Abstract
Taking a critical discursive approach (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1988, 1992) to analysing interview data, the article discusses the possible implications of top and middle managers’ constructions of intercultural collaboration for the day-to-day workings of a Danish–Ukrainian software company. Of particular interest is the extent to which divergent and contesting understandings may lead to positive synergies or conflict, and whether managers’ reflections may function as a means of justifying a particular mindset or course of action, provoking either contestation or acceptance within the organisation (e.g. Parker, 2000). Thus, the findings provide insight into the relation between discourse, that is, talk as (inter)action, and the development and enactment of organisational culture, contributing valuable and practice-oriented knowledge to the field of cross-cultural management. The data for the analysis are derived from 10 semi-structured interviews, which were conducted in the Danish headquarters and the Ukrainian division, respectively, securing a broad intraorganisational representation of voices.
Keywords
Introduction
Like many other businesses before them, in the late 1990s, a Danish software company decided to move its programming division abroad to Ukraine, where skills in software development are high and wages are low. However, this move has not been one of unconditional success. As collaboration between the division and the Danish headquarters developed, problems emerged that led to a great deal of frustration among the Danish management – frustration over poor quality of work, the missing of deadlines and lack of independent thought among Ukrainian staff members, or middle managers, to be precise. According to management, these problems were related to differences in culture, in the company represented by the different nationalities among these managers; in other words, differences in national cultures were seen as determinants of (un)successful collaboration in the company. This led to the (unofficial) strategy of teaching middle managers in the division the Danish way of doing things, that is, showing them how to work independently on various tasks, take personal responsibility, enter into dialogue with seniors and so on. However, this strategy only had limited immediate effect, frustrating the Danish management even more.
In cross-border business, the above approach to intercultural collaboration is by no means new or unusual, inspired, as it is, by the work of well-known scholars such as Hall (1959, 1966), Hofstede (1980, 1997) and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997). Work by these scholars sees national background and identity as important determinants of behaviour, facilitating the categorisation, and not least management, of large groups of individuals along perceived common cultural characteristics. Thus, knowing that a person is, for example, Ukrainian makes it possible to predict his/her behaviour and adjust one’s approach accordingly, regardless of the context and situation in which, for example, an encounter is taking place. Quite often this approach allows for the construction of an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ relation, in which one’s own national identity is seen as superior to the other. The question is, however, whether this is the most advantageous approach when managing an organisation across borders. The example seems to prove otherwise, begging the question of how to best access and deploy the know-how and skills offered by divisions set up or acquired in foreign countries. The answer to this may be found in some of the more recent literature on cross-cultural management and organisational culture (e.g. Alvesson, 2002, 2004; Kleppestø, 1998; Morosini, 1998; Parker, 2000; Søderberg and Holden, 2002; Vaara, 2000), which offers alternative insights into culture, and how it is expressed in organisations. This literature moves beyond the functionalist perspective of former approaches, providing alternative explanations of the emergence and interpretation of culture. Here, culture is not a phenomenon associated with neither national identities and characteristics informing individual behaviour nor with an organisational form that can be shaped and controlled; on the contrary, it is perceived as a social construction or ‘a socially shared orientation to social reality created through the negotiation of meaning and the use of symbolism in social interactions’ (Alvesson, 2004: 318). This points to the existence of multiple and ‘fluid’ cultures within the same (cross-border) organisation and thus to the necessity of management acknowledging diversity and holding ‘a capacity for interactive global networking, team-working and organizational learning’ (Søderberg and Holden, 2002: 109) instead of seeing things from one perspective, that is, its own.
This approach is relevant for discussing possible responses to some of the frustrations experienced by the Danish management in the business case above and, by extension, cross-border businesses in general. By viewing the organisation as a site of multiple and ‘fluid’ cultures, emerging as a result of organisational members’ interpretations, managing a company may become a process of meaning negotiation between social actors and groups in the organisation rather than a process in which management shapes and controls a common set of norms and values. However, this meaning negotiation may take many forms and have many outcomes, ranging from the consensual and inclusive to the conflictual and exclusive. Management may, for example, see its own understanding as one of many, and hence as one which may be accepted, contested or resisted. This, it may choose to consider a threat to its position and integrity, leading to feelings of lacking control and possible frustration, as in the above case, or as an opportunity for enhancing collaboration, meaning exchange and problem solving, in turn allowing for participatory meaning making in the broadest sense of the term.
In the following, the understanding that culture is the result of a socially anchored, interpretative process will form the starting point of the discursive analysis of interview data retrieved among management staff in the above-mentioned software company. The aim of the analysis will be to show how a select number of Danish and Ukrainian top and middle managers understand and interpret intercultural collaboration, with a view to discussing whether divergent and contesting understandings may lead to positive synergies or conflict. The contribution of this study to the field of cross-cultural management lies in its illustration of how critical analyses of interview data retrieved in cross-border organisations can help uncover as well as explain the different ways intercultural collaboration is perceived and potentially enacted by members of staff. In doing so, it directs attention to the fact that discursive constructions of, for example, intercultural collaboration are never mere statements, but carry with them ideological content, which may be hidden from the naked eye, but nonetheless exerts significant influence on social actions and relations. As such, it contributes to a more profound understanding of the intricate mechanisms constituting organisational culture.
Organisational culture and cross-cultural management
On the basis of Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) typology of sociological paradigms, Parker (2000) identifies four overarching approaches to organisations and culture, representative of academic studies in the field in the latter decades of the 20th century. Of these, radical humanism will, in part, be the paradigm informing our analysis in this article. 1 Radical humanism, in Parker’s words, is the identification of organisational culture as ‘a contested relation between meanings – the distinctive understanding of a particular social group which may conflict with those of other social groups’ (Parker, 2000: 74). Along these lines, organisational culture becomes one of fragmentation instead of unity, challenging management to seek routes that facilitate a collaborating organisation. These routes may include knowledge of other cultures/interpretations, critical thinking, openness and flexibility, that is, what may be called a ‘process model of intercultural growth’ (Matsumoto et al., 2007: 80). In other words, in such a process, differences may become resources facilitating the transfer of knowledge, values and experience enabling various social actors to act in and respond to a globalised world (Schneider and Barsoux, 2003). Søderberg and Holden (2002) argue that in cross-cultural management this is indeed a necessary strategy for surviving in an increasingly globalised world where multicultural teams and global knowledge networks are the name of the game. Thus, they contend that international, cross-cultural management of the past 40 years is unsuitable for guiding management in this environment as it is often ‘regarded as a methodology for handling cultural differences predominantly seen as sources of conflict, friction or miscommunication’ (Søderberg and Holden, 2002: 104). A major reason why functionalist theories and models like these see cultural differences as a source of conflict is their focus on general aspects of culture, that is, on differences on the level of society, of the family, of the workplace and so on. Although, admittedly, this focus may serve to make general behavioural patterns more understandable, the insight into differences usually only has little bearing on or usefulness in the actual social encounter or interaction, where contextual issues and individual interpretations play an essential role. Thus, the focus on general differences offers little help for understanding why frustrations emerge in intercultural collaboration in the first place, and second, it provides the international/cross-cultural manager with little guidance for handling the intricate mechanisms and behaviours at play in intercultural encounters, providing, as it does, only a level of general awareness of other cultures (Franklin, 2007).
Being social constructivist in origin, with meaning being the primary object of study, recent theories of organisational culture and cross-cultural management (e.g. Alvesson, 2002, 2004; Kleppestø, 1998; Morosini, 1998; Parker, 2000; Søderberg and Holden, 2002; Vaara, 2000) may offer ways of obtaining the specific knowledge essential to understanding and managing intercultural collaboration that functional approaches cannot provide. Stressing the contextual nature of culture, this work sees symbols, for example, words and statements, 2 as the proper objects of study arguing that these are the means through which social actors accomplish meaning. Taking this idea into the realm of radical humanism, the expression of meaning through language must be understood against the relative power of various groups in the organisation. Thus, the giving of voice to different groups in the organisation, including those that are rarely or never heard, is an important objective, recognised, as it is, that an organisation may be conceived of as a site of hegemonic struggle. Management is, for instance, generally one of the dominant groups constructing meaning, and therefore the organisation is likely to be a site of continuous enforcement and resistance of particular understandings of culture with management seeking to set the agenda (Parker, 2000). However, as will become apparent from the analysis, even within management, this struggle may take place, with top management setting the agenda for middle management.
Organisational culture and discourse analysis
Social constructivist studies of organisational culture and cross-cultural management have made use of various approaches to studying meaning making and interpretation, including the study of narratives (e.g. Gertsen et al., 1998; Gertsen and Søderberg, 2010; Helin and Sandström, 2008; Kleppestø, 1998), and sense-making (e.g. Vaara, 2000), to critical discourse analysis (e.g. Askehave and Holmgreen, 2011a, 2011b). Of these, when studying meaning as a process of contestation and acceptance, the more critical strands of discourse analysis are particularly promising.
Doing a discursive analysis of organisational culture involves studying language and language use as sources of meaning, that is, studying ‘spoken interaction, formal and informal, and written texts of all kinds’ (Potter and Wetherell, 1987: 7). However, doing discourse analysis does not simply mean revealing how language reflects or reveals social phenomena such as culture, but is a way of examining how language constructs these phenomena, that is, how it assists in creating, maintaining or contesting socially produced ideas and objects over time (Mumby, 2004; Phillips and Hardy, 2002). In this sense, discourse functions as an ‘active producer of temporary order’ (Alvesson, 2004: 329) where groups and ideologies may continuously challenge other groups for the right to determine what, for example, culture and intercultural collaboration mean in the organisation. This situation, it is suggested, may result in the existence of multiple and contradictory meanings in the same discursive space or organisation, allowing social actors a high degree of agency, rather than in a system of monolithic power (Mumby, 2004). However, discourse is not only constitutive of the social – social phenomena are also constitutive of discourse, that is, the two enter into a dialectical relationship (Jørgensen and Phillips, 1999). This dialectical relationship is also the reason why many discourse analysts (e.g. Fairclough, 1992, 1995; Phillips and Hardy, 2002; Van Dijk, 1997) argue that discourse analysis entails a three-dimensional perspective that takes into account the interplay between texts, discourses and contexts. Put into the context of organisational life, this understanding entails that in the process of analysing individual texts, we need to study how they draw on broader discourses existing within the organisation (referred to by Fairclough as the ‘order of discourse’, that is, ‘a network of social practices in its language aspect’ (2003: 24)) as well as how they interact with organisational elements of a non-discursive nature. As for the latter, non-discursive elements may be divided into ‘distal’ and ‘proximate’ contexts (Wetherell, 2001). ‘Distal’ context refers to, for example, the positions and responsibilities of the respondents, the organisations they act in and work for and so on, whereas ‘proximate’ context refers to the features of the actual interaction, in this case the interview session. In this article, we are interested in both types of context. As will become apparent in the analysis below, our interviewees, although belonging to the same organisation, express both convergent and divergent ideas of culture and intercultural collaboration, drawing on similar as well as divergent discourses, which to some extent may be attributed to the influence of contextual aspects.
But how may discourse be analysed? For a critical perspective, a great number of approaches (e.g. Fairclough, 1992, 1995, 2003; Mumby and Clair, 1997; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1988, 1992; Van Dijk, 2001, 2009; Wodak and Meyer, 2009) offer ways of studying the discursive construction of meaning, both within and outside organisations. However, for our present purposes, which are to ascertain the way managers discursively construct culture and intercultural collaboration and how this may influence meaning formation and interaction, Discursive Psychology (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1992) is highly relevant. Discursive Psychology shares with critical discourse analysis the focus on language use in social interaction, but instead of examining the interplay of localised language use and discourses on the more abstract, societal level, it analyses how actors’ strategic uses of language and discourse in social interaction may be a tool for promoting a particular self-image and understanding of the world and the social consequences of this use (Jørgensen and Phillips, 1999).
Discursive Psychology
In its origin, Discursive Psychology (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1992) is a criticism of and challenge to cognitivism, arguing that mental processes are not internal, universal and consistent processes but a result of social, discursive activity. In this perspective, the individual is not an isolated, autonomous agent, but a social actor whose identity, actions and attitudes are influenced by, or contingent on, the interaction with other actors in specific historic and cultural contexts. In this interaction, discourse plays a decisive role. This means that a person’s identity is not a permanent or fixed entity, but fragmented and unstable as a result of contradictory discourses instantiated in different social contexts. This leads to a person having several and, possibly, conflicting identities, influencing the way he/she constructs the social world in different communicative and social events (Jørgensen and Phillips, 1999). However, social identity is not the only aspect determining the way we construct our social worlds. Wetherell and Potter (1988) argue that texts and talk are action oriented, and therefore what we say and write in different situations depend on what we are doing in those particular situations, consciously or not. This is what they call variability, which is closely associated with the functional and strategic aspects of language use and, as such, is an inherent part of all human social and discursive interactions.
With the emphasis on discourse as action and social practice, where the sense of text and talk is derived from their situated use, discourse analysis becomes focused upon the material rather than the abstract instantiations of discourse, that is, on the discourses implemented in actual settings (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1992). This point is the reason why Wetherell and Potter prefer to talk about ‘interpretative repertoires’ instead of discourse. They argue that first and foremost interpretative repertoires are ‘a way of understanding the content of discourse and how that content is organized’ (Wetherell and Potter, 1992: 90). As such, they consist of terms, descriptions and figures of speech together forming metaphors or images by means of which actors make evaluations, construct social and cultural phenomena and perform actions. Furthermore, these metaphors and images may be the access points for identifying and analysing various repertoires in spoken and written data. With the analytic focus being on the content of discourse, the attention to linguistic detail is limited and instead attention is given to the rhetorical organisation of text and talk, that is, to the way language is used for particular social purposes and actions, over and above the mere referencing to an outside world (Jørgensen and Phillips, 1999; Potter and Wetherell, 1987). Thus, emphasis is put on the way actors use text and talk for the construction of reality; however, less so in the post-structuralist sense of adopting discourses that render accepted and taken for granted versions of reality on the basis of familiarity, and more so in the rhetorical sense of organising text and talk in ways that make particular interpretations seem solid, real and stable, while at the same time, being designed for countering alternative versions of reality (Wetherell and Potter, 1992).
For our present purposes of analysing top and middle managers’ constructions of intercultural collaboration, this approach appears well suited. With its emphasis on situated social practices and language, a discursive psychological approach allows us to focus our analysis on the data produced in the interview sessions, that is, in the proximate context, and include considerations on the distal context and its influence on respondents’ interpretations and constructions, leaving out considerations on the larger societal context, compare the organisational culture and discourse analysis section. In this way, our analysis becomes highly focused upon issues central to the life and collaboration of the organisation, facilitating the discussion of potential areas of conflict and/or synergy.
The construction of intercultural collaboration
Background and data
The background of the analysis is a 3-year research project carried out with a Danish cross-border software company between 2008 and 2011. The purpose of the collaborative research project was to investigate how culture was constructed and enacted in a company, where geographical distance and cultural differences pose challenges to daily interaction. The company, established in 1999 by a Danish entrepreneur, is engaged in the development of software solutions for business and industry and, at the time of data collection, it employed approximately 350 staff. Of these, 325 were employed in the company’s Ukrainian subsidiary, and with all ‘production’ located in Ukraine, there was extensive and daily interaction and communication between the Danish headquarters and middle management in Ukraine, with Danish top and middle managers visiting the subsidiary on a regular basis. Communication was primarily in English, as all management and staff in Denmark, except one, were Danish.
In this particular part of the study, we want to look at how a number of the company’s top and middle managers, both from the Danish headquarters and the Ukrainian subsidiary, would describe collaborating with one another in a cross-border company, that is, how they would recount and thematise their experience with intercultural collaboration. This focus derives from the fact that collaboration between the Danish headquarters and the Ukrainian division primarily took place on the management level. Thus, the intercultural challenges experienced by the Danish managers were largely a result of their experiences in interacting with the Ukrainian middle managers. Following a critical approach as described above, the analysis involves going beyond the mere description of the content of the accounts to include an assessment of its ideological consequences. By this, we refer to the analysis of how, in the context, the managers’ reflections on intercultural collaboration may function as a means of justifying a particular mindset or course of action, provoking either contestation or acceptance and naturalisation within the organisation.
The data selected for the analysis are 10 semi-structured interviews, which were tape recorded and subsequently transcribed verbatim. The interviews took place within the first year of the project (from 2008 to 2009) and were conducted with three Danish top managers and one Ukrainian middle manager located in Denmark (early 2008), four Ukrainian middle managers from the Ukrainian subsidiary and a Danish and German middle manager located in Ukraine (early 2009). The interviews were conducted at an early stage, when no results had yet been reached or communicated.
The above distribution lends itself to the formation of three distinct groups of respondents: top management in Denmark, foreign middle managers in Denmark and Ukraine and Ukrainian middle managers in Ukraine. The members of each of these groups share a number of characteristics that may influence their perception of intercultural collaboration. Thus, the hierarchical placement in the organisation (top or middle management level) may influence their interpretation of intercultural collaboration as may their geographical location, where, for example, managing at the distance provides insight into intercultural collaboration, which is distinct from the knowledge gained from managing at close range.
The interviews were intended in general to elicit reflections among the managers on a number of cultural issues within the organisation, which resulted in numerous interpretative repertoires or themes. For our present purposes, however, experience with intercultural collaboration is of primary interest, and therefore the parts of the interviews that deal with this aspect in relation to the managers’ experiences both as newcomers to the organisation and as ‘experienced’ staff at the time of interviewing are especially relevant. These parts reveal not only the knowledge and viewpoints the managers would bring into the organisation but also the moderation and adjustment of this knowledge after a period of learning and integration, pointing to the significance of time, interpersonal relations and collaboration for the structuring of perceptions. Thus, in setting the framework for the analysis, time and the above group division play a salient role.
Interpretative repertoires of intercultural collaboration
In order to uncover the interpretative repertoires of the interviews, we carried out careful readings of the material, during which we allowed the inclusion of cases that might be considered ‘anomalous or borderline’ to the talk about intercultural collaboration (compare Wetherell and Potter, 1988: 177). From this process, specific patterns emerged that pointed to a number of overarching or dominant repertoires. Of these, three are particularly relevant here: affiliation, workplace interaction and adaptation. These repertoires subsume a number of issues that the individual manager perceives to be salient for the unfolding of intercultural collaboration, revealing areas of potential conflict or synergy. The first two repertoires are closely connected conceptually and functionally, and therefore they will be treated together.
Affiliation and workplace interaction
The first of the three repertoires, affiliation, includes perceptions of culture and considerations on whether cultural background shapes (individual) behaviour, in turn influencing collaboration. Respondents construct this relation in two major ways, with one set of constructions pointing to a causal relationship between a person’s cultural (often national) background and his or her behaviour. The implicit argument advanced in these cases is that people sharing the same national background often display similar behavioural characteristics and that these characteristics are significantly different from the behaviour of people from other national backgrounds. One of the Danish top managers says
Extract 1
… one of the dimensions you also have in culture, that is trust, right? Where the Danish starting point is that you trust everybody until proven otherwise, and they have the opposite in Ukraine … you can’t … you distrust everybody until proven otherwise. (Peter)
On the other hand, constructions reveal a set of understandings that point to no significant relationship between a person’s national/cultural background and his or her behaviour. The point made is that people are first and foremost individuals and that individual characteristics, rather than national backgrounds, are salient in defining behaviour. The Danish middle manager, stationed in Ukraine, says
Extract 2
… what I’m working with are human beings, and they have different skills, and we have different challenges with them, and I cannot say that this is typical Ukrainian. I hear it from time to time from our colleagues if there are some issues “this is typical Ukrainian”, but for me this is just typical this person … (Jane)
These two sets of views suggest differences of opinion that reflect fundamental assumptions about the construction of social identities and roles, while also pointing to the influence of organisational structures and contexts. Thus, the former view is reflective of the functional approach to culture (e.g. Hall, 1959, 1966; Hofstede, 1980, 1997), which allows for the construction of general, overall patterns of behaviour among people belonging to the same national culture. This means that differences and similarities between cultures become easily discernible, with challenges in intercultural collaboration frequently becoming the focal point. Along with such constructions may also come the distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’, where one’s own culture (‘us’) is generally seen to epitomise preferred behaviour.
As for the Danish top manager, his approach may be explained by a number of factors: management training and experience as well as organisational structure. Prior to his employment in the company, he studied for a management degree, where among other things he was introduced to functional theories, and since then he attended a recurring company-internal management course, along with several of his colleagues, that included discussions and exercises on intercultural communication in the Hofstede vein, employing his four dimensions to explain cultural differences and similarities in the organisation. 3 This was a course introduced by top management and made compulsory for most new managers in the organisation, and it thus became the reference point for the top managers, in particular, when handling cultural issues in the organisation.
While training provides the theoretical basis for the Danish top manager’s understanding of cultural issues and behaviour, his working experience with different nationalities as well as his geographical location form the more practical basis for his understanding of workplace interaction. Thus, his being located in the Danish headquarters seems to have been conducive to upholding stereotypes due to the geographical distance this involves. And although he would visit the Ukrainian office on a regular basis, he would apparently not be there long enough to establish an intimate relationship with the Ukrainian managers that would allow more nuances in his interpretation of behavioural patterns. In fact, his collaboration with middle managers in Ukraine only seemed to confirm his understanding of behaviour as largely the result of general traits in culture that you can study out of context:
Extract 3
In the beginning, I was really frustrated because I was sort of prejudiced, right? I thought it wasn’t okay to act accordingly because it was, after all, only prejudice. But in reality, my experience tells me now, well, act according to your prejudice and be ready to adjust it. Prejudice is actually not entirely wrong! (Peter)
The second view on affiliation, advanced by the Danish middle manager, entirely ignores the influence of national culture on behaviour, although she is well aware of functional views being common in the organisation, compare ‘I hear it from time to time from our colleagues, if there are some issues, “this is typical Ukrainian”’. Instead she is advocating an interpersonal and contextualised approach to understanding colleagues’ behaviour, reflective of a symbolic approach to culture and cultural understanding, where social and cultural reality is created through the negotiation of meaning in social contexts (compare Alvesson, 2004). This approach may in part be explained by the manager’s involvement in the daily activities and interaction of the Ukrainian office. She is not geographically distanced like her Danish senior, and therefore she has the opportunity of interpreting and reacting to inconsistencies and changes in behaviour in light of her knowledge of the individuals she works with, instead of basing her understanding on a set of predefined categories. This, in her view, helps addressing issues before they become problems:
Extract 4
… being close to people and working with people every day, you know this [that they may try to avoid responsibility] and you can work with these challenges, and then it no longer becomes a challenge for you. You don’t give up if you get some feedback “it’s impossible” … And I think that if you are somewhere else and talking on Skype you don’t have a chance to follow up so closely and understand that you think this is strange, and then you give up … (Jane)
What are the consequences of these understandings? In this particular organisation, top management’s construction and promotion of cultural affiliation along functional lines seems to have widespread impact, confirming the assumption that some social groups are more powerful than others in organisations. The chief executive officer (CEO) says
Extract 5
I think that [culture] is created by management. … You could say the strategy of the company decides where we are going, and then we need to look at what’s the appropriate culture, you could say … I believe that it’s a management responsibility to eehmm … help create the culture. (John)
Informed by prescriptive theories of culture, such as Deal and Kennedy’s (1982) ‘strong cultures’, the CEO advocates the active involvement of management in creating organisational culture. In this perspective, culture is constructed as an organisational form that can be shaped and controlled by management to obtain organisational goals, and not a complex of multiple and ‘fluid’ cultures, that is, it is constructed as something the organisation ‘has’ and not ‘is’. This is an approach that is supported by his two associates, the other two Danish top managers.
Extract 6
… actually, I must admit I’m trying to force in the Danish culture and having a more flat organisation where you collaborate a lot more. And that’s some of the things we’re bringing into the organisation. (Søren)
Extract 7
Well they [Ukrainians], when you’ve actually worked together, then they learn my style, right? Or the Danish style, or whatever you choose to call it, right? Sort of more open and direct, and they tell you if it’s not okay, and so on. And they learn, adapt to this, you know. (Peter)
During our interviews with middle managers in both Denmark and Ukraine, we experienced widespread acceptance of the constructions advanced by top management, that is, that differences between Ukrainians and Danes are distinct and that within the organisational framework, it would be preferable to do things the Danish way in order to obtain strategic goals. Thus, several of the Ukrainian middle managers would stress differences between Ukrainians and Danes, with the Danish approach being preferable, often through comparisons between the company and previous experience in Ukrainian companies:
Extract 8
… actually [name of the company] is very good company and my, our first impression was that with a good structure and uh, the management was, yeah, quite open and open-minded to all the people. And you know that in Ukraine very, yeah, not so often we have the open communication with management at all … (Sergey)
Extract 9
Actually, work in such company like [name of company] is, has difference in working in our national company because this is different style of management, different, uh, culture inside teams … In our national company we have a position, you’re doing this, this, this from morning till the evening. … So in Ukrainian companies we have a lot of hierarchy, directors, managers and so on, so on. (Anatoly)
The finding that most middle managers follow the top managerial line is not surprising. First of all, there is the likelihood that they may feel the need to please us as Danish researchers. Second, and perhaps more importantly, top management may represent one of many voices in the organisation, but its inherent right to set the agenda in various ways is legitimised by the power it possesses to run the business and with that for defining organisational goals. And if the achievement of these goals is constructed as being dependent on the pursuit of particular (culturally embedded) workplace strategies, this is a construction that is likely to be acknowledged in the organisational system.
While the pursuit of common strategies and norms may seem a wise choice, there are inherent problems in advancing such an approach. First, with its stressing of generalised behavioural attributes among staff, there is only little room for the individual to advance particular characteristics and thus for management to achieve a deeper understanding of the motivation underlying particular actions. To this should be added that in this particular company, much of this construction puts Danes in a favourable light and Ukrainians in a less favourable one, leading to frustration, resistance and discontentment in the working process, as indicated in the opening example of the article. Thus, instead of achieving genuine involvement among Ukrainian middle managers in the process of obtaining organisational and strategic goals, the Danish management may experience a lack of interest, beyond what the middle managers are requested to do, in working towards common goals. Second, it is naive to think that there is one single cultural ‘recipe’ for achieving organisational goals and success; in fact, different situations and different contexts will require different strategies – strategies that may, nonetheless, lead to the achievement of desired goals.
Despite the acceptance of a functional view on culture, the second view above (extract 2) is no less frequent in the interviews with middle managers. Thus, it appears that, depending on the experiential and contextual reference points, respondents will construct the relation between culture and behaviour in different and perhaps even contradictory ways. This supports Potter and Wetherell’s (1987, 1988, 1992) argument that speakers may draw on a number of repertoires that are inconsistent but individually appropriate for the context they are used in. The two Ukrainian middle managers from extracts 8 and 9 above say for instance:
Extract 10
Working with different people and, uh, I’m not talking about the foreigners and the people from other countries but even the Ukrainian guys and girls and friends, we are different and everybody is unique. So I just am getting the new experience in communication with any kind of persons … (Sergey)
Extract 11
… I guess that customers are people like me. And I communicate in the way we, I communicate with my other colleagues. So, of course, I don’t make any attention on actual nationality, religions and so on, so on, just business and nothing more. (Anatoly)
The middle managers’ strategy of ignoring or downplaying national differences in favour of a more individualised approach seems to be based on everyday experiences of closely working and communicating with other people, be it colleagues or customers. Thus, in the Ukrainian office, a number of different nationalities are present, but they are clearly not important to the way employees work together, compare,
Extract 12
… they [foreign colleagues] are not foreigners for me, especially NN [name of German colleague], he is Ukrainian, definitely, I don’t have any doubt. But uh … yeah, they are like everybody and they don’t feel any obstacles or issues or some extraordinary things … (Sergey)
In this sense, the middle managers’ experience is distinct from that of the Danish top managers (extracts 1, 6 and 7), allowing them first-hand insight into the facets constituting the individual person as well as the possibility of establishing personal bonds. However, other factors may also explain the middle managers’ more individualised and localised approach, namely, the common ground created through the professional and technical aspects of the business, as also suggested by the manager in extract 11. Arguably, the sharing and pooling of professional knowledge and expertise may mitigate differences and facilitate communication, and thus assist in creating a favourable working environment that may lead to the fulfilment of organisational goals.
The above examples demonstrate that the Danish top management and Ukrainian(-based) middle management draw on similar repertoires, but that the use they put them to is divergent, suggesting different approaches to cultural issues and intercultural collaboration. In this, hierarchy and geographical distance play salient roles: the hierarchical order gives top management the prerogative to formulate and implement preferred strategies and goals, as indicated above, while geographical distance makes generalised constructions of Danes and Ukrainians plausible due to the relative lack of personal contact. At the same time, other groups in the organisation may be restricted in voicing alternative constructions and may instead choose to officially abide by dominant repertoires and concepts, while establishing networks and working relations locally that foster understandings on the interpersonal level, allowing localised interpretations of repertoires to emerge. In fact, it may be deduced from all 10 interviews that the use of networking, team-working and flexibility as survival strategies in a globalised world (as suggested by e.g. Søderberg and Holden, 2002) is dependent not only on individual inclinations but even more so on the circumstances under which these qualities can be exercised.
The fact that these alternative interpretations exist in the organisation may challenge top management to either strictly enforce its policy or seek new routes of collaboration that would accommodate the request for a more nuanced understanding of the middle managers’ behavioural attributes. And in fact, despite examples of the opposite above, the latter strategy seems to be the one that the CEO would like to follow in the future after having been with the organisation for a number of years:
Extract 13
I think maybe we’ve also made a small mistake at a point in time because we tried to put each other in a bit of boxes, you know, and say: “Danish culture is like this, so Danes are like that. Ukrainian culture is like this, so Ukrainians are like this.” … As I see it, we’re getting more and more out of that box, and we should be extremely careful not to make the stereotypes because the difference, you know, just between my colleagues here … I have colleagues also just walking up and down here in XX [headquarters] that would be exactly the same, you know … (John)
Adaptation
The CEO’s comment in extract 13 indicates a shift in top management’s construction of what is the preferable culture strategy to pursue. But what may have caused this change in attitude (if it is not the inclination to please the researchers), and how may it influence the collaboration of the organisation?
Implied in the pursuit of a prescriptive strategy (which had been the preferred strategy, compare above) is the belief that if management makes a strong case for particular values and rituals in the organisation and ensures appropriate communication systems for these to be enforced, organisational or business success will be enhanced (Deal and Kennedy, 1982). However, as was demonstrated above, despite the efforts of top management to carry this through, divergent values and rituals exist in the organisation (compare the analysis of affiliation and workplace interaction above), challenging what is officially communicated and how, calling for a change in strategy. In fact, as pointed out by the Danish middle manager in Ukraine, the weakness of a top-down approach was clear early on in the company history.
Extract 14
… when they [top management] were talking about culture in XX [name of company], they were referring to our values, company values, teamwork and deadlines [but] … they could not see what is the real Ukrainian culture or XX [name of company] Ukraine culture … So this was what people were focused on. They were focused on themselves, what they could get from the company in terms of education, uh, they were not focused on reaching performance goals because there were no high requirements, and their managers were friends they used to be working with … it was more [like] friendships so there was no risk that this person would be fired, the company was growing, and this was the culture that existed when I came. And it was a big shock for people in XX [headquarters] to hear that … And that time it was definitely the XX [name of company] culture, and it was not about these values that we had written on our walls. (Jane)
To this manager, the weakness of the approach has less to do with the actual values communicated than with the way they are communicated and enforced. This is confirmed by her Ukrainian colleague in Denmark;
Extract 15
They [Ukrainian colleagues] know that we have these values, and they are written on our cards, business cards and on the walls of the company, but I don’t think they give that much value … (Vladimir)
With top management’s presence in the Ukrainian office being restricted to occasional visits, as indicated previously, and to banners on the wall communicating company values, the result is likely to be limited integration and naturalisation of these values, encouraging the establishment of local cultures and values. But the lack of physical presence is only one aspect influencing the communication of values and eventually determining the outcome of particular strategies. Another is the construction of adaptation processes, that is, who is expected to learn what from whom. And here, it seems that top management’s approach is once again being challenged.
In accordance with the belief that the Danish way of doing things is preferable to the Ukrainian, top management’s attitude is that the Ukrainians must learn the Danish business and workplace principles. This involves inter alia teaching the Ukrainians to take responsibility and initiative, be trustful, observe deadlines and be good team players. While these may be reasonable requirements for a company that strives to maintain a healthy bottom line, there will be a number of ways in which they can be implemented, as well as a number of other requirements that would be equally relevant to focus upon, but which are being ignored. We saw already in extracts 6 and 7 that two of the Danish top managers are in favour of a relatively firm approach through which the Ukrainians must learn the principles of working and interacting in the organisation; however, as straightforward as these principles may seem to a Dane, this is not necessarily so for a Ukrainian, leading to frustration when forced through. Especially, if, as one respondent suggests, the principles of, for example, value-based management are not being explained to staff and made relevant to the tasks they carry out;
Extract 16
… sometimes I see that Ukrainians don’t feel that Danes take [the] right decisions based on business characteristics … we feel more about the person and how he works, and what he does in his everyday job instead of caring about what’s written in the contract … so it was quite a big frustration over that thing [that a colleague was fired]. (Vladimir)
In this example, it becomes clear how the business orientation clashes with a more person-oriented attitude. Such differences of opinion have a potential for conflict and require good communication and interpersonal skills from management to be resolved. In this case, the frustration that the firing caused was not addressed and resolved by top management but by one of the middle managers, who acted as a go-between. However, he was not specifically asked to do so by his superiors (who believed that the handling of the whole affair had been by the book) but acted on his own initiative. Although the intervention by the middle manager, in itself, may not be problematic, it is yet another example that top management is not particularly interested in listening to and learning from the arguments of their subordinates if they go against the general managerial line, but will leave this to unofficial fora on the middle management level. Initially, this may seem an easy solution but may eventually backfire as it could create the feeling among staff that top management has only one strategy for managing the business and obtaining business goals, displaying little flexibility and openness to middle managers’ alternative interpretations. However, these alternative interpretations will continue to exist, resulting in ‘a contested relation between meanings’ (compare Parker, 2000) – of which some are officially accepted and others are not. This may create tension, if not addressed, and may seriously hamper the company’s ability to transfer knowledge, values and experience and hence to act in and respond to a globalised world, where creating a healthy bottom line is determined by a multitude of factors (Sackmann and Phillips, 2004).
Despite the top managers’ initially firm and consistent stance on the direction of learning processes, as the interviews and project proceeded, we did see a gradual realisation that learning on both sides might be beneficial to collaboration. This may be attributed to the fact that during the interview sessions as well as the whole project period, the managers started reflecting on their own practices, making them think about the reasons for, for example, feeling frustrated or pleased with the development of particular events, thus achieving more nuanced understandings of what collaboration may require. However, we are also well aware that the willingness to see things differently may in part be attributed to respondents’ interest in pleasing the researchers by displaying the capability of admitting mistakes and learning new ways. Nonetheless, at a later presentation of our analyses to top management, this mental process had matured even more, leading to much reflection on past and future behaviours (see Askehave and Holmgreen, 2012). As one of the Danish top managers says
Extract 17
… in reality, the solution [to problems] could well be that we should unlearn something, we Danish managers should unlearn stuff and learn something else, right? (Peter)
This attitude is close to what many of the middle managers stress, explicitly or implicitly. They all indicate that during their employment with the company, they had to learn new ways of interacting, and that they had to adapt their behaviour to different situations and people, but also that learning, in order to make things work, must be a two-way process
Extract 18
… I think we can all learn so much from each other. I think in Germany, you know, I know everything. Not everything, but most of it. And then here it’s so much new experience and working life … (Frantz)
Such attitudes are reflective of recent understandings of organisational management, as presented in the Introduction section of this article. In what has been termed ‘the knowledge economy’, the ability of organisations to learn and share knowledge is paramount to survival, as knowledge is the means to staying innovative and thus competitive. However, the access to knowledge is not only facilitated by the use of new information and communication technologies but also by encouraging staff to give voice to and share their different perspectives, as well as by the willingness of the organisation to modify its behaviour and strategies in light of these different perspectives. In this way, it is argued, companies may become successful global players (Søderberg and Holden, 2002). In the case of this particular company, such observations are, of course, relevant from a competitive perspective; however, they are equally relevant to the processes surrounding the production of the company’s products, that is, software solutions, which are, if anything, knowledge intensive, thus requiring the ingenuity, creativity and knowledge sharing of the company’s staff.
Concluding remarks
For any company, doing business across borders offers a significant number of challenges, both in terms of the set-up of the business, with the concomitant practical, legal and financial considerations, and in terms of entering a culturally and linguistically different environment. However, with a frequent motivational factor for off shoring being the opportunity to reduce production costs while maintaining high quality in the production process and the final product, focus is often first and foremost on the immediate financial gains to be made from such a transfer and less on adapting to changes in the linguistic and cultural environment.
Strategic choices such as these may turn out to be ill advised, as insufficient attention to the differences in values and perceptions may lead to disrupted and misguided work processes. However, paying attention to differences is not necessarily a solution in itself, as is indicated by this case study. Supporting recent research in cross-cultural management, the study suggests that an overly reliance on functional approaches to culture may easily create more problems than they solve by failing to address the intricate mechanisms at play in actual intercultural encounters or interactions, providing interactants with little guidance on how to interpret the situation at hand and behave expediently. Furthermore, our analysis of the interview data indicates that ideas derived from an interpretivist frame of mind (conscious or not) encourage more nuanced understandings of why social and intercultural situations develop the way they do and consequently may foster a more tolerant attitude to working with people of different beliefs and values. However, the analysis also suggests that the enactment of either a functional or an interpretivist approach to collaboration in a cross-border company is dependent on a number of factors. Thus, despite the apparent benefits of an interpretivist approach, functional approaches are likely to be part of the official collaborative strategy if top management is geographically removed from the daily activities of its staff (in this case middle managers), and they are likely to be widely accepted and abided by, at least on the surface level, due to the unequal distribution of power between top management and staff, allowing top management to set the discursive agenda through a top-down strategy. However, unofficially, collaborative strategies that allow more room for individual interpretation and expression may also be alive and well in cross-border organisations. This may be attributed to a different set of factors such as the close daily collaboration between staff and the sharing of professional experience and insights, which contribute to making the day-to-day activities of the business run smoothly.
The existence of two approaches to intercultural collaboration may not be a problem if addressed wisely by top managements, who may see the knowledge of unofficial strategies as an opportunity for approaching and discursively constructing collaboration in new ways that could potentially remove the source of frustration as illustrated in the opening lines of the article and lead to better conditions for the team working and knowledge sharing so important for making it in a globalised world.
From a theoretical and methodological perspective, while being relatively small in scope, this study demonstrates the benefits of taking a qualitative and discursive approach to analysing culture in organisations. By applying Discursive Psychology to the analysis, the large amount of data generated by the interviews could be condensed into a number of themes, or interpretative repertoires, central to the construction of culture and intercultural collaboration in the organisation (which had otherwise not been recognised or at best only implicitly understood). Through the focus on these repertoires, it was possible, on the one hand, to make a strong case for why top management experienced a number of challenges in their collaboration with the Ukrainian(-based) middle managers, and on the other hand, to provide evidence for the challenges and possibilities offered by the application of two influential strands of (cross-)cultural understanding and management. Moreover, a critical approach like Discursive Psychology directs attention to the fact that discursive constructions of, for example, intercultural collaboration are never mere statements but are strongly influenced by contextual and relational issues, creating contesting perspectives on and understandings of the same issues, invariably influencing the way such issues must be addressed. However, from the acknowledgement of contextual and relational issues influencing social actors’ construction of reality also follows the realisation that the conclusions to be drawn from interview data have certain restrictions. Thus, following the claims of Discursive Psychology, respondents’ constructions of culture and intercultural collaboration will in part be the result of, for example, their organisational identities (in this case, as managers, Ukrainians, Danes or Germans), their status and position in the organisation, as well as of their identities and interaction in the interview session. As indicated in the analysis, this challenges the researcher to sort out when respondents provide answers with the aim of, for example, recounting their experiences and attitudes as members of the organisation, and when they do this with the purpose of pleasing and paying lip service to the interviewers. This may be a difficult task if interview data are the only source of information, and therefore carrying out observations of actual collaboration may prove valuable for ascertaining the validity of these data. This said, the benefit of carrying out an analysis as the one presented in this article is twofold: First, it may provide managements with a better informed basis to make their decisions on, and second, by being case-based, it provides valuable insight into the intricate relationship between discourse, or talk as (inter)action, and the enactment of organisational culture, in this way contributing new knowledge to the field of cross-cultural management.
Footnotes
Funding
This work was supported by The Danish Council for Strategic Research (under The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation).