Snejina Michailova of The University of Auckland Business School in New Zealand and Nigel Holden of Leeds University Business School, UK, offer the intriguing question: How can research on culture in international business be made more interesting? Writing in the European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management, they suggest that an oft-overlooked aspect of business research is its potential for “interestingness”. They suggest that this is a curious omission from existing reviews and analyses.
The pair has now looked at two interconnected issues that sociologists and management scholars have wrestled with for quite some time: namely, what exactly is interesting research and why does it matter? They have made the suggestion that contextualization is important and have highlighted the need for more research into language. Moreover, they advance the case for research into intracultural variation.
“Conducting research on these three topics involves a break with national value systems, on the one hand, and the embrace of non-cultural variables, on the other,” the team writes. “The current shifts and changes in the world open up new vistas of truly interesting research, at which international business scholars can and indeed should be at the forefront.”
They suggest that when we consider the BRIC countries and so-called emerging markets, the context of the USA as the “default business nation” for benchmarking activity is not necessarily the best approach and moreover is somewhat restrictive.
“The shift in the world’s economic centre of gravity opens up new vistas of truly interesting research, at which cross-cultural management scholars as a specialist sub-group of IB scholars can and indeed should be at the forefront,” the team concludes.
Michailova, S. and Holden, N.J. (2019) ‘How can research on culture in international business be made more interesting?’, European J. Cross-Cultural Competence and Management, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp.1–12.