Qualitive research in a cross-cultural context: Fijian experiences

In this article, the authors discuss the experiences of conducting qualitative research in traditional Fijian communities. This provided the setting for the cross-cultural exchange between the researcher and research participants and from which the authors draw important considerations for the design of future qualitative studies. In particular, the authors discuss the need to adapt essentially Western research designs to accommodate different cross-cultural styles of facilitation, group dynamics, spatial arrangements, gender issues, protocol, patterns of participation, and perception of time. They propose a model that clarifies the types of roles and styles of facilitation observed in a Fijian workshop setting and comment on how different cross-cultural dynamics between the researcher and participants can influence the success of qualitative research.

Overseas Chinese as expatriate managers in China: is their recruitment a solution to cross-cultural management problems for multinationals operating in China?

This paper examines the issue of diversity in Chinese identity and how it impacts on the operations of multinationals in China who recruit Overseas Chinese to handle cross-cultural issues. China’s rapid economic development and entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 made her a formidable player in the global economy and direct foreign investment surged. Yet it is acknowledged that for the foreign investor in China, cross-cultural issues create difficulty at every level, from the interpersonal level relating to communication and negotiation, to the organizational level relating to decision making, human resource management practices, corporate legal institutions and liaison with government institutions. Western multinationals have considered the advantages of posting Overseas Chinese from Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan and Hong Kong to their China operations as a solution to cross-cultural management issues. But has this policy been successful? In terms of language expertise this would seem to be a good strategy, yet organizational case material contradicts this in reality. Overseas Chinese, while sharing some elements of Chinese culture with mainland Chinese, the Confucian heritage and other aspects such as language and diet, nevertheless have different world views and values and behave differently from mainland Chinese in areas critical to business management. As a survival strategy, Overseas Chinese have often developed dual identities which operate simultaneously. For political and historical reasons, many of them have had to adapt to the local culture of their country of citizenship or even hide their own ethnicity in order to survive. On the other hand, the mainland Chinese are different in that their behaviour has only had to be Chinese, but overlaid with this has been the experience of participating in a communist political environment for decades, which has left its mark on mainland Chinese culture. On the basis of their different historical experiences, in the current business environment in China, cultural confusion, difficulty and conflict may occur for the Overseas Chinese.

This paper focuses attention on the subtle cultural differences between the Overseas Chinese and mainland Chinese in an organizational context. This problem has yet to be researched in depth within international business and international management studies. It provides evidence that Overseas Chinese are not often favoured by the local Chinese. It gives insights on how to manage the local Chinese for foreign multinationals operating in China.

A cross-cultural study into peer evaluations of women's leadership effectiveness

Purpose: The present paper is based on a cross-cultural exploration of middle managers in two diverse cultures and aims to focus on how the leadership styles of managerial women are perceived and evaluated. In particular, female and male peer evaluations of leadership effectiveness in Malaysia and Australia are to be explored.

Design/methodology/approach: Surveys from 324 middle managers from Malaysia and Australia were quantitatively analysed. The sample for the study was drawn from organisations in four industry types in both countries.

Findings:  Findings suggest that evaluations of female managers' leadership styles in general, and within the respondent's own organisations, were strongly culture specific, especially in Malaysia. The results reflected the strongly held values, attitudes and beliefs of each country. While this is not unexpected, it does highlight a need to be cautious when interpreting Western research results and attempting to transplant those into other cultures. In Malaysia, female managers were not seen as effective in the leadership styles they adopted in their roles when compared to the Australian female managers' evaluations. Such an evaluation may have had little to do with an objective appraisal of the female managers' capability, but rather with a strongly held cultural belief about the appropriate role of women in society, and in organisations in particular.

Research limitations/implications:  It is suggested that national culture manifests itself in the values, attitudes and behaviours of people. Cultural influences are therefore likely to impact on the way women and men behave in the workplace, particularly when roles of authority and power are evident, and the way in which that behaviour will be evaluated by others. Further research using different samples in different cultures are recommended. In addition, the influence of ethnicity, race or religion in plural countries such as Malaysia and Australia is also worthy of investigation.

Practical implications:  This research suggests that values and attitudes are strongly culture-specific and therefore have the ability to influence evaluations at an organisational level. Such an awareness of cultural influences should guide appropriate human resource practices, particularly within a globalized environment.

Originality/value:  The inclusion of a gender comparison in the data analysis in this paper is a significant attempt to add to the extant knowledge of the cross-cultural research. This is a unique contribution because of the omission of a gender perspective in the previous two seminal studies in culture literature (i.e. Hofstede and House et al.). In addition, the findings suggest that culture-specific influences are important determinants that impose expectations on the role of women differently from men in society and within organisations hence, making the gender comparison of the findings more significant.

The dual technique model within case study approaches to cross-cultural management research in China

This paper advocates the effectiveness of a dual technique model of interviewing, which combines narrative and depth interview techniques, within the case study method in a cross-cultural management research setting, an Australian MNC operating in China. The case study is acknowledged to be a highly appropriate method for gaining insight into the complicated area of cross-cultural management enquiry in order to generate new theories. In this context, we propose a model which combines the narrative and the depth interview techniques in the interview process, and have illustrated its usefulness with material drawn from the China-Australia cross-cultural research interface.

After establishing the rationale for the model, the discussion focuses on the practicalities of applying it in interviews, in relation to the preparation, warm-up and trust building phases, and in the exercise of personal interviewing skills in cross-cultural research, in this case, the advantage of the interviewer being bilingual.

Corporate codes of ethics in Australia, Canada and USA : measurement and structural properties of a cross-cultural model

The objective is to test the consistency of measurement and structural properties in a model of corporate codes of ethics (CCE) on an aggregated level and across multiple samples derived from three countries, namely Australia, Canada and the USA. The properties of four constructs of CCE are described and tested, these being: surveillance/training, internal communication, external communication, and guidance. The conclusion is that the measurement and structural models on an aggregated level have a satisfactory fit, validity and reliability. Furthermore, they are consistent when tested on each of the three samples (i.e. cross-validated). The cross-cultural model makes a contribution in addition to previous mostly descriptive studies and theory in the field using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Review of prevalence data in, and evaluation of methods for cross cultural adaptation of, UK surveys on tobacco and alcohol in ethnic minority groups

Objective To assess the adequacy of cross cultural adaptations of survey questions on self reported tobacco and alcohol consumption in the United Kingdom.

Design Assessment of consistency of data between studies identified through literature review. Studies evaluated with 12 guidelines developed from the research literature on achieving cross cultural comparability.

Results The literature review identified 18 key studies, five of them on national samples. Survey instruments were obtained for 15 of these. The comparison of prevalence data in national surveys showed some important discrepancies, greater for tobacco than for alcohol. For example, prevalence of cigarette smoking in Bangladeshi women was 6% in a national survey in 1994 and 1% in a national survey in 1999; in Chinese men it was 31% in a survey in 1993-4 and 17% in one in 1999; in African-Caribbean men it was 29% in a 1992 survey and 42% in one in 1993-4. The most guidelines met by any study was three, although one study partly met a fourth. Two studies met no guidelines. Only four studies consulted with ethnic minority communities in developing the questionnaire, none checked each language version with all others, and two stated the questionnaire had not been validated.

Conclusions Surveys have not followed best practice in relation to measurement of risk factors in cross cultural settings. There is inconsistency in the prevalence data on smoking provided by different major national UK studies. Users of such data should be aware of their limitations. Research is needed to help achieve linguistic equivalence of survey questions in cross cultural research.

Insights from research on cross-cultural validation of health-related questionnaires : the role of bilingual project workers and lay participants

This article discusses the recruitment and training of bilingual project workers and their role in data gathering; the level of comprehension of the interviewees with regard to the nature of the task and its alien nature; the contribution of social customs and expectations; the vagaries of language; the researchers' level of comprehension of data collected across a range of languages; the feelings of loss of control by the researchers over the research process; and issues of communication with bilingual project workers. The authors draw on two studies designed to assess the adequacy of questionnaire translations from English into four ethnic minority languages: Cantonese, Punjabi, Urdu and Sylheti. Bilingual project workers were recruited to carry out interviews and focus groups with the lay communities and to feed back results in English to the researchers. The authors conclude that researchers should be aware of the influence of social and contextual factors when carrying out research with ethnic minority participants mediated by bilingual project workers.

Cross-cultural methodological issues in ethical research

Despite the fundamental and administrative difficulties associated with cross-cultural research the rewards are significant and, given an increasing trend toward globalisation, the move away from singular location studies to more comparative research is to be encouraged. In order to facilitate this research process it is imperative, however, that considerable attention is given to the methodological issues that can beset cross-cultural research, specifically as these issues relate to the primary domain or discipline of investigation, which in this instance is research on business ethics. Utilising the experience of a four country comparative study of both Asian and Western cultures in the field of business ethics, the following presents a discussion of methodological concerns under the three broad areas of operationalising culture, operationalising business ethics, and data interpretation.

Overseas Chinese as expatriate managers in China : is their recruitment a solution to cross-cultural management problems for multinationals operating in China?

The rapid economic development has gravitated businesses into the Chinese market. It’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 made her an even more formidable player in the global economy and direct foreign investment surged. Yet it is acknowledged that for the foreign investor in China, cross-cultural issues create difficulty at every level, from the intercultural level relating to communication and negotiation, to the organizational level relating to decision making, human resource management practices, corporate legal institutions and dealing with governments. Western multinationals have considered the advantages of posting overseas Chinese, from Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan Hong Kong and etc. But has this policy been successful? In terms of language expertise and cultural literacy this would seem to be a good strategy, yet organizational case material contradicts this in reality. Overseas Chinese, while sharing some elements of Chinese culture with mainland Chinese, the Confucian heritage and other aspects such as language, diet, etc, nevertheless have different world views and values and behave differently from mainland Chinese in areas critical to business management. As a survival strategy, overseas Chinese often developed dual identities operating simultaneously. For many of them, for political and historical reasons, they have had to adapt to the local culture or even hide their own ethnicity in order to survive. On the other hand, the mainland Chinese are different in the sense that their behaviour has only had to be Chinese, but overlaid with this has been the experience of participating in a communist political environment for decades, which has left its mark on mainland Chinese culture. On the basis of this, in the current business environment in China confusion, difficulties and conflict may occur for the overseas Chinese. This paper aims to provide insights of the cultural differences between the overseas Chinese and mainland Chinese. It provides evidence that overseas Chinese are not often favoured by the local Chinese. This problem has yet to be researched in depth within international business and international management studies. It draws the attention to issues on how to manage the local Chinese.

Cross-cultural assumptions about perception and identity in western socio-legal frameworks

Socio-legal analysis has relied heavily on Mnookin and Kornhauser's "bargaining in the shadow of the law" and Galanter's "litigotiation" concepts. These concepts provide a framework for examining the relationship between formal legal rules and other normative sources in out-of-court activity. In this paper we explore the extent to which these frameworks' Western assumptions about individualism, conflict and the rule of law would require adaptation if they were to be used to examine such phenomena in Chinese culture or in Australian-Chinese negotiations. In particular, we focus on the "difference" between: i) China and Confucian culture; and ii) Western society in terms of the Confucian principles relating to hierarchy, harmony, collectivism and face. These principles have fundamental implications for Chinese perceptions of appropriate dispute resolution behaviour. Western researchers who omit consideration of these perceptions and neglect the defining characteristics of Chinese identity will emerge with flawed projects.

Cross-cultural issues in the supervision of a Chinese socio-legal PhD student

The purpose of this co-authored paper is to explain how culturally specific features of Chinese students impact on the processes by which they commence their socio-legal research degrees by research candidature. The presentation by the co-authors of the paper will include a simulation of the first meeting between the candidate and the supervisor. This simulation will show how specific features of Chinese culture and the Chinese education system create a massive culture shock when Chinese research students are exposed to Anglo-Australian academic culture. We will explain how the underlying principles of Chinese culture impact on the candidate‘s expectations in relation to: the role of the supervisor; the requirement of original contribution; expectations in feedback on written work and communication more generally . We will then propose strategies for reducing the impact of culture shock and improving the experience of the candidature and the performance from each party to the relationship in terms of timely completions and reduced attrition. These strategies derive from the authors‘ experience in relation to doctoral research management and cross-cultural communication.

Museum development and cross-cultural learning in the Kelabit Highlands, Borneo

The article discusses an aspect of the first phase of the Kelabit Highlands Museum Development Project. Deakin University and the Rurum Kelabit Sarawak collaborated in a field school for post-graduate cultural heritage and museums studies students that was held in Bario in June 2012. The article provides details about the learning framework and research activities that were designed to facilitate exchange and cross-cultural learning between the students and local participants.

A cross-cultural study of somatic countertransference: a brief overview

Whilst countertransference is commonly experienced as feelings, thoughts, images, symbols and dreams endured by the therapist in relation to their client, somatic countertransference is positioned as embodied, physical manifestations in the therapist’s body. Common examples include headaches, nausea, aches, pains, sleepiness, sexual arousal, dizziness and trembling felt by the psychotherapist in session. Current interest in somatic countertransference spans the spectrum from the psychoanalytic, post-Jungian, dance movement and humanistic modalities to empirical studies originating from the trauma research field. Although the clinical literature emphasizes the therapeutic relevance and richness of somatic countertransference for understanding unconscious communications occurring in the session, trauma research advocates greater self-awareness and management of somatic countertransference to prevent therapist burnout. This article will outline the rationale and research process for proposing the first cross-cultural study of somatic countertransference. This study is suggested as a means to extend our understanding of, and ability to work with, somatic countertransference. Preliminary results from an initial study of Chinese psychotherapists will be discussed.