This informative Field Guide to Intercultural Research is specifically designed to be used in the field, guiding the reader away from pitfalls and towards best practice. It shares valuable fieldwork challenges and experiences, as well as insights into key methodological debates and practical recommendations relevant to both new and seasoned researchers.

Multinational companies transfer managerial practices such as quality management globally. Studies from different perspectives have examined cultural, institutional, and organizational challenges in practice transfer, however, little is known about the micro-processes of intercultural transfer, especially in complex cultural settings as Brazil. Integrating the recontextualization perspective and Scandinavian institutionalist transfer-as-translation approach, this book explores micro-processes of transfer from German MNC to Brazilian subsidiaries from a multiple cultures perspective. Findings show the complementary nature of micro-processes of translation and recontextualization, embedding them into a process model of four stages: Preparation, translation, recontextualization, and institutionalization. Intercultural transfer can be considered an iterative and multi-level process in which practices diffuse from individuals, to teams, to the organization. The book contributes to international management by cross-fertilizing the two approaches, by highlighting cultural and institutional particularities of the Brazilian context using a culturally sensitive methodology, and by showing the transformative power of managerial practices on organizations and ecosystems.

This textbook explores the reasons for intercultural differences and their effects on the behavior of individuals and organizations within the context of management. The text embraces the presence of ambiguity and complexity and encourages critical thinking when it comes to intercultural relations in order to avoid ethnocentrism, stereotyping and prejudice, as well as overly simplistic solutions. Integrating findings from management, but also the humanities and social sciences, as well as politics and popular culture, intercultural management is understood as a phenomenon that transcends disciplinary boundaries and includes questions around identity constructions, power relations, and ethics. This makes intercultural management a fascinating and rewarding subject to study. Throughout, the author encourages an analytical approach to intercultural management built upon strong methodological foundations, and draws on examples from a wide range of different contexts and cultures to help reflectively translate research and concepts into practice in a way that is lively and engaging. This textbook is essential reading for students taking university courses related to intercultural management. Lecturers can visit the companion website to access a Teaching Guide and PowerPoint slides that can be adapted and edited to suit teaching needs. Dirk Holtbrügge is Professor of International Management at the School of Business, Economics and Society, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.

This textbook explores the reasons for intercultural differences and their effects on the behavior of individuals and organizations within the context of management. The text embraces the presence of ambiguity and complexity and encourages critical thinking when it comes to intercultural relations in order to avoid ethnocentrism, stereotyping and prejudice, as well as overly simplistic solutions. Integrating findings from management, but also the humanities and social sciences, as well as politics and popular culture, intercultural management is understood as a phenomenon that transcends disciplinary boundaries and includes questions around identity constructions, power relations, and ethics. This makes intercultural management a fascinating and rewarding subject to study. Throughout, the author encourages an analytical approach to intercultural management built upon strong methodological foundations, and draws on examples from a wide range of different contexts and cultures to help reflectively translate research and concepts into practice in a way that is lively and engaging. This textbook is essential reading for students taking university courses related to intercultural management. Lecturers can visit the companion website to access a Teaching Guide and PowerPoint slides that can be adapted and edited to suit teaching needs. Dirk Holtbrügge is Professor of International Management at the School of Business, Economics and Society, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.

Drawing on contributions from nine prominent scholars, the book reflects on global aspects of research in work, employment, leadership, management, and business. It follows current trends in global business research and recommends directions for closing the gaps between theory and practice for the benefit of executives in multinational corporations, academics, and international transients. Work and employment remain important and a core part of life, giving not only a sense of purpose, routine and meaning, but also independence and the ability to connect and contribute to the lives of others and society. Leadership styles and management behaviors in earlier multi-country studies did not demonstrate significant associative patterns regarding interpersonal leadership in different countries, and the use of mainstream single-country leadership meta-categories was invalidated. Thus, future studies of leadership should focus on investigating interpersonal leadership across national borders in combination with contemporary trends such as distance leadership, global virtual teams, and intersectionality. As more and more people seek employment across borders, various types of sojourners, specifically millions of low status international workers, with some few exceptions, have largely been ignored by scholars who study international mobility. This failure adds to the research - practice gap between scholars who investigate, and the practitioners who manage, sojourners of all status levels. This book will appeal to scholars in leadership, management, international business, cultural studies and to practicing managers. The chapters in this book were originally published in International Studies of Management & Organization.

Nature has gone feral. How can we re-attune ourselves to the new nature? A field guide can help. Human action has transformed our planet and ushered in a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene. The effects are global in scope, but take shape within distinct social and ecological "patches," discontinuous regions within which the key actors may not be human, but the plants, animals, fungi, viruses, plastics, and chemicals creating our new world. Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene takes stock of our current planetary crisis, leading readers through a series of sites, thought experiments, and genre-stretching descriptive practices to nurture a revitalized natural history. Field guides teach us how to notice, name, and so better appreciate more-than-human worlds. They hone our powers of observation and teach us to see the world anew. Field-based observations and place-based knowledge cultivation—getting up-close and personal with patchy dynamics—are vital to truly grapple with the ecological challenges and the historical conjunctures that are bringing us to multiple catastrophic tipping points. How has commercial agriculture runoff given rise to comb jellies in the Black Sea? What role did the Atlantic slave trade play in the worldwide spread of virus-carrying mosquitoes? How did the green revolution transform the brown planthopper into a superpredator in Philippine rice fields? Questions like these open up new ways of understanding, and ways of living through, the epoch that human activity has ushered in. This Field Guide shifts attention away from knowledge extractive practices of globalization to encourage skilled observers of many stripes to pursue their commitments to place, social justice, and multispecies community. It is through attention to the beings, places, ecologies, and histories of the Anthropocene that we can reignite curiosity, wonder, and care for our damaged planet.

As a fascinating interdisciplinary and emerging field of research and practice, cross-cultural management is shaped and enriched by women scholars. This book takes an engaging narrative approach to insightful conversations with 12 women academics to illuminate key concepts, methods and issues within this ever-evolving field. The leading scholars interviewed are: Nancy Jane Adler, Zeynep Aycan, Ariane Berthoin Antal, Nakiye Boyacigiller, Mary Yoko Brannen, Paula Caligiuri, Sylvie Chevrier, Martha Maznevski, Joyce Osland, Sonja Sackmann, Susan C. Schneider, Lena Zander

Indigenous enterprise practices are an essential part of business success in Africa. The continent’s unique and diverse culture, embedded in age-long practices, presents an interesting proposition for advancing indigenous knowledge and building sustainable business structures.

Alcantara, Shinohara, and their contributors evaluate the current state of diversity and inclusion (D&I) within business and higher education in Japan, and the importance of D&I to the growth of Japan’s economy and the enrichment of its society. Japan is widely understood to be a homogenous and patriarchal society, and while this is changing and was never wholly accurate, it certainly faces challenges in becoming more diverse and inclusive, particularly in its business and higher educational cultures. Grounded in research and offering best practices, the chapters in this book analyze critical issues relating to D&I in Japan at the individual, organizational, and industry levels. They present both a longitudinal analysis of the evolution and performance outcomes of D&I policies in Japanese corporations across industries, and rich studies of different underrepresented groups in Japan. These groups include immigrants, women, and people with disabilities. The contributors prescribe policies for promoting D&I in higher education, within businesses and at the governmental level. This book is an essential contribution to D&I discourse in the Japanese context that will be of great value to scholars of Japanese society and business, and an important extended case study for those looking at D&I more widely.

This book critically engages with the concepts of small states and soft power and advances a new approach to defining small states, a new conceptualisation of soft power, and a method for empirically analysing the exercise of soft power. It revisits the concepts of small states and soft power with a focus on Bhutan and Qatar and their approach to exercise soft power to achieve their foreign policy goals. Building on two main perspectives to define small states – the objective approach and the subjective perspective – this book offers an intersubjective approach to define states as small. The intersubjective approach requires a shared understanding between states that a certain state is small. The book further highlights the importance of deconstructing the meaning of size and to separate the notion of size from the concept of power because size is not always indicative of power. It argues that although small states tend to have fewer material resources than large states, they nevertheless can have influence through the exercise of soft power. Soft power is in this book defined as the ability of an actor to convince another actor that something is true. Convincing deals with the beliefs of an actor and is a mental decision rather than a physical action. This book argues that the exercise of soft power can be analysed through examining the development, projection, and reception of identities. The findings of this book show that Bhutan was more successful than Qatar in exercising soft power and explains the reasons for this variation. Aimed at a multidisciplinary audience, this book will be of particular interest to practitioners, scholars, and students of International Relations, Political Power, Small States, and Area Studies.