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This chapter extends Henri Lefebvre's writings on rhythm to explore how time, space, power and difference articulate themselves in the uneven social relations of intercultural space. Taking Lefebvre's ‘Seen From the Window’ chapter as a theme, I propose a variation of rhythmanalysis which interrogates the politics of copresence at a dance party in Munich, Germany. Plug in Beats is a participatory party – songs are selected by the crowd through a karaoke-like process. The monthly event was initiated in 2015 when a refugee camp was installed near an arts and cultural center. The party creates a space for dialogue between new migrants and established locals occupying a wide range of social positions. I look at the implications of rhythm for studying intercultural dance through a rhythmanalysis of one party in June 2018. The methodological approach is framed around the embodied multisensory participant observation advocated by Lefebvre; however, the analysis draws on additional ethnographic data from interviews, audio recordings, Shazam (a song identification app) and video footage. I propose a relational rhythmanalysis which engages the historical and geographic power dynamics at work in music, dancing and in the party space. Such an approach, I argue, reveals how participants negotiate and sometimes reconfigure social relations of difference through rhythm itself. While there are limits to the questions that rhythmanalysis allows the researcher to ask and answer, it is a valuable means to engage how power and difference work – and might be more equitably reworked – in migrant-receiving and otherwise heterogeneous spaces.

It is generally recognized that multinational enterprises must take into account country differences in deciding the degree to which it makes sense to localize their human resource management (HRM) strategies and organization cultures to fit with the host country or rather standardize HRM strategies and organization cultures across countries. However, an important vein of academic work assumes that country differences, especially in national culture, are so important that management is “culturally dependent” (Hofstede, 1983) and that “national culture constrains variation in organization cultures” (Johns, 2006). I critically evaluate the logical and empirical evidence (including methodological issues regarding effect size) used to support such constraint arguments and conclude that the evidence is much weaker than widely believed. One implication then is that organizations may be less constrained by national culture differences in managing workforces in different countries than is often claimed. A second implication is that researchers may wish to re-think how they study such issues. I provide suggestions for future research.