25.2 Understanding Culture
and Cultural Diversity
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The concept ofculturerefers to the beliefs, values, and attitudes shared by people
within a given group and used to guide their thoughts, reasoning, actions, and
interactions (Brown 1963 ). Following Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s ( 1952 ) review of
more than 160 deWnitions of culture, Kluckhohn ( 1954 : 73 ) developed a deWnition
of culture that has become widely accepted:
Culture consists of patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and trans
mitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups,
including their embodiment in artefacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional
(i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values.
A substantial body of research has explored the ways in which, in diVerent
cultures, individuals construe themselves and others. Markus and Kitayama
( 1991 ) identiWed that one’s construal of self, of others, and the interdependence
of the two, has implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Understand-
ing the cultural context for self- and other-construal should help to explain
individual behavior and the outcomes of that behavior. An individual’s self-
construal of culture, or cultural identity, is derived from their membership of
distinct socio-cultural groups (Cox 1993 ). As Ely and Thomas ( 2001 : 231 ) say,
cultural identity is ‘socially constructed, complex and dynamic.’ Cultures evolve
as societies adapt to changes in their environment; globalization has brought many
opportunities, but also challenges and pressures for change.
Javidan and House ( 2001 ) advocate that managers and employees in trans-
national Wrms should understand and be aware of cultural diversity and its
implications, and possess the skills to deal with cultural diVerences in an appro-
priate way. Workforce diversity is not a new concept for scholars or practitioners,
yet the eVective management of diversity is an elusive goal in manyWrms.
Globalization of markets has brought a broadening of mindsets amongst executives
and increasing awareness of the need to understand cultural diversity (Leung
et al. 2005 ).
Early research on HRM in transnationalWrms was principally concerned with
expatriate selection and training, usually for expatriate management assignments
(Dowling and Welch 2004 ). Expatriates remain an important aspect of trans-
national staYng strategies. However, recent research has broadened the focus of
research, to recognize the increasing diversity of international work assignments,
moving away from long-term expatriation towards moreXexible forms of inter-
national work, such as transnational project teams, short-term assignments, and
virtual assignments. Recent evidence suggests that international assignments,
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