Jean-Pierre Dupuis

New approaches in cross-cultural management research The importance of context and meaning in the perception of management styles

The field of cross-cultural management is expanding rapidly. Traditional approaches are being critiqued and new approaches put forward. The latter mainly adopts an interactionist perspective, pay more attention to context and different levels of analysis (local, regional, national etc.) and propose more qualitative methods as well as a more dynamic definition of culture. Our research is in keeping with this new shift and contributes to this renewal in two ways. First, it shows the variability of the perceptions of individuals from a given culture regarding the management practices existing in another culture when they find themselves working in that other culture. This variability is based on contextual elements that we have identified: duration of work experience in the country of origin, occupation of the respondent, quality of the relations with locals and so on. Then, the research reveals the link that exists between the quality of the respondents’ integration into this culture and their interpretation of the others’ management practices. These findings were obtained by combining a qualitative approach (some 40 semi-directed interviews) and a quantitative approach (a questionnaire administered to a population of more than 1000 respondents) among a population of French nationals working in Quebec and Quebecers working in France.

Diversity Management in Organizations in Québec and Canada: Facts, Figures and Real-Life Experiences

Abstract In this chapter, we will be describing the situation of minority groups in the labour market and in organizations in Quebec and Canada. We will be focussing mainly on the situation of women and ethnocultural minorities. First, we will present a statistical picture of their situation. Second, we will explore in more depth the situation of two ethnocultural groups – the Maghrebians and the French – in Quebec, 1 to demonstrate the complexity of the situation of minority groups that cannot be portrayed by statistics alone. Then, third, we will examine some tensions specific to Western societies that have an impact on the dynamics of culturally diverse enterprises. This assessment will show that even though much progress has been made, especially for women, there is still much to do to ensure full equality and greater fairness between minority and majority groups in Quebec and Canada. Furthermore, by means of a more qualitative analysis of the situation of these two ethnocultural groups, we will see that statistics do not tell the whole story.