Intercultural collaboration stories: On narrative inquiry and analysis as tools for research in international business

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gertsen, Martine Cardel; Soderberg, Anne-Marie
• 署名单位: Copenhagen Business School
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2506
• DOI: 10.1057/jibs.2011.15
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 787-804
• 关键词: cross-cultural research; Cross-cultural management; CHINA; intercultural collaboration; narrative interviewing; Narrative analysis

摘要

The objective of this article is to show how narrative methods provide useful tools for international business research. We do this by presenting a study of stories told about the collaboration between a Danish expatriate manager and his Chinese CEO in the Shanghai subsidiary of an MNE. First, we explain and exemplify how narrative interviews are designed and conducted. In this connection, we consider the interviewers' interaction with the interviewees, and clarify our reasons for focusing on the two selected interviews. Second, we demonstrate how narrative concepts and models are able to elucidate intercultural collaboration processes by analyzing how each member of a dyad of interacting managers narrates the same chain of events. We show how the narratological concepts of peripeteia and anagnorisis are well suited to identifying focal points in their stories: situations where change follows their recognizing new dimensions of their conflicts, eventually furthering their collaboration. We explain how Greimas's actantial model is valuable when mapping differences between and changes in the narrators' projects, alliances and oppositions in the course of their interaction. Thus, we make it clear how they overcome most of their differences and establish common ground through mutual learning. Journal of International Business Studies (2011) 42, 787-804. doi:10.1057/jibs.2011.15