Lena Zander

Walking the Cultural Distance: In search of direction beyond Friction

What we know is that the concept of cultural distance is frequently used, hotly debated and for many intuitively appealing. Suffering from a series of illusionary properties, it is argued to have outlived its usefulness. What we need to know is how to conceptualize the complexity of culture as a multi-dimensional, multi-level concept, taking context into account to measure quality rather than quantity (or distance). It is our ambition to do justice to the idea that cultural diversity not only leads to friction or problem creation, but also to enrichment and to generation of solutions. We discuss cultural conceptualizations and suggest cultural profiling and cultural positioning as alternative ways of comparing and contrasting critical cultural differences.

The Business of Teaching and Learning through Multicultural Teams.

Team working is a key skill students need in this era of global complexity. Here we combine research with practice to develop a model for working in multicultural teams which can be used in International Business curricula. We formulate the 4 Cs model focusing on two areas: composition and communication. These two Cs have been chosen because they are active research areas and because they are the areas that have presented our own student groups with the biggest challenges. Getting these wrong can lead to the third C: conflict. Getting these right can lead to that illusive fourth C: creativity. We then illustrate how using multicultural teams in international business courses can facilitate the development of inter‐ and intrapersonal capabilities through conceptual, experiential, experimental, and reflective student learning. We would like to express our appreciation to two anonymous reviewers and to the Guest Editors for invaluable help in developing this article.

Processes of International Collaboration in Management Research: A Reflexive, Autoethnographic Approach

Scientists and academics increasingly work on collaborative projects and write papers in international research teams. This trend is driven by greater publishing demands in terms of the quality and breadth of data and analysis methods, which tend to be difficult to achieve without collaborating across institutional and national boundaries. Yet, our understanding of the collaborative processes in an academic setting and the potential tensions associated with them remains limited. We use a reflexive, autoethnographic approach to explicitly investigate our own experiences of international collaborative research. We offer systematic insights into the social and intellectual processes of academic collaborative writing, identifying six lessons and two key tensions that influence the success of international research teams. Our findings may benefit the formation of future coauthor teams, the preparation of research proposals, and the development of PhD curricula.

Examining the Influence of the Individual in Arts Sponsorship Decisions

Support from the corporate sector is an important revenue source for many nonprofit organizations. In this article, we consider individual-level influence within the decision-making processes of companies as they make decisions concerning nonprofit arts sponsorship. These decisions have often been linked to the influence of a single high-level executive, and the research contained here seeks to better understand the role of the individual in influencing these decisions. Through qualitative multiple-case research the authors find that a single individual, termed the advocate, is in fact influential. Furthermore, the advocate is determined not by their title or official ranking but by their possession of expert power, a combination of knowledge and the belief of others in that knowledge. In addition, how individuals influence these decisions relates to their application not of gut instinct, but of informed intuition. The article closes in suggesting new perspectives that will assist in better understanding this role.

Team-based global organizations: The future of global organizing

This chapter draws on a panel discussion of the future of global organizing as a team-based organization at EIBA 2014 in Uppsala, Sweden. We began by discussing contemporary developments of hybrid ...

Special issue of International Journal of Human Resource Management: The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications

Special issue of International Journal of Human Resource Management : The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications

Building competitive advantage in international acquisitions: grey box conditions, culture, status and meritocracy

Building competitive advantage in international acquisitions: : grey box conditions, culture, status, and meritocracy

A sensemaking perspective on arts sponsorship decisions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to better understand the sensemaking strategies of managers involved in making decisions concerning arts sponsorship. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative, multiple case method is employed, using multiple informants in ten arts sponsorship decisions. Within and between case analyses were conducted and examined iteratively, along with literature to generate themes to guide future research. Findings – This study finds art sponsorships may be seen as ambiguous, cueing sensemaking; the sensemaking strategies of senior managers involve response to pro-social cues while middle managers draw on commercial benefit cues; sensebreaking and sensegiving are part of the process; and the actors and their interpretations draw from cues in the organisational frames of reference which act as filters, giving meaning to the situations. Research limitations/implications – This study presents a novel perspective on these decisions, focusing on the micro-level actions and interpret...

Desilencing Complexities: Addressing Categorization in Cross-cultural Management with Intersectionality and Relationality

Abstract A central focus of cross-cultural management research is how individuals and organizations differ across national cultures and how that fundamentally shapes their thoughts and actions and serves as a unit of identification. In this article, we critically reconsider the essential categorical nature of culture, problematizing categorization and questioning national culture as the primary basis of differentiation. We draw on intersectionality, an approach that helps understand how multiple categories are experienced by the individual, and on relationality, an approach that conceptualizes people, organizations, and their actions within dynamic patterns of relations and cultural meanings. Both approaches challenge the primacy, unity, and separateness of any given category, the a priori determination of categories (and associated boundaries) in research, and the nature and stability of boundaries. Based on this we advance notions of boundary work and boundary shifting that help explore how today’s sociocultural groups and categories, and the boundaries that separate them, emerge and change. We conclude that, while the extant cross-cultural literature has come far in identifying differences, relationality and intersectionality can enable cross-cultural scholars to engage in research practice that better reflects the complexities of sociocultural life. We contribute to theory by suggesting why and how these two approaches can be used to explore complex cross-cultural management phenomena.

The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications

Abstract In this special issue we aim to advance the theoretical, conceptual and empirical knowledge about the relationship between global teams and human resource management in international organizations. We argue that although the prevalence of global teams in international organizations is rapidly rising, simultaneously affecting the management of firms on global, regional and local levels, the response of firms and scholars alike to such changes has been slower, especially in the area of IHRM. The HR function in organizations could play a vital role in understanding, managing and leveraging the benefits of global teams to ensure that they contribute positively to the performance of firms, organizational units, and people. We demonstrate that there is still a disconnect in this respect and we highlight several areas in which the increasing use of global teams may challenge our conventional understanding of IHRM issues, and at the same time offer solutions for improvement in international organizations. The selected articles in this special issue provide both theoretical and practitioner implications by highlighting the need to explore the relationship between global teams and IHRM more generally and fully, as well as the need for HR practitioners and IHRM scholars to focus more on the ‘human’ and less on the ‘resources’ aspect. We trust that readers of this issue will agree that the articles all offer novel insights into key issues that open new avenues for further research in this nascent yet promising area.