The role of culture at different levels of analysis

Abstract

The past few decades have seen a tremendous growth in work patterns that involve social actors from different cultural backgrounds interacting with one another, as shown by the increase in number and forms of international staff (Collings et al., 2007) or the rise in the formation of international joint ventures (Pothukuchi et al., 2002). Even actors whose scope of activity is limited to a domestic context are likely to be exposed to foreign cultures as they collaborate with coworkers, partners, suppliers and clients from different ethnic and cultural origins. Although research at the interface between the domestic and international context is still relatively scarce, for example as illustrated by the limited attention that local nationals have received in international assignment research (Toh and DeNisi, 2007; Vance and Ring, 1994), scholars widely agree that culture transcends and thus forms an integral part of many aspects in business. One stream of research has explored the multiple layers that constitute culture and that differ in terms of their degree of tangibility and visibility, distinguishing between observable artifacts and behaviors, deeper-level values and basic assumptions (e.g. Schein, 1992). In this vein, existing cross-cultural research has mainly conceptualized culture as a system of shared, underlying values that explain (Hofstede, 1980; Schwartz, 1994) but may also potentially vary from (House et al., 2004) behavioral practices. Another debate has centered on the multiple levels at which culture has been conceptualized to operate (Chao, 2000; Leung et al., 2005). It has been common to consider a hierarchy of levels in which lower levels are nested within higher levels, for example an individual working in a team that forms part of an organization that, in turn, operates in a specific national market. However, these scholars increasingly also point to the cross-level effects that occur when changes at one cultural level influence and reshape other levels. Although the resulting implications are highly relevant to the understanding of cultural phenomena at large, levels issues in cross-cultural research have thus far focused mainly on the different levels at which national culture influences behavioral outcomes, broadly distinguishing between individual, group, and organization-level effects. In this respect, national culture has been shown to have both direct and moderated effects on a wide range of individual and interpersonal attitudes, cognitions and behaviors (Tsui et al., 2007), impact on team processes (Gelfand et al., 2007) and influence various organizational systems, structures and practices, including capital International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 10(2) 131–136 a The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1470595810376429 ccm.sagepub.com CCM International Journal of Cross Cultural Management