Balancing Emic and Etic: Situated Learning and Ethnography of Communication in Cross-Cultural Management Education

Abstract

We interrogate current approaches to cross-cultural management teaching and learning, which have been criticized for delivering a curriculum modeled on “cultural patterns.” Such approaches could be described as etic or culture-general. We argue for re-centering cross-cultural management teaching and learning around a stronger emic or culture-specific component, balancing the current etic emphasis. This we call the “situated cultural learning approach” (SiCuLA), which focuses on the active role that the learner plays in the specific cultural contexts of learning. First, we propose to look at emic–etic as a continuum, as others have argued, rather than an opposition. Second, we reconceptualize cross-cultural management learning as situated learning and, third, we put forward ethnography of communication (EoC) as a learning epistemology that bridges the gap between situated learning and the classroom and workplace as learning contexts. More important, we propose a novel “situated curriculum” based on practical ideas to train students as culture learners. Last, we discuss some implications for developing an ethnography of communication-based curriculum for future cross-cultural management education.