"Cultural Distance, Turbulence, and Friction: Advancing Constructs in Cross-border Knowledge Transfer"

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship of cultural distance with cultural friction. We introduce cultural turbulence (the direction and ease of flow of cultural ideas, values, and actions across cultural distance) as a construct that impacts potential cultural friction (PCF). We highlight the importance of within-culture heterogeneity, an often ignored but meaningful characteristic of culture that is accounted for in the cultural turbulence construct. We build propositions regarding cultural turbulence and its relation to cultural friction and we provide illustrations of these constructs by applying them to cross-border knowledge transfer phenomena. To illustrate the cultural turbulence construct and its influence on PCF in more detail, we draw on data from the Cultural Perspectives Questionnaire database (Maznevski et al., 2002), and we provide measures of directional turbulence of origin countries to destination countries for 12 countries that are often included in international management research. Lastly, we explore how these measures contribute to the knowledge transfer discussion and we discuss implications for further research and for practice.