Research seminars

Dr. Mika Skippari

"Emergence of institutional pressures upon market entry: insights from the case of Lidl Finland"

am 13. Januar 2015 von 16.00 bis 18.00 Uhr,
Ort: Fakultätssitzungszimmer 2.43
Carl-Zeiß-Straße 3, 07743 Jena

Short Bio

Mika Skippari, PhD., currently works as a research director at the University of Tampere, School of Management. He has earned his doctoral degree at Tampere University of Technology in 2005. His work has been published in several international management and business history journals. His current research interests include internationalizing strategies, institutional pressures upon market entry and HRM management in the retail sector.

Professor Dr. Brendan McSweeney

"A Science of Human behaviour? GLOBE, Hofstede, Huntington, Trompenaars: Common Foundations, Common Flaws"

am 13. November 2014 von 16.00 bis 18.00 Uhr,
Ort: Fakultätssitzungszimmer 2.43
Carl-Zeiß-Straße 3, 07743 Jena

Abstract

A critique of the claims of GLOBE, Geert Hofstede, Samuel P. Huntington and Fons Trompenaars to have identified distinct, enduring, shared, determinate national or regional cultures defined as values.
The notion that a single, enduring, shared national culture (defined as values) shapes the behaviour of the populations in discrete territories (countries) both within and outside of organizations has extensive support within both the academic and management consultancy communities. Research, teaching and training which attribute such causal power to a national culture relies heavily on the extensively cited work of Geert Hofstede; the multi-authored Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project (GLOBE); or Fons Trompenaars. Although the Trio have at times engaged in intense criticisms of each others' research they have much in common. The postulates they share include - national cultures are: (1) values - defined as invariant transituational preferences; (2) universally shared by the population of a country; (3) coherent (contradiction-free/integrated); (4) the fundamental cause/source of behavior and artefacts; (5) stable; (6) identifiable from the mean scores of answers to self-response survey questions from a minute portion of a national population; (7) depicable in league (ranking) tables (indices) of 'dimensions' (quantifiable comparators). Each purports to have unlocked a science of human behavior. At the heart of this 'science' is a simple but sweeping idea - that 'national culture' is the wellspring of our behavior. In short, each national population location is conceived of as a container of an undifferentiated measurable culture which moulds the social in its supposed geographical domain. The presentation will principally consider those aspects which have received comparatively little attention in the management literature. These are: downward conflation (the belief or assumption that the macro (in this instance the national) is replicated at, indeed creates, lower hierarchical levels (organization, individuals, etc.). More specifically, it discusses a crucial methodological error (the ecological fallacy), which characterises an extraordinarily large number of papers which purport to apply the findings of one or other aspect of the Trio's work: culture cannot logically be said to have uniform and enduring national "consequences" without that invalid assumption. We will further discuss discuss the supposition of the fixity of national boundaries within which enduring national cultures are said to be located. An increasingly popular representation of intra-national variation - the view that countries are composites of multiple mono-cultures is critically considered. Finally, the presentation will challenge the possibility of identifying national/regional cultures through analysis of answers to survey questions. The discussion of these matters will be preceded by a commentary on the notion of culture employed by the GLOBE, Hofstede, Huntington and Trompenaars viz. values defined as transituational preferences.

Short Bio

Brendan McSweeneyExterner Link (PhD LSE) is a chaired professor of management at Royal Holloway, University of London and a visiting professor at Stockholm University. He is member of the advisory board of the Europe, Middle East and Africa division of globally located Japanese company. Prior to becoming an academic he was a banker (retail and venture capital); a trade union official, and head of research of an international accountancy body. His work has been published in a wide range of journals including: Accounting, Organizations & Society; Human Relations; Journal of International Business Studies; Organization Studies; and The Political Quarterly. His most recent book is the jointly edited: Remaking Management: Beyond Global and Local (Cambridge University Press).