Search results

1 – 10 of over 48000
Article
Publication date: 15 February 2013

Jean‐Claude Usunier and Stéphane Sbizzera

Local marketing decisions are too often made on a dichotomous basis, either standardize or fully adapt. However, similarities are too substantial and differences go too deep to be…

1662

Abstract

Purpose

Local marketing decisions are too often made on a dichotomous basis, either standardize or fully adapt. However, similarities are too substantial and differences go too deep to be ignored. This article aims to articulate similarities and differences in local consumer experience across multiple contexts.

Design/methodology/approach

Language, being used daily in local contexts, reflects local knowledge (Geertz). This paper shows how translation/back‐translation can be used as a discovery tool, along with depth interviews and checks of researcher interpretations by informants, to generate cognitive mapping of consumption and taste experiences. Local words, used as emic signals, are combined into full portraits of the local experiences as narratives linking people to products and taste. Local portraits can then be merged to derive commonalities emergent from within the contexts studied. The comparative thick description framework is applied to the bitterness and crunchiness taste experiences in ten countries (China, Croatia, El Salvador, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey) and nine languages.

Findings

Local experiences in several different languages and countries in different areas of the world can be surveyed, compared, and organized into cognitive maps (Eden), which highlight commonalities and differences between contexts. In essence, differences are qualitative, dealing with creolization patterns, local consumption experience, local preferences, perceptions, and associations.

Research limitations/implications

This approach can be considered as interpretive and, although driven by a systematic approach, depends on researcher and informant expertise and rigor.

Practical implications

Cognitive maps help evaluate cross‐national differences and similarities in local markets. The emergent similarities and differences are highly meaningful for glocalizing marketing strategies, in terms of advertising, branding, and packaging.

Originality/value

Significant insights derived from this method can be tested in a more traditional and applied manner. This allows quicker insights into new local marketplaces and a progressive enrichment of cognitive maps with new languages and countries.

Book part
Publication date: 30 July 2012

Michael Keenan

Purpose – This chapter reflects on my research experiences as a heterosexual man interviewing gay clergy. The chapter focuses on the interviewer/interviewee relationship…

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter reflects on my research experiences as a heterosexual man interviewing gay clergy. The chapter focuses on the interviewer/interviewee relationship reflecting on the place of similarity and difference in the research interaction.

Methodology/approach – The chapter reflects on my experiences of undertaking feminist inspired qualitative interviews on sensitive issues.

Findings – The chapter argues for a move beyond a binary understanding of similarity and difference and illustrates interviews as dynamic interactions.

Research limitations/implications – It is hoped that the reflections presented will inform future research in sensitive areas and encourage an open, engaged and reactive approach to interviewing around sensitive topics.

Book part
Publication date: 9 November 2020

Riikka Hofmann

There is an identified need in higher education research for methods which have the capacity to generate conceptual insights grounded in concrete local practice but with wider…

Abstract

There is an identified need in higher education research for methods which have the capacity to generate conceptual insights grounded in concrete local practice but with wider applicability in understanding and facilitating research-based change. This chapter outlines an intermediate approach to qualitative data analysis which can support theoretical knowledge advancement from practice-based research, which I call the difference-within-similarity approach. It involves a particular way of conducting dialogues with our data: of interanimating similarities and differences within our qualitative datasets. The approach outlined involves first identifying a similarity, then systematically examining differences within that similarity to generate theoretical explanations. Drawing on sociocultural theorising, particularly dialogic theory and cultural–historical activity theory, the approach is based on the idea that new meanings arise from a comparison of multiple perspectives on the ‘same’ phenomenon. The tensions between such perspectives are seen as a key driver for change in educational practice. Therefore, articulating and examining such tensions in our data gives an opportunity to simulate the possibility of change in our analysis and, hence, develop insights which can inform change beyond local settings. Important here is that the differences examined are bound together by an analytically productive similarity. Through multiple research examples, the chapter identifies and illustrates a range of ways of articulating productive analytical similarities for comparison in our data: through theory/literature, through forward and backwards processing of data itself and through a process termed ‘weaving’.

Article
Publication date: 23 September 2013

Pauline Vromans, Marloes van Engen and Stefan Mol

To introduce the presumed cultural similarity paradox as a possible explanation for the findings that adjusting to a culturally similar country is just as difficult as adjusting…

1291

Abstract

Purpose

To introduce the presumed cultural similarity paradox as a possible explanation for the findings that adjusting to a culturally similar country is just as difficult as adjusting to a culturally dissimilar country. We provide a conceptual framework, enabling further understanding and research into this phenomenon.

Design/methodology/approach

Expatriates moving to a country that shares common characteristics may presume more cultural similarity and easier adjustment than is actually the case. During their stay abroad, expatriates may find that these expectations are not met. While the smaller cultural distance may facilitate adjustment, the undermet expectations inhibit adjustment and performance.

Findings

A first preliminary test compared Dutch expatriates in Belgium (culturally similar) and in China (culturally dissimilar). The expectations of cultural similarity and adjustment difficulty of the expatriates in Belgium were significantly more undermet than those of the expatriates in China and this had a negative influence on affective adjustment. The larger cultural distance of China was negatively related to intercultural adjustment. Better adjustment, both affective and intercultural, led to better job performance.

Research limitations/implications

Future research should try to replicate and extend our findings to other cultural contexts.

Practical implications

Expatriates and their employers must consider and prepare for the increased chance of undermet expectations and the negative consequences this can have on adjustment and job performance, when moving to a culturally similar country.

Social implications

Expatriates and their employers must consider and prepare for the increased chance of undermet expectations and the negative consequences this can have on adjustment and job performance, when moving to a culturally similar country.

Originality/value

This paper conceptualizes and provide a theoretical framework that should allow future research to empirically test the psychological process that occurs in this paradox, accommodate the contrasting effects of cultural distance and met expectations of cultural similarity and investigate which characteristics of countries lead expatriates to presume more cultural similarity than is the case.

Details

Journal of Global Mobility, vol. 1 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2049-8799

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Understanding Intercultural Interaction: An Analysis of Key Concepts, 2nd Edition
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-438-8

Book part
Publication date: 2 December 2019

Frank Fitzpatrick

Abstract

Details

Understanding Intercultural Interaction: An Analysis of Key Concepts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-397-0

Book part
Publication date: 12 September 2003

Joel A.C Baum and Theresa K Lant

Organizations create their environments by constructing interpretations and then acting on them as if they were true. This study examines the cognitive spatial boundaries that…

Abstract

Organizations create their environments by constructing interpretations and then acting on them as if they were true. This study examines the cognitive spatial boundaries that managers of Manhattan hotels impose on their competitive environment. We derive and estimate a model that specifies how the attributes of managers’ own hotels and potential rival hotels influence their categorization of competing and non-competing hotels. We show that similarity in geographic location, price, and size are central to managers’ beliefs about the identity of their competitors, but that the weights they assign to these dimensions when categorizing competitors diverge from their influence on competitive outcomes, and indicate an overemphasis on geographic proximity. Although such categorization is commonly conceived as a rational process based on the assessment of similarities and differences, we suggest that significant distortions can occur in the categorization process and examine empirically how factors including managers’ attribution errors, cognitive limitations, and (in)experience lead them to make type I and type II competitor categorization errors and to frame competitive environments that are incomplete, erroneous, or even superstitious. Our findings suggest that understanding inter-firm competition may require greater attention being given to the cognitive foundations of competition.

Details

Geography and Strategy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-034-0

Book part
Publication date: 15 July 2009

Andrea Fischbach

Within the last two decades there has been an increased interest in the issue of work and emotion within work and organizational psychology and related fields. Although the…

Abstract

Within the last two decades there has been an increased interest in the issue of work and emotion within work and organizational psychology and related fields. Although the cross-cultural perspective has a long tradition in research on emotions, organizational behavior researches on the dynamic of emotions at work have devoted surprisingly little attention to cross-cultural issues. In this paper, an attempt is made to show how important and useful a cross-cultural perspective is for understanding the role of emotion in the workplace. First, a review of recent publications of cross-national cross-cultural research of emotion at work is presented. In this, the focus is exclusively on cross-national organizational behavior studies of specific emotions with national culture as an explanatory variable. The aim of this is to identify core findings of cross-cultural research on emotion in organizational behavior and some gaps in this burgeoning literature. Second, a review is presented of findings on cross-cultural similarities and differences in emotion, culture-specific norms, and values and their effect on emotion. The aim of this is to identify the implications of these findings for future research on emotion at work. Third, a review of methodological issues in cross-cultural research is presented followed by some recommendations to further advance this area of research.

Details

Emotions in Groups, Organizations and Cultures
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-655-3

Article
Publication date: 27 April 2023

Martin A. Goetz and Dirk Morschett

This study combines institutional and organizational learning perspectives to investigate the impact of institutional distance and institution-specific cross-border acquisition…

Abstract

Purpose

This study combines institutional and organizational learning perspectives to investigate the impact of institutional distance and institution-specific cross-border acquisition experience in emerging markets on cross-border acquisition performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample consists of 874 transactions involving targets across 37 emerging markets by 484 different acquirers from 45 developed and emerging markets. The authors decompose institutional distance and acquisition experience along their cultural, administrative, geographic and economic dimensions.

Findings

The authors find that cultural, administrative and geographic distance have a negative impact on acquisition performance. In contrast, economic distance does not appear detrimental to acquisition performance across markets. The study provides evidence that a company may apply learnings from previous transactions in similar cultural and economic emerging market environments to elevate the likelihood of a successful acquisition.

Originality/value

This study offers a more fine-grained perspective of the distance concept by decomposing the concepts of institutional distance and acquisition experience along different institutional dimensions. The research across 37 emerging markets sheds light on which of the similarities and differences between these markets are relevant concerning acquisition experience and performance.

Details

International Journal of Emerging Markets, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-8809

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 September 2014

Frank Walter, Bernd Vogel and Jochen I. Menges

We offer a new perspective on group affective diversity by introducing the construct of mixed group mood, denoting co-occurring positive and negative mood states between different…

Abstract

We offer a new perspective on group affective diversity by introducing the construct of mixed group mood, denoting co-occurring positive and negative mood states between different members of a group. Mixed group mood is characterized by four facets, namely members’ distribution between two positive and negative subgroups, subgroups’ average mood intensity, subgroups’ mood intensity heterogeneity, and individual members’ mood ambivalence. Building on information/decision-making and social categorization/similarity–attraction perspectives, we explore the performance consequences of mixed group mood along these four facets and we discuss implications and directions for future research.

Details

Individual Sources, Dynamics, and Expressions of Emotion
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-889-1

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 48000