Multiparadigmatic Studies of Culture: Needs

European Management Review, (2016) DOI: 10.1111/emre.12089

Multiparadigmatic Studies of Culture: Needs, Challenges, and Recommendations for Management Scholars T ARAN P ATEL Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble, France This conceptual paper serves as a timely reminder for culture scholars in business studies to engage in multiparadigmatic studies. Our review of culture literature (at the macro level: regional, societal, national) reveals a dominance of the objectivist tradition, which has, over time, resulted in three problems: (1) an oversimplification of the otherwise complex culture concept; (2) equating nation and culture; and (3) neglecting factors other than cultural dimensions that influence individual behavior. We argue that these problems can be partially resolved by engaging in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. Since combining different paradigmatic traditions can be difficult, we also offer insights into how this can be done through two illustrative cases of recent multi-paradigmatic studies. These examples reveal that conducting multi-paradigmatic cultural research is not only feasible, but that it also results in more innovative insights than mono-paradigmatic studies, while simultaneously resolving some of the afore-cited problems. Keywords: paradigms; methodology

objectivism;

subjectivism;

Introduction Culture has been a topic of interest since the writings of early Greek scholars (Gelfand et al., 2007). Although business scholars have made significant advances in recent times toward understanding culture and its impact on business-related outcomes (Taras et al., 2009), they are no closer to a conceptual consensus on the topic than their predecessors. Culture remains an elusive, grossly misunderstood term with a contentious lineage (Bond, 2004). Culture scholars disagree on many points. While some scholars agree that culture is shared (Triandis, 1994), others (Martin, 2002) argue that culture is more accurately defined as an incompletely shared system (see also Tsui et al., 2007). While many scholars (e.g., Hofstede, 1980) maintain that members of a social entity (e.g., company, nation) enjoy considerable cultural homogeneity, others like Tung (2008) and Usunier (1998) support the notion of intra-group cultural heterogeneity. Finally, while some scholars declare that ‘culture implies stability’ (Schein, 1991: 245–248), others (Ohmae, 1985) question the ‘permanent nature’ of culture. Correspondence: Taran Patel, People, Organization Society Department, Grenoble Ecole de Management, 12, rue Pierre Semard, Grenoble, France. E-mail: [email protected]

© 2016 European Academy of Management

multi-paradigmatic; culture; ontology;

epistemology;

Yaganeh et al. (2004) propose that our cultural understanding may have been compromised by weaknesses in the way cross-cultural research has been conducted in the past. This viewpoint has also been supported by other scholars (see Sekaran, 1983; Arbnor and Bjerke, 1997). Tayeb (2001) criticizes extant cultural literature for categorizing countries into cultural ‘boxes’ based on scores on bi-polar cultural dimensions, and for neglecting factors other than cultural dimensions that influence people's behaviors. Following a similar line of thought, Leung et al. (2005) complain that many previous culture studies in business literature adopt a simplistic view of culture, resulting in examining the static influence of a few cultural elements in isolation from other cultural elements and contextual variables. Yet other scholars (Adler and Doktor, 1986; McSweeney, 2009; Usunier, 1998) complain that the way cultural studies have been conducted in business literature have led to wrongly equating culture with nation. In light of these criticisms, we argue that there is a need to rethink the way in which cultural research is being conducted in business literature. This need becomes more pressing in light of new forms of organizations that have emerged in recent decades. For instance, companies are increasing relying on international business collaborations (e.g., joint ventures, international strategic alliances). In such entities

T. Patel boundaries are continuously being redefined (Angwin and Vaara, 2005), accompanied by a blurring of corporate and national identities of members. Therefore, in such organizations the notion of a stable and manageable culture with clearly defined boundaries no longer holds (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, 2003). Instead, managers are faced with culturally dynamic, plural organizations with porous and flexible boundaries (Martin, 2002), where geographic boundaries are less relevant (Taras et al., 2009; Leung et al., 2011). The current business environment is also witnessing an increasing number of virtual and geographically-dispersed organizations (see Martin's 2002 illustrations of EUREKA and The Well), which render geo-ethnically-embedded definitions of culture obsolete. These alternative forms of organizational structures compel scholars to generate alternative ways of conceptualizing culture (see Patel and Rayner, 2012). We believe that this need may be partly satisfied if scholars engage in multi-paradigmatic cultural research. Therefore, our present conceptual paper aims to serve as a timely reminder in favor of multi-paradigmatic cultural research in business literature. Nevertheless, conducting multi-paradigmatic cultural research is fraught with challenges. Therefore, as a secondary aim of the present paper, we offer insights into how scholars may operationalize multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. Figure 1 offers a schematic representation of our study. This paper is structured as follows. First, we define the term ‘paradigm’ and expose two dominant paradigmatic traditions in business literature. Then we review culture literature in business studies and chart out the paradigmatic preferences of scholars in this domain. Next, we identify the problems emanating from the dominance of certain paradigmatic traditions over others in this field of study. We then offer insights into how scholars may engage in such multi-paradigmatic studies. We conclude the paper with a few words of caution regarding conducting multi-paradigmatic research, a discussion of our theoretical and practical implications, and with some suggestions for future research.

Defining ‘paradigms’ The term ‘paradigm’ derives from the Greek word paradeigma, meaning model, pattern, or exemplar (Ball, 1976). In natural sciences, the first to speak of paradigms was the eighteenth-century philosopher Georg Lichtenberg, who conceptualized paradigms as accepted standard models or patterns into which researchers fit unfamiliar phenomena. Thomas Kuhn's work on paradigms has had a considerable influence on contemporary scholars. In The structure of scientific revolutions, Kuhn (1962) defines a paradigm as an allencompassing world-view, a scientific cosmology, with its attendant (often unconscious meta-physical) assumptions about reality, knowledge, and truth. A somewhat simpler definition offered by Guba (1990: 17) described a paradigm as ‘a basic set of beliefs that guides actions’. More recent definitions integrate the role of the ‘scientific community’ within the definition of paradigm. For instance, Faria et al. (2011) define a paradigm is a set of beliefs, theories, empirical methodologies, communication practices shared by a scientific community that serves as a foundation for future scientific endeavors. Similarly, Sterman (2000: 849) defines paradigms as self-consistent communities of like-minded scientists, sharing a worldview. From this perspective, it is believed that paradigms transform groups of researchers into a profession, and lead to the formation of professional bodies, such as professional associations, schools of thought, departments, and specialized journals (Faria et al., 2011). Consequently, paradigms are resilient (Kuhn, 1962); they are difficult to change because the scientific community has invested a lot in them (Faria et al., 2011). Nevertheless, when a paradigm fails to explain anomalies, it results in crises that lead to the emergence of new theories and to paradigm change (Kuhn, 1962; Faria et al., 2011). A paradigm includes three distinct components: ontology, epistemology, and methodology. Ontology – the theory of being - denotes assumptions about the nature of reality (Lewis and Kelemen, 2002). It implies developing strategies to expose the components of

Figure 1 Schematic representation of our study


Multiparadigmatic studies of culture: Needs, challenges, and recommendations for management scholars people's social reality – about what exists, what it looks like, the units that make it up, and how these units interact with each other (Blaikie, 1993: 6). Conversely, epistemology – the theory of knowledge – represents the assumptions that researchers make to understand a phenomenon of interest, and what forms of knowledge are considered scientific (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). It presents a justification for the criteria that knowledge must satisfy in order to be called knowledge rather than beliefs (Blaikie, 1993: 7). Finally, methodology is the way in which one attempts to obtain knowledge about the real world. The net that contains the researcher's ontological, epistemological, and methodological premise is a ‘paradigm’. As a concluding remark to this section, some scholars adopt a rather purist perspective toward paradigms. For instance, Burrell and Morgan (1979) conceptualize paradigms as the tightly coupled ideologies, ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies guiding the work of scholarly communities. According to these scholars, paradigmatic traditions differ considerably from one another, thereby limiting the possibility of crossparadigmatic collaborations. In contrast, other scholars take a more pragmatic approach and argue that what can be studied and how it can be studied need not be governed by one specific paradigm, but can be influenced by other paradigms (Ponterotto, 2005). It is interesting to note that sometimes, even the same scholar may shift his/her stance on paradigms over time. For instance, although in his earlier works, Kuhn (1962) supported the idea that paradigms are strictly incommensurable, in his later works (Kuhn, 1970), he accepted Popper's (1970) notion that paradigms are like languages and therefore, intertranslatable. Following this shift, Kuhn (1970, p. 175) re-defined paradigms as an ‘entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by members of a given community’, and subsequently as a disciplinary matrix composed of metaphysical parts, symbolic generalizations, exemplars, and values (Kuhn, 1996: 182). Although this latter definition has gained popularity with some scholars (see Romani et al., 2011), Kuhn's shift from an incommensurability position to a partially commensurability position has also invited criticism (see Ball, 1976). In the present paper, we support Kuhn's (1970) partial commensurability positon, and argue that paradigms can and should be combined to gain better insights into culture-related topics.

Introducing two main paradigmatic traditions of business literature The broad philosophy of science literature evokes two main paradigmatic traditions: objectivism and subjectivism. Objectivist scholars assume rationalization and control, and are focused on establishing causal relations © 2016 European Academy of Management

through hypothesis testing (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). They believe that reality can be measured objectively, and that relations between different variables can be assessed in a linear cause-effect fashion. The objectivist tradition is characterized by realist ontology, functionalist or positivistic epistemology, and nomothetic methodologies. In line with the realist ontology, scholars treat reality as tangible, stable, and deterministic in its relations among constituent parts (Arbnor and Bjerke, 1997). Regarding epistemological choices, those inspired by the functionalism consider the organization to be functionally effective if it achieves its goals through rational decision making (Karataş-Özkan and Murphy, 2010), while those who adhere to positivism assume that there is one possible answer to a research question, and offer broad generalizable results that apply across varied contexts. This practice of producing broad generalizable results is consistent with the nomothetic methodology of the objectivist tradition (nomothetic implies law-like). In contrast, the subjectivist tradition is characterized by nominalist ontology, non-positivist epistemology, and idiographic methodology (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). The nominalist ontology implies that subjectivist scholars do not support universals; rather they treat each reality as being particular. The non-positivistic epistemology of the subjectivist tradition includes works grounded in interpretivism, social constructivism, or post-modernism. Interpretative scholars reveal how particular realities are socially produced and maintained (Deetz, 1996). Using ethnographic and hermeneutic methods, they attempt to establish local meanings grounded in social and organizational practices (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). Conversely, for social constructivists, knowledge and truth are socially generated (Karataş-Özkan and Murphy, 2010). Individuals are engaged participants, co-creators of social structures (Zickar and Carter, 2010). Finally, post-modernists focus ‘on the processual as opposed to structural character of human institutions’, and on ‘disparity, difference and indeterminacy’ (Cooper and Burrell 1988: 100–101) rather than the origin of things. They have little tolerance for rigid categorizations of social practices, ideologies, and focus instead on the situational, contingent, and provisional nature of social reality (Karataş-Özkan and Murphy, 2010). Their aim is to expose the fluid nature of power relations in contemporary society, and to uncover the complexities of taken-for-granted realities. The idiographic methodology of the subjectivist tradition treats each phenomenon under study as ‘specific’, and attempts to understand the meaning of unique phenomena within their contexts. Such a methodology is consistent with the nominalist ontology of subjectivism. The two paradigmatic traditions discussed in this section are represented schematically in Figure. In this section, for ease of exposition, we have presented different

T. Patel epistemological preferences independently from one another. In practice though, scholars often combine epistemological perspectives (e.g., functionalism with positivism, or interpretivism with social constructivism). One such example is that of post-positivism, that uses qualitative data with a belief in the importance of subjective reality, but without abandoning tenets of conventional positivism (Samdahl, 1999). Post-positivism recognizes that multiplicity and complexity is the reality of all human experiences, and acknowledges the inadequacy of dualistic thinking (see Wildemuth's 1993 examples combining interpretivism with positivism). Such potential combinations of epistemological perspectives are represented through dotted lines in Figure 2. One such study grounded in post-positivism is offered as an illustrative case in subsequent sections of this paper. Next, we chart the dominant paradigmatic preferences of culture scholars in business literature. Understandably, some of this literature draws from other disciplines such as anthropology and psychology. We choose to concentrate our review on studies that focus on the macro level (regional, societal, and national levels) of culture. This decision was grounded in three reasons. First, by concentrating the review exercise on the macro level, we hope to do more justice to a narrow segment of the otherwise large body of literature. Second, most culture scholars tend to focus on this macro (mostly, national) level of culture in their studies (see Schaffer and Riordan, 2003), so much so that they often confound culture with nation. This practice has invited much criticism in recent years. This ongoing tension between proponents and opponents of national culture makes it an interesting venue on which to focus our attention. Third, the

organizational level of culture has already been the focus of excellent scholarly reviews (see Smircich, 1983; Martin, 2002), and has benefited from much conceptual clarity by both objectivist (see Hofstede et al., 1990; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1997; Schein, 1992) and subjectivist scholars (Baudrillard, 1988; Robertson and Swan, 2003), making it less interesting for the present exercise. In conducting our literature review, we hoped to identify some of the most commonly-cited cultural studies from business literature in the past four decades. The exercise of identifying the most commonly-cited objectivist cultural studies was easy, since business literature is largely dominated by the objectivist tradition, and offers many examples of such studies. Conversely, identifying of the most influential works in the subjective tradition in the past four decades proved to be more difficult. As d'Iribarne (2009) explains, subjectivist scholars explore the co-existence of multiple realities within any given society. This exercise is easier done at the organizational level than at the macro (national, regional, or societal) level. Therefore, we find few examples of subjective studies at the macro level of culture, although such examples are common at the organizational level. Therefore, in our literature review, we decided to focus on exposing the diversity of subjective studies (based on varied epistemologies and methodologies) instead. Another challenge we faced in our present endeavor involved classifying scholarly works into different paradigms. Since scholars rarely state their paradigmatic choices explicitly, we were compelled to assess their paradigmatic preferences through their use of metaphorical language (Lewis and Grimes, 1999).

Figure 2 The two key paradigmatic tradition of business literature


Multiparadigmatic studies of culture: Needs, challenges, and recommendations for management scholars

Charting the paradigmatic terrain of culture studies in business studies Culture is a complex construct. Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) had identified over 164 definitions of the term ‘culture’, and that these definitions have increased even more in recent years (Hofstede, 2001; Taras et al., 2009). Therefore, defining culture in a way that appeals to varied constituencies is itself a challenging task. Nevertheless, Tylor's (1871: 1) commonly-cited definitions states that culture is ‘that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’. In recent years, Hofstede's (1980: 25) definition of culture as ‘the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the member of one human group from another’ has gained considerable popularity. Most scholars agree that culture is a multi-level construct starting with the macro level (regional, societal, national), followed by the meso level (organizational, group), and finally the micro level (individual) (see also Taras et al., 2009; Leung et al., 2005). As explained before, in the present paper we focus on the macro level of culture. Objectivist cultural studies in business literature Among the most commonly-cited objectivist cultural studies in business literature are Hofstede's (1980; Hofstede and Bond, 1988) work on national culture, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner's (1997) work on societal culture, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavioral Effectiveness (GLOBE) Study of regional culture (House and Javidan, 2004; House, Quigley, and de Luque, 2010), and Schwartz's (2004) work on cultural orientation and values theory (Schwartz, 2006). Since each of these studies has received considerable attention in extant literature (see Patel, 2013), we simply offer a brief introduction here, while also reviewing some of the recent evolutions in this literature. In his famous work, Hofstede (1980) explored the differences in thinking and social action that exist between members of several nations, collecting over 116,000 questionnaires in 20 different languages between 1967 and 1973. Initially, Hofstede (1980) identified four dimensions on which nations differ from one another: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity. These four dimensions describe the collective programming of the mind and distinguish members of one national group from those of another (Hofstede 1994). Later a fifth dimension – Confucian dynamism – was identified by Hofstede and Bond (1988) to explain people's orientation towards time. Although Hofstede's work has enjoyed considerable popularity for several decades and has inspired many other scholars (Harvey, 1997; Hambrick and Brandon, © 2016 European Academy of Management

1988; Soares et al., 2007), it has also been subject to some refinements in recent years. For instance, Taras et al. (2010) have offered boundary conditions for using Hofstede's framework effectively. Gibson et al. (2009) have shown that individual-level, group-level, and situational factors moderate the impact of national culture on individual outcomes. Other scholars (e.g., Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Triandis et al., 1993) have refined our understanding of cultural dimensions, more specifically of individualism/collectivism. Such studies have provided greater precision to Hofstede's original work (Leung et al., 2005). Another study that has significantly impacted business scholars is Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner's (1997) work on societal cultures. In an earlier work, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1993) explored seven cultures (equated with ‘countries’) using seven dilemmas. This work can be considered as a precursor to the seven cultural dimensions that these scholars subsequently proposed in 1997 for distinguishing societies from one another: universalism versus particularism, individualism versus communitarianism, affective versus neutral, specific versus diffused, achievement versus ascription, sequential versus synchronic perception of time, and internal versus external locus of control. The GLOBE study explored effectiveness of leadership behaviors across societies. Over 170 scholars from different countries contributed to this study and collected data from about 17,000 managers in 951 organizations. It covered a variety of sectors including the food processing, finance and telecommunications industries. GLOBE scholars defined societal culture as ‘the shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives that are transmitted across generations’ (House and Javidan 2004: 15). These scholars distinguished between cultural practices and cultural values, explaining that whether one should address one or the other would depend on the underlying research question. GLOBE scholars identified nine cultural dimensions, which distinguish societies from one another; uncertainty avoidance, power distance, collectivism I, collectivism II, gender egalitarianism, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation. Based on scores on these cultural dimensions, they clustered societies into ten regional clusters (Gupta and Hanges 2004). Schwartz's (2004) work on cultural orientation has also received considerable acclaim. Schwartz (2004) conceptualized cultural orientations as a set of problems that individuals in each culture are required to resolve. He identified three cultural orientations: conservatism versus autonomy, hierarchy versus egalitarianism, and harmony versus mastery. He observed that, while the three cultural orientations are often described separately, they

T. Patel occur concomitantly in societies. For instance, the Western European society has a preference for both egalitarianism and intellectual autonomy. Therefore, Schwartz proposed that, rather than conceptualizing cultural orientations as mutually independent (which he claimed was Hofstede's approach), it would be more accurate to view them as an integrated system. His mapping of the national groups along cultural orientation revealed seven transnational cultural grouping composed of countries in close geographical proximity. Schwartz (2004) concluded that values, norms, practices and institutions influence people across national borders, and that shared histories, religion and the level of development also play a role. In subsequent work, Schwartz (2006) collected data on values orientation in over 70 countries, and identified 10 motivationally distinct value orientations: selfdetermination, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence and universalism. Schwartz explained that these ten values are universal because they are grounded in basic human requirements. Nevertheless, individual differences (life circumstances, age, education, gender, income, etc.) influence the significance people attach to different values. Further, Schwartz (2006) explained that pursuing one value has consequences: it conflicts with some values but is congruent with others. For instance, pursuing achievement may be congruent with pursuing power, but it may be in conflict with pursuing benevolence. People can and do pursue competing values, but they do so in different acts occurring in different spheres of their lives. Values form a continuum of related motivations. For instance, power and achievement form a continuum – they both focus on social superiority and esteem. Therefore, Schwartz (2006) presented values and their motivational continuum in a circular manner. The closer any two values are in either direction around the circle, the more similar are their underlying motivations. This implies that the whole set of ten values relate to one another in an integrated manner. Many interesting developments have occurred in recent years in objectivist culture studies in business literature. For instance, in an attempt to liberate the cultural discourse from its over-reliance on values, Leung et al. (2002) have worked toward generating sets of social axioms (basic assumptions about life) at the individual and national levels. Their original results of five, individual-level factors (social cynicism, social complexity, reward for application, religiosity, and fate control) from five nations were confirmed through a subsequent study of 41 nations (Leung and Bond, 2004). A national-level aggregation of the same data revealed a different structure of social axioms composed only of societal cynicism and dynamic externality (Bond et al., 2004). Thus, these scholars show that patterns that hold

at the individual level do not necessarily coincide with those emerging at the national level. Another stream of literature that has emerged recently focuses on bicultural individuals – individuals who have more than one (national) cultural identity due to immigration, bicultural parents, working/studying/living abroad, etc. (e.g., Benet-Martínez et al., 2002; Brannen and Thomas, 2010; Lakshman, 2013). Such individuals are considered as being particularly culturally intelligent (Earley, 2002; Earley and Ang, 2003), that is, they are well-equipped to switch cultural frames when faced with culturally-diverse others. Other scholars (Triandis, 1994) talk of cultural convergence through either subtractive (replacing some of one's preferences with those of the dominant group to fit in) or additive (adding other‘s preferences on to one's own preferences to fit in) multiculturalism. Another body of literature worth citing in this subsection has been previously categorized by Adler (1983) and Smircich (1983) as comparative management studies.1 As Adler (1983) explains, these studies identify aspects of organizations which are similar (universal) and which are different (specific) in cultures around the world, and draw implications for organizational effectiveness (Smircich, 1983). Scholars engaging in comparative management studies either examine the relationship between culture and organizational structure (macro focus) or they investigate the similarities and differences in attitudes of managers of different cultures. Many of these comparative studies are grounded in works discussed earlier in this sub-section (e.g., Hofstede, 1980; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1997). The desired outcome is statements of contingent relationships between culture and other variables that will have applicability for managers. Since the underlying interest is the search for predictable means for organizational control and improved means for organizational management, the issue of causality is of critical importance in such studies. The studies cited in this sub-section largely subscribe to the objectivist tradition. Generally, these scholars prioritize prediction, generalizability, causality, and control (borrowing from Smircich, 1983). Guided by their realist ontology, these scholars view culture as a stable, independent, and objective phenomenon that can be accurately measured (Yaganeh et al., 2004). Those subscribing to a positivistic epistemology look for clear cut responses, by measuring cultures across various unidimensions, bi-polar (barring exceptions like Singelis et al., 1995) cultural dimensions. Those subscribing to the functionalist epistemology (e.g., comparative management scholars) seek to find answers to those problems that directly affect organizations. Functional 1

It should be noted that Smircich's (1983) work focused largely on organizational culture. Nevertheless, the description of objectivist and subjectivist studies that she offered is equally useful for our present discussion.


Multiparadigmatic studies of culture: Needs, challenges, and recommendations for management scholars Table 1 Summarizing key objectivist cultural studies in business literature Paradigmatic tradition: objectivism ontology: realism Epistemology

Illustrative scholarly works

Focus

Methodology

Tools of data collection

Positivism

Hofstede (1980), Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997), GLOBE Study (House and Javidan, 2004), Schwartz (2004, 2006)

Nomothetic; prediction, generalizability, causality, and control are prioritized

Etic instruments, self-report surveys measuring unidimensional bi-polar criteria, recent calls for multi-method studies

Functionalism

Comparative management studies (see Adler, 1983; Smircich, 1983)

On differences in cultural dimensions between geo-ethnic entities (societies, regions, or nations) and their impact on organizational, group, or individual-level outcomes On charting the differences among cultures, locating similarities, and drawing implications for organizational effectiveness

scholars ‘freeze’ culture by representing its characteristics in a static way (Schultz and Hatch, 1996), thereby making it possible to compare cultures. Further, in line with their nomothetic methodologies they offer results which are law-like broad generalizations. Objectivist scholars rely largely on quantitative self-report etic survey instruments that quantify values, assumptions, or practices along varied cultural dimensions (Taras et al., 2009). More recently, some objectivist scholars have called for multimethod cross-cultural studies, as well as for studies combining non-cultural factors with cultural dimensions for a more complete understanding of the topic under study (see Taras et al., 2009; Leung et al., 2005). The reflections presented in this sub-section are summarized in table 1 below: Subjectivist culture studies in business literature Subjectivist scholars are concerned by the fundamental issues of meaning and by the processes which make social life possible (Smircich, 1983). In the subjectivist tradition, the social world does not have an objective independent existence that imposes itself on people. Instead, the social world exists as a pattern of symbolic relationships and meanings sustained through ongoing human interactions. As a first example of subjectivist culture studies in business literature we offer the recent work of d'Iribarne (2009), in which he takes on the challenge of addressing national cultures through an interpretative approach. This, as explained earlier, is not an easy exercise. Nevertheless, d'Iribarne show that it is possible to present a theory enabling us to take into consideration what is diverse across national cultures and changing as well as what is shared and stable. Based on empirical research conducted in the US and France, he shows that within every country, a core concern is at the heart of social existence. However, people use different ways, and strive to find forms of organization as well as representations that help them cope © 2016 European Academy of Management

with this core concern. In the US, the core concern is the contract, while in France the focus is on one's ‘métier ’. Other examples of subjectivist culture studies include recent studies conducted by Ailon-Souday and Kunda (2003).2 In 2003, through their ethnographic study of an Israeli-American merger, they challenged the functionalist notion that national identity is ‘a passive embodiment of a predetermined cultural template’ (Ailon-Souday and Kunda 2003: 1074), and contended that this conceptualization fails to take into account the discretionary power that members exercise in defining what national belonging means to them, and in deciding when to activate or suppress the same. In practice, members often tailor national identity towards certain goals. Acting out certain stereotypes, in fact, serves a strategic interest for many Israeli employees, who consciously and systematically reproduced these stereotypes. This is a far cry from the assumption that individuals’ behaviors are subject to a predetermined national culture. The authors conclude that the realities of globalizing businesses cannot be effectively captured by viewing national identity as an objective essence. In a subsequent ethnographic study of an Israeli-Palestinian subsidiary of a multi-national hi-tech company, Ailon and Kunda (2009) critique the attempts of MNCs to found a transnational ‘imagined community’ which does not rival the national one, but internalizes it, creating an arena of discretionary power for managers, whereby they can decide when to activate and when to suppress nationality. This study explores the relationship between transnationalism and nationalism inside organizations, and its implications for understanding MNC's role in globalization.

2

It should be noted that in both the studies, data collection is done at the organizational level. Nevertheless, their findings have implications for the concept of national and transnational identities. It is for this reason that we have included these studies as examples in our paper.

T. Patel Another subjective cultural study was conducted by Mwaura et al. (1998). Using an interpretative approach, these scholars studied the interaction between national and corporate cultures in the hotel industry in China. Data was collected by participation observation, focus groups and case studies. Mwaura et al. (1998) ground their work in the understanding that while the Chinese hotel sector tends to be highly ‘occidental’, the Chinese national culture itself is quite ‘oriental’, and that conflicts result when different national and corporate cultural values interact. These authors show that while Chinese employees make a significant attempt to assimilate the ‘foreign organizational culture’, their Chinese national culture exercises considerable influence on them. Subjective cultural research has received some acceptance in the field of consumer behavior (Craig and Douglas, 2006). For instance, McCracken (1986) adopts an all-encompassing view of culture, defining it as the ‘lens through which the individual views phenomena’. Defined as such, culture determines how individuals perceive and interpret phenomena, it provides the ‘blueprint’ of human activity, and determines the co-ordinates of human action. This view follows closely the interpretative perspective of Geertz (1973), Clifford (1988) and Marcus (1999), and their view of culture as interpretation of meaning in a culturally constituted world (Craig and Douglas, 2006). Subjectivist cultural scholars in business studies have often relied on the works of social and cultural anthropologists. For instance, the works of Patel and her colleagues (Patel, 2007; Patel and Schaefer, 2009; Patel and Rayner, 2015) are grounded in Douglas's (1970) Grid Group Typology (GGT). GGT was introduced in Natural symbols (Douglas, 1970) and expanded in Cultural bias (Douglas, 1978). Since then, GGT has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines such as ecology (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1983), political science (Coyle and Ellis, 1994), and public administration (Wildavsky, 1987). Although the initial development of GGT was largely influenced by Douglas's structural-functionalist legacy, in subsequent years it took on a much more interpretivist turn through the works of Thompson (1996).3 GGT 3

Thompson (1996) was largely influenced in his thinking by transactional anthropologist, Fredrik Barth. Barth (1959) criticized structural-functional cultural approaches because of their assumption that culture is a structurallyintegrated whole, and for oversimplifying the cultural discourse by depicting the world as divided into separate yet internally cohering parts. Barth called for cultural scholars to focus on transactions which produce generally shared meanings. In their broadest usage, the terms ‘transaction’ and ‘exchange’ refer to patterned transference of ‘items’ both material (shells, animals, food and labour) and immaterial (status and power) between individuals and groups (Kapferer, 1976). Barth explains that social transactions involve a series of interactions systematically governed by reciprocity, with each party trying to ensure that the value it gains is greater than or at least equal to the value lost. Through repeated transactions, people create enduring social forms between them, which provide a way to model both micro level (e.g., interpersonal) and macro level (e.g., social systems) relationships. Since transactions are common to all social relations, they can be used to explore culture across levels, scales and geo-ethnic boundaries.

explains that human behavior is grounded in two dimensions of social transactions: (1) ‘Group’ which represents the extent to which people are restricted in thought and action by their commitment to a larger social unit; and (2) ‘Grid’ which represents the extent to which people's behaviors are controlled by role differentiation (Gross and Rayner, 1985). Four cultures (high grid-high group or hierarchical, high grid-low group or fatalistic, high group-low grid or egalitarian, and low group-low grid or competitive) emerge from different grid-group configurations in which people organize themselves. But these are not rigid or permanent categories. Since people place themselves in different grid-group arrangements at different times and in different contexts, the four cultures of GGT are simply sets of behavioral preferences which change with the context. Human behavior is thus the outcome of ongoing interactions between an individual's behavioral preferences (on the grid-group dimensions) and her social context (Douglas, 1970). Subsequent work by Thompson (1996) revealed that the ongoing competition between members of the four cultures and their concomitant interdependence creates a system which is in a constant state of flux – or dynamic disequilibrium. Grounding her ethnographic study of international strategic alliances in Douglas's (1970, 1978) GGT, Patel (2007) shows that in pursuing their goals managers often promote their own set of behavioral strategies, thereby emphasizing their own viewpoints and precluding others. However, doing so only leads to gridlocks between the dominant cultures. What ensures the viability of international alliances is just the opposite. Encouraging different cultures to co-exist in the same alliance, although chaotic and messy prevents any culture from becoming dominant, thereby ensuring viability. Hence, in designing international alliances, managers should focus on involving people from different cultures rather than attempting to create a homogenous group. Additionally, having an egalitarian group (high group-low grid) that serves as the bridge between the other dominant cultures (hierarchy and competitive) is especially important for the viability of international alliances. This not only prevents any one group from becoming overly dominant, but it also helps them to arrive at a mutual consensus. The works cited so far in this sub-section follow the interpretivist epistemology. Interpretivist scholars engage in ongoing, interrelated, cyclic processes of interpretation, sense making, understanding, and action, to comprehend how cultures are constructed (Hatch, 1993). They rarely explore discontinuities in sense making, so they produce organizational ethnographies that are, at best, static representations of dynamic processes (Schultz and Hatch, © 2016 European Academy of Management

Multiparadigmatic studies of culture: Needs, challenges, and recommendations for management scholars Table 2 Summarizing subjectivist cultural studies in business literature Paradigmatic tradition: subjectivism ontology: nominalist Epistemology

Illustrative scholarly works

Focus

Methodology

Tools of data collection

Interpretivism

Thompson (1996); AilonSouday and Kunda (2003), Ailon and Kunda (2009); D'Iribarne (2009); Mwaura et al. (1998); Craig and Douglas (2006), polycentric cultural studies (Adler, 1983)

Inductive, idiographic, uncovering meaning and the processes by which social life is made possible

Emic instruments Ethnographic interviews, qualitative semistructured interviews, participation observation, and other qualitative techniques.

Social constructivism

Schwandt (2000); Christiansen et al. (1999)

Post-modernism

Featherstone (1995); Mathews (2000); Schneider (1968); Perusek (2007)

On cultures emerging as a function of the interaction between people's preferences and their contexts; on charting what is diverse across national cultures and what is shared and stable; on culture as interpretation of meaning in a culturally constituted world Social entities are historically and culturally unique sites, where members collectively engage in the social construction of reality. Cultural identities are not only multiple but also flexible

1996).4 For these scholars, culture constitutes an ongoing interpretation process rather than a stable structure of values that can be measured at a point in time (Yaganeh et al., 2004). Like interpretivists, social constructivists (e.g., Schwandt, 2000) propose that social entities (such as organizations, nations, etc.) are historically and culturally unique sites, where members collectively engage in the social construction of reality. We also find similar references in the work of Christiansen et al. (1999), who introduce a social constructivist approach into the research on the European integration. Finally, the works of Baudrillard, Lyotard and Derrida (Martin 2002) exemplify the postmodernist tradition in culture studies. Postmodernist culture scholars explain that (national) identities are not only multiple (Featherstone, 1995) but also mobile constructs (Sarup, 1996). They represent infinite combinations of cultural possibilities that can be picked up and chosen like clothes from shelves (see Mathews 2000). As Featherstone (1995) explains, people are not just recipients of a cultural repertoire, but also actively contribute to it. Yet the degree of participation that people can have in the creation of culture depends on power structures within a society (Featherstone, 1995). Following a similar line of thought, Schneider (1968) perceives culture to be a system of arbitrary symbols, which communities manipulate to create their own reality. Other subjective scholars like Perusek 4

Although most examples of subjective studies cited by Schultz and Hatch (1996) refer to the organizational level of culture, their observations about the nature of subjective studies are just as valid for studies addressing other levels of culture.


(2007) also challenge the assumption of homogenous and bounded cultures, and supports instead that cultures are characterized by inconsistencies, contradictions, and conflicts. He also supports that cultural borders are porous, so cultures may be shared by people from different geographic regions, and contested by people from the same region. In addition to the studies cited in this sub-section, those described by Adler (1983) as polycentric studies may also be included in the subjectivist category. Such studies focus on describing, explaining, and interpreting the patterns of management and organization in foreign countries. In line with their nominalist ontology, these studies are grounded in the assumption that what applies to one cultural context is so unique that it cannot apply to another cultural context, thereby rendering cultural comparisons futile. Such studies take an inductive approach and let patterns emerge from the data; they take an idiographic approach stressing the uniqueness of the specific culture being studied rather than a nomothetic approach which attempts to identify universals. The reflections presented in this sub-section are summarized in Table 2. Summarizing the paradigmatic terrain of culture studies in business literature Figure 3 summarizes the paradigmatic attributes of different cultural works that we have identified and discussed in this section. Our review of extant cultural literature in business studies reveals a distinct dominance of the objectivist tradition. Further, it is commonly believed (see Douglas's 1986 ‘thought worlds’, and Knorr

T. Patel

Figure 3 Charting the paradigmatic terrain in cultural studies in business literature

Cetina's 1999 ‘epistemic cultures’) that scholars from each paradigmatic schools form part of distinct cultural systems (Rohner, 1984), with their own distinct realms of knowledge and preferences regarding how to explore them (Rayner, 1991). They organize perceptions and knowledge in ways that ensure their reproduction, and also socialize newcomers into their ways. Consequently, scholars from different paradigmatic schools pay attention to certain kinds of questions and neglect others, eventually leading to ‘blind-spots’ in their knowledge (Lowe et al., 2007) over time. We argue that in the same way the dominance of one paradigmatic tradition (in our case, objectivism) over other paradigmatic traditions also leads to certain problems. In the next section, we identify three such problems.

Problems emanating from an overly objectivist treatment of culture Three problems emerge from an overly objectivist treatment of culture in business literature. The first problem has to do with the oversimplification of the otherwise complex culture concept. The positivistic undertones of objectivist studies tend to render cultural phenomena ahistorical, linguistically naïve, psychologically unaware (Yaganeh et al., 2004), and divorced from its social context (Arbnor and Bjerke, 1997). Although such studies produce tangible quantitative results, they cannot really explain people's day-to-day workplace behaviors (Patel, 2007). They operationalize culture through a few tangible indicators,

and concentrate on the static influence of a few cultural elements at the expense of other cultural elements and contextual variables (Leung et al., 2005). While this facilitates the research design, it oversimplifies an otherwise complex construct (Tayeb, 2001). Objective scholars' practice of categorizing countries into neat little boxes based on their scores on varied cultural dimensions ignores the fact that the impact that cultural dimensions exercise on individual behaviors could be influenced by a variety of criteria. For instance, whether an individual behaves in an individualist or collectivist way depends on whether they are dealing with the in-group or the outgroup, the context, and other situational variables (Tayeb, 2001). Delineating culture to a handful of bi-polar dimensions ignores the fact that the two opposing poles of each of these dimensions may exist in the same culture (see also Patel, 2013). Finally, by focusing on narrow causal relationships, objectivist culture scholars overlook the possibility of gaining in-depth cultural understanding (Yaganeh et al., 2004), and ignore intragroup cultural variations, which are just as important as inter-group cultural variations (Au, 1999). In light of these emerging problems, Leung et al. (2005) call for a more complex conceptualization of culture that treats culture as a multilayer, multi-faceted, contextual and systemic construct. The second problem that arises from the overly objectivist tradition that dominates culture literature in business studies relates to the tendency of equating culture with nation. Since objectivist scholars focus on producing broad generalizations at the national level in line with their nomothetic methodology, it leads to an excessive,


Multiparadigmatic studies of culture: Needs, challenges, and recommendations for management scholars selective focus on national culture, such that its proponents have begun equating culture with nation (Adler and Doktor, 1986). This has led to much dissatisfaction among other scholars. McSweeney (2009) argues that ‘nation’ cannot be conflated with ‘country’ or ‘state’ because some states (e.g., the UK) include many nations. Usunier (1998) notes that though nationality may be a convenient way of grouping people, the direction of causality between nationality and culture is not selfevident. Also cultures can cut across national boundaries (Leung et al., 2011) and although nationality might have been an acceptable proxy for culture in the past, in modern times, geographic boundaries are less relevant (Taras et al., 2009). Finally, as noted earlier, equating culture with nation can be particularly problematic in international business collaborations (Ailon-Souday and Kunda, � Angwin and Vaara, 2005) and in virtual and geographically-dispersed organizations (Martin, 2002). The third and final problem with the predominantly objectivist trend in culture studies in business literature is that such studies tend to ignore that in addition to national culture, there are many other factors such as age, occupation, life experiences which influence individual behavior (Tayeb, 2001). Even within one country, the situational factors influencing one region are different from those influencing another region, and therefore, influence people's behaviors. For instance, in regions of high unemployment and economic depression, employees are more tolerant of the employer's authority than in areas where there is economic prosperity and full employment. Therefore, when scholars attempt to study the impact of national culture on a variety of outcomes, they must either control for the other factors influencing the relationship, or combine these factors with cultural dimensions as part of their study. Following the same line of argument, Leung et al. (2005) call for studying the impact of culture in combination with other non-cultural factors (for example, socio-economic-political variables), and evaluating this impact because culture may relate to non-cultural factors in a complex way and a simple consideration of their joint effects is inadequate. To a certain extent, recent cultural studies by Woodside and his colleagues meet this demand. One such study (Ferguson et al., 2014) is offered as an illustrative case in subsequent sections of this paper. In our viewpoint, the different problems cited in this section can be resolved, at least partially, if scholars actively engage in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture (also see Maruyama, 2004). This viewpoint is also echoed by Tayeb (2001: 232), who calls for drawing ‘the best from both paradigms’. Similarly, Leung et al. (2009) call for multi-methods approaches to research in culture (see also a similar call in a special issue of Journal of Cross© 2016 European Academy of Management

Cultural Psychology in 2009).5 Despite repeated calls by past scholars to engage in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture (Lewis and Kelemen, 2002; Yaganeh et al., 2004) the shift from mono-paradigmatic to multiparadigmatic studies has been slow. This is because the exercise of operationalizing multi-paradigmatic studies is rife with challenges. In the next section we outline some of these challenges, and offer two illustrative cases to demonstrate how they may be overcome.

Multiparadigmatic studies of culture: challenges and illustrative cases Multiparadigmatic culture studies: challenges While there may be many reasons for scholars’ resistance to engaging in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture (see Sullivan and Daniels's 2008 discussion of scholars’ ‘ethnocentric bias’, and Kogut's 2005 discussion of the ‘self-referential dynamics of academic communities’), we believe that one of the main reasons for resisting engaging in multi-paradigmatic studies is that combining different paradigms is challenging, not in the least due to their inherently incompatible assumptions. Although there is some extant literature on how to operationalize multiparadigmatic studies, this literature remains sparse and inconsistent. For instance, while some scholars suggest that combining different paradigms can be made possible if researchers systematically critique each paradigmatic lens and identify transition zones across them (Gioia and Pitre, 1990; Lewis and Grimes, 1999), other scholars suggest conducting separate analysis according to each paradigm, so as to address the inherent assumptions of each paradigm (Hassard, 1991). Contesting this advice, Parker and McHugh (1991) suggest that more realistic approach is for scholars to behave ‘as if’ they adhered to different paradigms. This argument is supported by the understanding that different paradigms reflect different views, interests, positions in organizational hierarchy, and time periods (Lewis and Grimes, 1999). Hence, even if scholars try to immerse themselves in less familiar paradigm cultures ‘they seldom ever become part of them’ (Lewis and Grimes, 1999: 687). While some scholars call 5

In our understanding, multi-paradigmatic studies are different from multimethod studies. While the latter involves combining two mutually complementary methods, the former calls for actively addressing the topic from more than one ontological and, epistemological perspectives. Combining methods may not always be required in multi-paradigmatic studies. Consider the following examples: while Hassard (1991) combined more than one methodology (positivistic part based on a quantitative survey, and interpretative part based on participation-observation) in his multi-paradigmatic study of the British Fire Department, Romani et al. (2011) used only the qualitative methodology (using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) and semi-structured interviews) in their bi-paradigmatic study of bicultural business entities.This was made possible by the fact that the CIT lends itself conveniently to analyses from more than one paradigmatic perspective.

T. Patel for parallel multi-paradigmatic studies (which concurrently maintain diverse theoretical perspectives through the use of opposing lenses), others call for sequential multi-paradigmatic studies (where alternative paradigmatic lenses are applied in succession to capture distinct, complementary focal points) (Lewis and Grimes, 1999). Extant literature is replete with other strategies for conducting multi-paradigmatic studies such as ‘paradigm planting’, ‘paradigm sliding’, ‘paradigm crossing’, and ‘paradigm transcendence’ (Lowe et al., 2007). Out of the varied strategies for conducting multi-paradigmatic studies, the ‘interplay’ strategy as proposed by Schultz and Hatch (1996) seems to have received some degree of acceptance, as evidenced by its recent use by Romani et al. (2011). Paradigm interplay accentuates the connections and differences between paradigm representations, allowing one to replace simplistic eitheror dualities with overlapping categories. Despite these recent advances, more work is desired toward eliciting strategies for multi-paradigmatic studies of culture (Lewis and Kelemen, 2002). Since determining how researchers can successfully operationalize multi-paradigmatic studies is crucial for advances in multi-paradigmatic cultural research, in the next sub-section we offer two recent illustrative cases of multi-paradigmatic studies. Multiparadigmatic culture studies: illustrative cases Our review of extant literature reveals a handful of multiparadigmatic studies of culture in business literature (Hassard, 1991; Ybema, 1996; Denny, 1999, to name a few). From among these, we choose to present two recent examples in this section, which are representative of two distinct trends that seem to be emerging within this stream of literature. The first example of Romani et al.'s (2011) study represents the more classic multi-paradigmatic (bi-paradigmatic) studies that combine two or more paradigms to study a culture-related problem. Conversely, the second example – Ferguson et al.'s (2014) study – represents the works of a distinctive group of scholars (see also Hsu et al., 2013) who resort to the post-positivist paradigm to engage in asymmetric and non-linear studies of culture. Case 1: Romani et al. (2011). Romani et al. (2011) conducted a bi-paradigmatic study of bicultural interactions between Japanese and Swedish medical researchers. These scholars subscribe to the paradigm crossing perspective (Schultz and Hatch, 1996) and to Kuhn's (1990) conceptualization of paradigms. Using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) and semi-structured interviews, they collected critical incidents (CIs) from respondents about their unexpected encounters with members of another culture. Then these CIs were narrated

to a cultural expert with knowledge about the other culture. Next, cultural schemas or standards were identified, which were confirmed/disconfirmed through supporting references from extant literature. Then the authors used a three-step process to engage in interplay between positivism and interpretivism. First, separate analyses were conducted according to each paradigm; second, the analyses were contrasted and compared to indicate possible improvements and potential for paradigm interplay; third, the analyses were placed in interaction with one another, revealing implications for theory development. Romani et al.'s work (2011) showed that not only due the findings from the positivist and interpretivist analyses enrich and complement one another, they also lead to the possibility of identifying theoretical constructs which were not the focus of the study at the beginning. In the present case, the ‘leader's authority' emerged as a construct, and revealed the connection between two Hofstedian cultural dimensions: power distance and masculinity/femininity. Power distance is based upon the acceptance of an unequal repartition of power. Masculinity indicates that this repartition is toward achievement, whereas femininity implies that it is toward concerns for the social environment. Thus, while power distance signifies the exercise of power, masculinity/femininity explains its legitimacy. Thus, by showing that power distance and masculinity/femininity are part of the same construct – leader authority – the interplay strategy allows for its enrichment.

Case 2: Ferguson, Megehee and Woodside (2014). Ferguson et al. (2014) studied tipping behaviors across countries in the restaurant and taxicab service industry. Other scholars exploring the topic (see Lynn et al., 1993; Lynn, 2000; Lynn and Lynn, 2004) have conducted symmetric and linear studies between individual cultural dimensions (see Hofstede, 1980) and their impact on tipping behaviors. For instance, Lynn et al. (1993) report a statistically significant positive relationship with tipping for power distance and masculinity, a positive relationship for uncertainty avoidance, and a significantly negative association for individualism. In contrast with Lynn et al.'s (1993) work, Ferguson et al. (2014) choose not to study the impact of each cultural dimension separately on tipping behaviors. Instead, using the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (FsQCA), they explored the impact of alternative cultural combinations or recipes on tipping behaviors across countries. The authors show that several recipes of cultural dimensions have an impact on tipping behaviors, and that asymmetric relations exist between antecedent conditions and tipping behaviors. Further, Hofstede's four cultural values alone do not accurately indicate the tipping


Multiparadigmatic studies of culture: Needs, challenges, and recommendations for management scholars frequency (or its negation) across restaurant and taxicab service industry. Including other contextual variables such as GDP, religiosity, and the Gini index along with Hofstede's dimensions helps to create better models explaining tipping behaviors across countries. The authors also show that while high religiosity results in high tipping behavior in restaurants, the same is not true for taxicab services. This finding supports the causal asymmetry tenet of complexity theory – the fact that models of tipping behaviors are not mirror opposites of models of negation of tipping behaviors. The two illustrative cases of multi-paradigmatic studies offered in this section offer unique theoretical insights, which are discussed in some detail in the next section.

Theoretical and practical implications for culture scholars Our present paper offers two theoretical insights. First, it shows that culture literature in business studies is currently dominated by the objectivist tradition. This has led to three emerging problems: (1) the oversimplification of the culture concept; (2) the tendency to equate culture with nation; and (3) the tendency to neglect factors other than cultural dimensions that influence individual behavior. We argue that engaging in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture may help address some of these problems. Thus, our paper serves as a timely reminder for business scholars to engage in multi-paradigmatic cultural research. Notwithstanding increasing calls to this effect in recent year (Schultz and Hatch, 1996; Yaganeh et al., 2004), most examples of multi-paradigmatic studies in extant literature focus on topics such as organizational learning (Karataş-Özkan and Murphy, 2010) and the complementarity of different knowledge forms (Spender, 1998). The continuing paucity of multi-paradigmatic studies of culture in business literature suggests that a reminder to this effect is warranted. Second, we offer two examples of recently conducted multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. Although, past literature is replete with references to the many advantages of multi-paradigmatic studies,6 the two illustrative cases outlined in this paper offer some fresh 6

Such studies allow cultural scholars to: (1) contrast the varied representations of different paradigms and explore plurality and the paradoxes characterizing social realities (Lewis and Kelemen 2002); (2) explore questions that may appear logical by themselves but are contradictory when juxtaposed with one another (Sullivan and Daniels, 2008); (3) explore questions they have long neglected for want of suitable paradigms (Martin, 1992); (4) explain realities and emergent phenomena in more depth than mono-paradigmatic studies (Sullivan and Daniels, 2008);(5) foster a more comprehensive portrait of organizational reality (Lewis and Kelemen, 2002); (6) shed more light on the tensions of organizational life (Hassard, 1991); and (7) witness framebreaking experiences (Lewis and Grimes, 1999), enabling them to surpass their comfort zones.


insight into the merits of multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. For instance, Romani et al.'s (2011) study shows that multi-paradigmatic studies relying on the interplay strategy allow one to surpass initially identified topics, and enrich theory in unexpected ways. By increasing researchers' reflexivity, multiparadigmatic studies can lead to new perspectives, more innovative and creative research outcomes, and more innovative theory-building than mono-paradigmatic studies (Romani et al., 2011). Conversely, Ferguson et al.’s (2014) study shows that multi-paradigmatic studies such as their's allows for asymmetric studies of culture (as opposed to symmetric linear ones), and also allows one to compare the outcome of different cultural recipes on a specific variable, while including factors other than cultural dimensions into the mix. These two studies also provide interesting methodological insights. Both the CIT used by Romani et al. (2011) and the FsQCA used by Ferguson et al. (2014) represent promising tools for facilitating multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. Further, the two examples we have presented in this paper partially address the three problems that have emerged in current culture literature due to the dominance of the objectivist tradition: (1) over-simplification of the culture concept; (2) equating nation with culture; and (3) neglecting factors other than cultural dimensions that influence human behavior. To begin with, both studies reverse the trend of oversimplifying the culture concept, and engage instead in exposing its complexity. While Romani et al.’s (2011) bi-paradigmatic study enriches theory by revealing that two cultural dimensions – power distance and masculinity/feminity – are part of the same theoretical construct of leader authority, Ferguson et al.’s (2014) study provides evidence to support that culture is a complex and holistic construct, and that combinations/recipes of cultural dimensions put together better explain cultural realities than individual cultural dimensions. Additionally, Ferguson et al.’s (2014) study reveals that within the same data set a variable can have a positive, negative and indifferent relationship with another variable depending on the other antecedent conditions present at a point in time. Therefore, conducting configural analysis or in other words, modeling multiple realities is required. In so doing, these scholars address the problem of oversimplification of the culture concept. Second, although the two studies do not explicitly address the second problem arising from the dominance of the objectivist tradition in culture studies (i.e., equating nation with culture), Ferguson et al.’s (2014) study does, to a certain extent, focus on intranational diversity, thereby indirectly challenging the notion of an internally consistent and homogenous national culture. This study shows that religiosity has a different impact on tipping behavior in the taxi cab

T. Patel industry as opposed to the restaurant business within the same country. Additionally, Ferguson et al.’s (2014) study also explicitly addresses the third problem emerging from an overly objectivist treatment of culture in business literature (i.e. a neglect of factors other than cultural dimensions to explain individual behavior) by combining cultural configurations with other demographic and contextual variables such as GDP, religiosity, age, industry sector, etc., to explain tipping behaviors. In so doing, these scholars re-connect the cultural phenomenon with its social context, thereby addressing another concern raised by scholars about objectivist cultural studies (Arbnor and Bjerke, 1997; Woodside, 2014). To summarize, the two illustrative cases of multiparadigmatic studies that we have cited in this paper show that not only is it feasible to conduct multi-paradigmatic studies of culture, but that such studies also offer more innovative understanding of the topic under exploration than mono-paradigmatic studies. Further such multiparadigmatic studies also partially overcome some of the problems that have emerged in culture literature due to the dominance of the objectivist tradition. By exposing such illustrative cases, we hope to inspire contemporary culture scholars to follow suite and engage in similar innovative endeavors. Finally, we have a few words of caution to offer to scholars choosing to engage in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. While this exercise offers several benefits, it will also place certain demands on business scholars' skill sets, requiring them to learn about other paradigms and corresponding methodologies. Also, business scholars intending to engage in multiparadigmatic studies of culture will need to manage the shift in the way they position themselves vis-à-vis their reference groups (i.e. their ‘home’ paradigms). In the West, scholars tend to categorize themselves and others into different disciplines, paradigmatic and methodological schools. This practice helps researchers identify and affiliate with specific reference groups to whose standards they then choose to adhere (see Becker, 2004). Engaging in multi-paradigmatic research could result in one of two outcomes for business researchers: they may either attempt to integrate more than one paradigmatic school thereby expanding their horizons and networks, or they may lose their affiliations with their primary group, thereby experiencing a loss of identity and ‘deculturation’. In an environment where clarity in terms of disciplinary, epistemological, and methodological affiliations is the norm, multiparadigmatic researchers might suffer in consequence due to their multiple (and seemingly diffused) affiliations. Therefore, any decision regarding engaging in multiparadigmatic cultural research should be taken after careful consideration.

Suggestions for future research and conclusions The main aim of this paper is to remind business scholars to engage in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. Since the dominance of the objectivist tradition that we observe in culture literature in business studies is also observed in broader management literature (see Redding, 2005), and has led to many conceptual and methodological concerns among management scholars (see also Delbridge and Fiss's 2013 editorial comment in the Academy of Management Review), the call for multi-paradigmatic studies that we make for culture studies is just as valid for broader management literature. Yet, it would be erroneous to assume that any/all kinds of cultural topics in business studies would lend themselves to multiparadigmatic explorations (Hassard, 1991). We propose that the multi-paradigmatic approach should be reserved for complex, paradoxical, and emerging phenomena. Consider, for instance, the varied and sometimes contradictory findings in extant literature regarding the impact of culture on international joint ventures. While some positivistic studies suggest that cultural differences are problematic for these ventures (Barkema and Vermeulen, 1997), other interpretive studies reveal that the coexistence of different cultures is in fact required for their viability (Patel, 2007). We believe that conducting multi-paradigmatic studies will offer a better understanding of such paradoxical topics. Second, our appraisal of cultural studies in business literature remains incomplete at best. The word limit imposed on this paper does not allow us to elaborate on many other noteworthy studies such as Hall's (1977) work on high and low context cultures, or Gelfand et al. (2011) work on loose versus tight cultures. Similarly, our exposure of different epistemologies is not exhaustive. For instance, we have not been able to elaborate on critical thinking or radical structuralism. Therefore, we encourage scholars to conduct a more exhaustive review of culture literature in business studies and to chart out the paradigmatic terrain of this field of study in a more systematic and rigorous way than we have been able to do. Another related suggestion would be to conduct an empirical study comparing the outcomes of monoparadigmatic and multi-paradigmatic studies of culture in business literature. This can be done by selecting both mono-paradigmatic and multi-paradigmatic articles published in the top ten business journals in the past decade, and comparing their outcomes for impact, innovativeness and richness of theoretical contribution. Third, in the present paper, we present two illustrative cases of recent multi-paradigmatic studies of culture in the hope that these will offer practical insights to researchers regarding operationalizing multi-paradigmatic studies. This effort is based on the assumption that


Multiparadigmatic studies of culture: Needs, challenges, and recommendations for management scholars scholars’ resistance to multi-paradigmatic studies is a function of their lack of understanding regarding operationalizing such studies. However, there may be other reasons for scholars’ resistance to multiparadigmatic studies. For instance, scholars’ ethnocentric bias may make them reluctant to question their preferred paradigms due to the impact this may have on their reputation, esteem and preferences (Sullivan and Daniels, 2008). This tendency is further accentuated due to the ‘self-referential dynamics of academic communities’ (Kogut, 2005: 66). Our present paper offers no insights into how these sources of resistance to multi-paradigmatic studies may be overcome. These concerns also deserve due attention, and may require combined efforts by varied stakeholders (journal editors, researchers, reviewers, professional and academic bodies, etc.). As a concluding remark, over three decades ago, Adler (1983) had stated that the tension of what we know and what we would like to know in the field of culture studies, suggests that the field is young and is asking the right questions. Notwithstanding the increased learning that has accrued since then, the field is still faced with multiple problems. Some of these problems, we argue, can be resolved by engaging in multi-paradigmatic studies of culture. Although some scholars would argue that adhering to one paradigm as opposed to another is only a matter of choice for them, most others would agree that over time we get ‘caught in the framework of our theories; our expectations; our past experiences; our language’ (Popper, 1970: 86). Therefore, we argue that the art of ‘balancing opposites in such a way that they do not cancel each other’ (Morrison, cited in Smith and Berg, 1987: 3) is the way forward for culture studies (following Lewis and Grimes, 1999). It is only by exploring divergent views that our debates around culture can become more productive, and the field of business studies itself will be liberated from the exclusive domination of certain paradigmatic traditions. Our present paper is a modest effort in this direction.

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