Unequal power relations, identity discourse, and cultural distinction drawing in MNCs

Abstract

Introduction While organizational scholars have shown a sustained interest in cultural processes in transnational contexts, the dominant approach in cross-cultural research has overlooked processes of culture construction and distinction drawing, and offers an a-contextual and a-political understanding of cultural encounters. Cultural identity, as it is usually conceptualized, starts from the assumption that national identity imprints a value-based, mental program or collective “software” in peoples' minds (Hofstede 1991). These cognitive models are represented through a small set of continua – individualism–collectivism, masculinity–femininity, power distance, anxiety reduction, long-term or short-term orientation (for similar approaches, see e.g. House et al . 2004) – which are claimed to manifest themselves in organizations through stubbornly distinctive patterns of thinking, feeling and acting located in the nationally constituted actors. Despite the appealing simplicity of a description in terms of dimension scores and the useful grip it promises to provide on a complex phenomenon, such a description gives a rather minimal, static and monolithic sketch of national cultures (for a critical discussion of Hofstede's work, see e.g. Ailon 2008). A few general characteristics are considered to be deep-rooted determinants of behavior that are assumed to constitute a true and timeless cultural essence.

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