Knowledge migration, communication and value change in different cultural contexts: an introduction

Citation

Chudzikowski, K., Fink, G. and Mayrhofer, W. (2011), "Knowledge migration, communication and value change in different cultural contexts: an introduction", Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Vol. 18 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccm.2011.13618aaa.003

Knowledge migration, communication and value change in different cultural contexts: an introduction

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 18, Issue 1

This special issue on knowledge migration, communication and value change from cross-cultural perspective contributes to the growing body of literature that addresses these issues from different locations around the globe (Fink and Mayrhofer, 2009). Managing individuals and organizations successfully in turbulent and highly diverse contexts requires, among others, a better understanding of commonalities and differences of these contexts, their unique demands and their changes over time. In particular, knowledge and knowledge flows across various kinds of boundaries, interaction processes among and between different types of individual and collective actors and the role of basic assumptions and action-related values play a key role in international management. This special issue also follows the call for contributions on these issues in various cultural contexts that are far beyond the commonly investigated contexts within cross-cultural research (Chudzikowski et al., 2009).

The special issue assembles papers from a broad range of theoretical and methodological positions and empirical. The contributions, five empirical studies and one conceptual paper, provide insights into cultural intelligence’s influence on international travellers’ stress in Brazil; the relation between personal national value perceptions and big five personality traits of business professionals in India and the USA; knowledge sharing within special organizational units in Germany; diffusion of global work values in multinational organizations; the dual meaning of the value honesty in the Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia; and communication practices of teams at universities in Yemen.

Most contributions focus on the topics of knowledge migration, communication, and value change. They link these topics to cultural differences determined by culture dimensions such as those studied by Hofstede (2001), Schwartz (2008), Triandis (1994), and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997) as well as to different social, political and economic contexts (Scott, 2004). Embedded into the local culture and context, individuals adapt their values when contexts change (Vadi and Jaakson, 2011).

The empirical papers offer a variety of methods within both the quantitative and qualitative paradigm. The different approaches enrich the respective field of study and broaden the debate in the field. Thereby they contribute to a growing body of cross-cultural literature by taking different epistemological and methodological approaches (Fink and Mayrhofer, 2009).

In the following, we give a brief overview of the contributions accepted for a publication in this special issue.

The first paper, a research note by Jase R. Ramsey, Jordan Nassif Leonel, Geovana Zoccal Gomes and Plinio Rafael Reis Monteiro, deals with the cultural intelligence’s influence on international business travellers’ ability to deal with the strain caused by institutional distance. Cultural intelligence partially moderates the relationship between institutional distance, travel and job strain observed by business travellers interviewed at the Sao Paulo Guarulhos International Airport in Brazil. More specifically, cultural intelligence moderates the positive relationship between institutional distance and job strain. The authors suggest that the concept of cultural intelligence needs to be contextualized to develop future propositions.

Laura Ann Migliore provides a comparative perspective on differences between business professionals in India and the USA with respect to the individual level correlations between the five-factor personality traits and Hofstede’s five dimensions of national culture (Hofstede and McCrae, 2004). While in the sample there were differences in all five cultural dimensions compared to Hofstede’s 1980 results, the author also finds correlations between personality traits and cultural dimensions for several occupational-job categories. These results offer new insights on leadership characteristics. The author also indicates that over time changes in the scores of Hofstede dimensions could be due to advances in communication and internet technologies.

Maaja Vadi and Krista Jaakson focus on value honesty among Russian organizational members from selected former Soviet countries: Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In their empirical paper they emphasize the importance of honesty, its concurrence with speculations about co-workers, and the impact of other personal values and socio-demographic characteristics. The study shows that the value honesty is amongst the most highly ranked values for Russians, while the importance is different among Russians living in Russia compared to those living in the Baltic States. Other personal values, namely, family security, comfortable life, imaginative, capable, and broad minded help to predict the assessment of honesty in these work contexts.

The fourth paper, by Martin Friesl, Sonja A. Sackmann, and Sebastian Kremser, is a qualitative study that examines knowledge sharing in newly set up special knowledge creating organizational entities of a military organization in Germany. The findings show that despite the structural separation of the new organizational entity, cultural imprint, and cultural re-import from the “mother” organization affected knowledge sharing. Four major influencing factors are identified in regard to knowledge sharing within the CD&E project team and between the team and the line organization; hierarchy, organizational context, micro-politics, and suspicion. Members of the special organizational entities strongly feel the impact of the culture of the “mother” organization.

The fifth paper by Murad Mohammed Al-Nashmi and Hj. Syd Abdul Rahman Hj. Syd Zin provides an assessment of communication practices in the academic context at universities in Yemen. The quantitative study investigates the relationship between national culture and communication satisfaction of multicultural teams at universities. The results show that the communication satisfaction levels among the academic staff vary dependent on nationality. There is a relation between communication satisfaction factors and national culture dimensions. The article provides insights into the university context in Yemen and faculty development and performance.

This special issue concludes with a conceptual article by Valerie Rosenblatt. The paper explores the roles of institutional mechanisms and moderating functions of social network structures and cultural values in diffusion of global work values within the context of multinational organizations. It combines diverse research streams to elaborate on the dynamic interfaces of global work values diffusion and lays groundwork for future empirical investigations. The author posits that the level of diffusion of global work values by members of multinational organizations is positively related to the level of institutionalization of these values within and between multinational organizations by means of regulative and normative institutional processes. Regulative and normative institutional processes are likely to diffuse global work values more efficiently among members of multinational organizations with collectivistic value orientations and tight dense social networks with closures.

Concisely, all the papers indicate that individuals are embedded into a specific cultural context and the cultural values continuously influence knowledge migration, communication and the change of these values in the respective context.

Katharina Chudzikowski, Gerhard Fink, Wolfgang MayrhoferGuest Editors