Search results

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of using foreign languages on cooperative behavior in a prisoner’s dilemma setting. The cultural accommodation hypothesis suggests that people are less cooperative in English, associated with the Anglophone cultural cluster, than in French, which is – as is Belgium – associated with the more cooperative Latin European cultural cluster.

Choices are framed as pricing strategies in the context of duopolistic competition. In total, 422 Flemish-Belgium participants with English and French as foreign and Dutch as their native language played in one of three language treatments.

While the authors observe differences between the native and both foreign languages, which are moderated by gender, the authors do not find any difference in effects between the two foreign languages that are associated with different cultures. Extending cultural accommodation arguments, the data suggests an effect specific to the use of the two selected foreign languages.

The authors contribute to this literature by reporting an experimental test of cultural accommodation and alienation effects related to two foreign languages. The authors explore novel arguments, related to cognitive psychology and gender effects.

Purpose – To advance narrative and context-based organizational research.

Approach – We detail how a research design can dynamically unfold and be adjusted based on feedback from multiple sources, with three components to this process: requisite conceptual openness, methodological adjustment, and acknowledgement of prescient issues. Three examples in existing literature are analyzed, demonstrating how this process can facilitate the development of novel lines of inquiry.

Research implications – Our framework and the practical guidelines we advocate here are a resource for scholars to allow new conceptualizations to blossom and grow in perhaps unexpected directions, which may not otherwise have been charted without this exploratory process.

Originality/Value – The process of discovery is a contribution toward research methodology and design, as a helpful method for maximizing richness in contextual research. This approach may be particularly important in emerging markets and other settings with unexplored organizational processes.

This chapter focuses on the question: What is Humanism? The chapter discusses definitions of Humanism. It synthesises such definitions in order to provide a philosophical understanding of Humanism. This understanding has epistemological, ontological and axiological dimensions. The chapter points out that Humanism is transcultural. Common objections to Humanism are discussed by engaging with the works of the historian Yuval Noah Harari. Based on the general understanding of Humanism, the approach of Radical Humanism is introduced. Radical Humanism is a particular form of Humanism. Its epistemological, ontological and axiological aspects are outlined. The chapter discusses four examples approaches of Radical Humanism (Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Wang Ruoshui, David Harvey).

What does it ‘feel like’ to be working class and an academic? This chapter explores the significance of working-classness both from influences in childhood, and experiences as an adult, when entering academia. Asking what feelings are involved makes autoethnography the perfect lens for analysis, while immediately challenging the objectivity of a distanced neutrality preferred by much academic process. A provocation comes from the question, ‘who do you think you are?’ that reverberates through my life and reinforces that as autoethnographers, we become both subject and analysts; as such working-class subject analysts, the reflections amplify the importance of experiences lived and offer more than mere diversity in research methodologies. This is an account of what it feels like, and how these feeling have altered what my work in the academy looks like, how theory, pedagogy and practice have changed and how a working-class praxis emerged.

The purpose of this paper is to reframe the role and function of perceived “bad English” in an international business (IB) context to illustrate that “bad English” could in fact facilitate cross-cultural communication in individuals who do not have English as first language.

This study uses the Bakhtinian concept of heteroglossia as a theoretical framework. For the method of analysis, applied linguistics is used in particular through the lens of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as discourse analysis method to analyze transcribed interview texts. Data collection is via long interviews with 33 top level managers in Swedish managed organizations in Singapore offices.

The study illustrates, through respondent interviews and discourse analysis, that perceived “bad English” could help facilitate communication across cultures in a cross-cultural working context. The study also shows how different individuals, depending on personal experience and cultural background, employ different means to navigate and manage language differences at work.

The findings confirm a Baktinian perspective of language as a heteroglot, where individual identities and understanding of context at work including work behavior are an amalgamation of collected experiences. While many individuals who do not have English as mother tongue might feel embarrassed by their poor English, this study shows that there are many Englishes existing in different working contexts. This study has a limited sample of respondents, pertaining to Swedish and Singaporean top managers in Swedish managed organizations in Singapore.

This study could be useful for multinational corporations that are interested in strategically managing their corporate language policies, taking into account cognitive differences or cultural identities in different offices worldwide.

At a social level, Bakhtin’s language as a heteroglot brings to awareness that at any one time, while individuals are drawn to identify with their dominant (national) culture and language, in effect, with increased contact with other cultures in working environments, both language and cultural identities shift and evolve with the workplace.

This study contributes to the growing language in IB research. The novelty in this study is the employment of a Bakhtinian perspective and specifically the employment of SFL as a method of data analysis.

Marx's formulation of the alienation problematic is grounded in a strategic set of underlying assumptions concerning the human condition. On the one hand, people are seen as the creators of their material and mental world through their labour activity. They are endowed with natural human qualities, creative powers and historically existing potentialities that are essential to human growth. People are, in essence, free, creative, productive beings of praxis in conscious control of their activities and the world they have created. But the material and mental products of human labour (e.g. commodities, ideas, social institutions) assume an autonomous life of their own. They come to rule over people as dehumanizing objects and powers, as alien and hostile forces operating independently above and against the common will of their own creators. People no longer experience themselves as active human agents in conscious control of their life circumstances. Their own productive activities, human creations, social relationships and nature at large remain alien and beyond their grasp. The realization of natural human capacities and potentialities for a genuinely human life in an alienating world of domination and oppression is consequently thwarted, repressed or denied. Alienation is construed as a universal social phenomenon that pervades all spheres of human life in the existing world.

In the literature of mergers and social justice, equality is regarded as a crucial phenomenon to achieve social integration. This paper is based on the philosophy that during mergers and acquisitions (M&As), the employees who experience the equal distribution of resources, equal respect to each other’s policies and procedures, and fair and respectful interactions, are more likely to have a sense of control and lower social isolation and hence tend to get influenced positively by the M&A process. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between perceived organizational justice and employee feelings of alienation during post-M&As.

A cross-sectional survey research design has been used. This study was undertaken on a sample of 315 employees from five organizations in India. The quantitative data were subjected to univariate and bivariate analysis, while qualitative data were subjected to relational content analysis. Different dimensions of justice were studied in relation to the feelings of alienation using multiple correlational analysis and hierarchical regression analysis.

Multiple correlational analyses revealed significant negative correlation of perceived organizational justice and of all of its dimensions with all the dimensions of alienation. However, the results of the hierarchical regression analysis found interactional justice and distributive justice to be the major predictors of alienation during M&As. Apart from the quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis also revealed interesting insights, unique to the individual organization.

The study has significant value for both MNCs and researchers. This study has strong implications for the multinational corporations that are making inroads into M&As but consistently failing due to employee issues. This study also presents future directions to the researchers to explore more in the area of soft issues of M&As.

Cross-cultural mergers and acquisitions (M&As) can generate the number of negative feelings and emotions among the survivors of the deal. These negative outcomes can range from lowered commitment, lack of productivity, and talent loss to the more serious work alienation. Hence, this chapter is an attempt to identify the employees’ level of commitment and their feelings of alienation in the post-M&A integration phase. Also, provided training has proven to be important in building employee commitment and mitigating the feelings of alienation, this studies the relationship of these psychological outcomes with the different kinds of training provided to them during post-M&A situations. The vast literature review studied revealed a significant relationship between employees’ perceived effectiveness of training and their level of commitment with the newly merged firm, while an inverse relationship was found with employees’ feelings of alienation. This chapter has crucial implications for researchers and practitioners.

Human resources are of great importance to provide competitive advantage in tourism, which is a labour-intensive industry. It is seen that the level of organizational commitment of the individuals who have similar values with the organization they work for and who can fulfil the roles and duties they undertake and who can meet all their needs in return increases. Their level of alienation is also observed to decrease. Population of the study, which purposes to reveal whether organizational culture has any impact on the employees' perception of person-organization fit and their level of organizational alienation or not, constitutes 4- and 5-star hotels in service in the central district of Izmir province. According to the results, it was seen that hotel businesses had two types of organizational culture such as hierarchy and clan culture. In the hotels with clan culture, demands-abilities fit levels of the worker were higher than value-congruence and needs-supplies dimensions. It was seen that workers alienated on meaninglessness dimension mostly. Similarly, in the hotels with hierarchy culture, demands-abilities fit levels of the worker were higher than value-congruence and needs-supplies dimensions. Workers alienated from their organization on meaninglessness dimension mostly.