Cross cultural competence stands for a specific range of skills, knowledge and abilities. Hofstede’s dominant research paradigm focuses on the contribution of collective cultural software to different levels of productivity reached in different countries with distinct national cultures. Values dominating national cultures shape individual preferences and determine productivity. The GLOBE research team (cf. House et al. 2004) modified the Hofstedian theoretical foundation, unzipping some dimensions and re-focussing on a relative readiness to accept a certain type of leadership behaviour demonstrated by managers of work organizations. Both popular applications (Trompenaars for organization consultants, de Mooij for marketing specialists and Peterson for a broader academic audience) and academic criticism (McSweeney, Jackson, Shenkar, Magala, Jack, Nkomo) contributed to the establishment of the institutional and methodological borders of the new discipline within the academic landscape, between “human resource management” researchers (e.g.Tayeb,1996, Jackson, 2002) and “organizational theory, design, development and change” academics (e.g. Schneider & Barsoux,2002, Alvesson,2002). Further growth of a discipline devoted to a study of cross-cultural differences would require interdisciplinary and inter-paradigmatic joint research projects in overlapping zones of interest with ethics (Appiah,2010), business ethics (Gorz, 2010), and strategic management (Boisot, 2012). Hofstede’s paradigm still shows signs of methodological and theoretical robustness (cf. Minkov, 2011), but increasing complexity and diversity of culture (cf. hybridization of 2 cultural softwares) calls for less reductionism, more emic sensitivity for local knowledge and cultural climates and more vigilance against violations of the ecological fallacy (Brewer, Venaik, 2014).

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hdl.handle.net/1765/78210
Department of Organisation and Personnel Management

Magala, S. (2015). Interdisciplinary Research of Cultural Diversity. In The Routledge Companion to Cross-Cultural Management. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/78210