in North American organizations, puzzled employees in Argentina. To not ask personal questions related to their family life was interpreted as a contradiction of the family friendly organization that represented part of national identity. Instead, it was understood as being insensitive or uncaring.

Likewise, displaying emotions and referencing themselves as passionate and warm people, in comparison to Anglo-Saxon cultures, is another part of the Argentine identity (see also Paludi & Helms Mills, 2013). This explains the subtle gender dynamics in the workplace, and some of the implications for the gender equality policies of MEGA, which could result in different under-standings outside of the Latin American context. In responding to one of the questions about interpersonal relationships at work, a manager said:

culturally from what I know, the Latino or Argentine way of working is very friendly and it calls attention to people coming from other cultures … I’ve worked a lot with Japanese in another company and they were surprised by the way we work, because you know, Japanese people go to work, open their computers and there is no dialogue between co-workers. But in contrast, in Argentina it is normal to have conversations … a sense of sociability, the comments people make … this creates a good working environment. This is reflected in the employees’ work environment survey globally, where you can see that Latin cultures have better rates [regarding satisfaction] than other non-Latin countries … if it is better or worse [Latino or Argentine culture], I don’t know, for us it is normal. Maybe we should compare ourselves to others, however we don’t have sexual harassment issues.

(Human Capital Manager)

The closeness and family-oriented nature of organizations was also important in enacting MEGA. Physical contact within a Latin American context was understood very differently from a North American context. It is worth noting that physical contact in the North American societies is one of the most evident elements used in cases of sexual harassment in the workplace. On the contrary, body language and human touch as a way of communication and self-expression is especially important in Latin cultures:

You can talk naturally with management … here [it] is more simple, open and family ori-ented. Everyone can go to your office, even though you might not need to go often, but if you need anything … well they might kiss you hello. It’s much more family oriented [meaning] closer, not so stiff or cold.

(Employee)

Sensemaking is also social and ongoing and it is interesting to note that constant interactions during the different stages of MEGA continually reshaped global policy at a local level, despite the more formal procedures that should have been followed. For example, members in the organization, including project leaders and auditing companies, were constantly questioning and negotiating the meaning of gender equality, both formally and informally. The project leader of MEGA (Argentine nationality) at one of the organizations offered this comment:

In the process of the pre-audit we were asked about our procedures. MEGA brought to our company a gender policy that allowed people to talk about gender and labour and one they can count on, with the possibility to be role model for other companies.


396


In a similar vein, the head of the Human Capital Department also commented on the implica-tions of receiving the MEGA certificate:

What tells you if it works or not is day to day experience. People in our organization value the sensitivity towards women (and men) issues, family concerns and health. We also carry on focus groups with members of different areas to listen to problems and suggestions regarding work environment.

This disruption of the flow of events in each of the participating companies forced individuals in them to stop, and pay attention to potential issues that could affect their activities. As such, MEGA was an ongoing process of reconstruction, through daily interactions that include gos-siping and joking, which unintentionally caused employees to re-evaluate their understanding of the programme:

training went well because people felt they could talk about gender and even related it to our business. The juicy parts were heard in the hallways more than during the training, or through the circulation of jokes among employees. I think that training sessions were a good idea because they made people question ideas that they normally do not have and gave them the time to think about gender issues on a daily basis.

(Corporate Social Responsibility Manager)

Conclusions

Critical scholars have argued for more studies of Latin America, using different approaches such as postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism (Calás & Smircich, 1999; Prasad & Prasad, 2003; Prasad, 2005). In this chapter, we have used the case of MEGA to illustrate how using a postcolonialist lens, combined with critical sensemaking, offers a way to understand how the creation of knowledge intersects with power and factors that influence meaning. In turn, this offers a different cross-cultural management perspective that shows how different meanings get constructed around the same event, how knowledge is created, how more power-ful voices, in this case those who decided to introduce MEGA, get heard and the consequences of this.

We believe that this approach gives us different insights into cross-cultural management because it doesn’t just focus on how to manage; rather, it looks at factors that contribute to sensemaking and it explains why universalist approaches might not be meaningful. By under-standing how values come to be and why they are important, organizations, such as the World Bank, can be aware of potential misunderstandings that might occur when they fail to take local contexts into account.

The case of MEGA and how it was implemented has implications for future cross-cultural management, teaching us that those implementing global designs should be cautious of their assumptions. Each country has a geo-historical context that shapes its culture and identity in a different way. For Argentine organizations MEGA was a self-learning process in which they formalized current gender practices into a written policy. MEGA enlightened the Argentine identity and also the managerial culture adding knowledge to a body of research in organiza-tions situated in the context of Latin America (Ibarra-Colado, 2006). More than ever the trans-formation in the global economy reminds us of the importance of understanding management and organizations (Prasad, 2003) and their relationship with policies and globalization (Calás et al ., 2010). The challenge ahead is to develop future gender policies that take into account the


397


processes of globalization but stick to the local reality of each country considering their history and culture; and by acknowledging this difference we will be creating decolonial projects in its best expression.

Note

1 We refer to South America as the geographically bounded territories south of Mexico. Latin America, on the other hand, refers to a set of disparate countries – both in terms of geographical location, history, culture and politics – that, nonetheless, have been categorized as a more-or-less single entity based on their shared heritage as former colonies of Spain and Portugal.

References

Barrancos, D. (2007). Mujeres en la sociedad argentina. Una historia de cinco siglos, Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana.

Barrancos, D. (2008). Mujeres, entre la casa y la plaza, Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana. Bird, A. & Fang, T. (2009). Cross cultural management in the age of globalization. International Journal of

Cross Cultural Management, 9(2), 139–143. Calás, M. B. & Smircich, L. (1999). Past postmodernism? Reflections and tentative directions. Academy of

Management Review, 24, 649–671. Calás, M. B., Smircich, L., Tienari, J. & Ellehave, C. F. (2010). Editorial: Observing globalized capitalism:

gender and ethnicity as an entry point. Gender, Work & Organization, 17, 243–247. Carroll, W. R., Mills, A. J. & Helms Mills, J. (2008). Managing identity and resistance: Making critical sense

of call centre management. Gestion 2000 (Belgian Journal of Management), 25, 57–82. Catalyst (2004). Women and men in U.S. corporate leadership: Same workplace, different realities?, New York,

Catalyst. Dupuis, J.-P. (2013). New approaches in cross-cultural management research: The importance of context

and meaning in the perception of management styles. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management , 14(1), 67–84.

Esquivel, V. (2009). Uso del tiempo en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Los Polvorines, Prov. de Buenos Aires, Argen-tina, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento.

Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, New York, Vintage Books. Harrington, P. E. (2000). Recruiting and retaining women: A self-assessment guide for law enforcement, Los Angeles,

CA, National Center for Women & Policing, a Division of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Hartt, C. M., Mills, A. J., Helms Mills, J. & Durepos, G. (2011). Markets, organizations, institutions and

national identity: Pan American Airways, postcoloniality and Latin America. Critical Perspectives on Inter-national Business, 8, 14–36.

Helms Mills, J., Thurlow, A. & Mills, A. J. (2010). Making sense of sensemaking: The critical sensemaking approach. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 5, 182–195.

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J. & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind: intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival, New York, McGraw-Hill.

Ibarra-Colado, E. (2006). Organization studies and epistemic coloniality in Latin America: Thinking other-ness from the margins. Organization, 13, 463–488.

Mayer, C.-H. & Louw, L. (2012). Managing cross-cultural conflict in organizations. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 12, 3–8.

Mignolo, W. D. (1993). Colonial and postcolonial discourse. Latin American Research Review, 28, 120. Mignolo, W. D. (2000). Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking, Prince-

ton, Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W. D. (2005). The idea of Latin America, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell. Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking the rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of

de-coloniality. Cultural Studies, 21, 449–514. Mignolo, W. D. (2009). Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom. Theory,

Culture and Society, 26, 7–8. Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options, Durham, Duke

University Press. Mills, A. J. (1988). Organization, gender and culture. Organization Studies, 9, 351–369.


398


Mills, A. J. & Helms Mills, J. (2004). When plausibility fails: Towards a critical sensemaking approach to resistance. In: Thomas, R., Mills, A. J. & Helms Mills, J. (eds.) Identity politics at work resisting gender, gendering resistance. London: Routledge.

Novick, M., Rojo, S. & Castillo, V. (2008). El trabajo femenino en la post convertibilidad. Argentina 2003–2007 , Santiago de Chile, Naciones Unidas.

Paludi, M. I. & Helms Mills, J. (2013). Making sense of the Latin American ‘other’: Executive women in Argentina. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal , 32(8), 732–755.

Pérez Esquivel, A. & Hernández, N. (2013). Género y Empresa La gestión del Proyecto MEGA en Portsaid y Desiderata [PowerPoint slides]. Seminario Abierto Permanente: Género y Sociedad, August 2013 Uni-versidad de San Andrés, Argentina.

Prasad, A. (2003). The gaze of the other: Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis. In: Prasad, A. (ed.) Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis: A critical engagement. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.

Prasad, A. & Prasad, P. (2003). The postcolonial imagination. In: Prasad, A. (ed.) Postcolonial theory and orga-nizational analysis: A critical engagement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Prasad, P. (2005). Crafting qualitative research: Working in the postpositivist traditions, Armonk, M.E. Sharpe. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism, New York, Vintage Books. Stobbe, L. (2005). Doing machismo: Legitimating speech acts as a selection discourse. Gender, Work & Orga-

nization, 12, 105–123. Unger, R. M. (1987). Plasticity into power, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Wainerman, C. & Guitiérrez, M. A. (2007). Conyugalidad y paternidad: ¿una revolución estancada? Género,

familias y trabajo: rupturas y continuidades: desafíos para la investigación política. Buenos Aires, Consejo latino-americano de ciencias sociales – CLACSO.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications. World Bank (2010). Argentina gender equity in the private sector promoting gender equity in the private

sector towards an international Gender Equity Certification Model (“GEM”): The case of Argentina, “MEGA 2009”, Washington.


Making Sense of Gender Equality Across Cultures: Applying a global programme in Argentina

Documents

Transcript of Making Sense of Gender Equality Across Cultures: Applying a global programme in Argentina