Editorial

Abstract

Globalization is reshaping our modes of thinking and ways of behaving and foster-ing cultural change in societies. While some scholars (cf. Harrison, 2006; Harrison and Huntington, 2000) may argue over a ‘clash of cultures’, it seems just as relevant to focus on the ways in which cultures may learn from each other, even inspire each other where the beauty of cultural differences and cultur-al collisions is applauded (Fang, in press; Soderberg and Holden, 2002). At the same time, some scholars argue that a world cul-ture (Lechner and Boli, 2005) or global cul-ture (Arnett, 2002; Bird and Stevens, 2003) is emerging and that it threatens the existence of national cultures.This special section on ‘Cross Cultural Management in the Age of Globalization’ aims at providing a forum to examine what globalization means for cross cultural man-agement with a special focus on the evolution of our understanding of national culture and cultural change. We attempt to avoid a sim-plistic and sweeping ‘either-or’ debate over convergence vs. divergence. Instead, we give importance to understanding the paradoxi-cal and evolving conceptualizations of cul-tures and their implications for cross cultural management theory and practice.To put the discussion into perspective, it is useful to consider the changing trends in the cultural research pantheon. In the 19th cen-tury, Sir Francis Galton first introduced the problem of cultural group independence in his work on correlation. He noted that cultural groups could not be considered truly independ-ent from one another because the processes of cultural transfusion created relationships that cannot be easily disentangled (Lindridge, 2005). Consequently, research came to focus on cultures