Title: Nations, Within-Nation Regions and Multiple-Nation Regions: Management Implications of the Boundaries that we have Built for Ourselves

Speaker: Professor Mark Peterson

Florida Atlantic University, Maastricht University

Time: 10:00-11:30am, Friday, May 27, 2011

Location: Room 217, Guanghua New Building

Abstract:

International management researchers continue to struggle with whether to make nations, within-nation regions or multiple-nation groups central to the way they analyze culture. We begin by providing a historical perspective on the complex relationship between cultural boundaries and political boundaries. We propose that the level of scholarly debate about cultural boundaries in international management can be raised by carefully considering the way in which functional, institutional and critical event rationales are used to support the cultural significance of these alternative groupings. Explanations for the substantial, yet limited, cultural significance of nation states are drawn from literatures that have been under utilized in international management research. Forces giving rise to cultural groupings that transcend nations and forces appearing as regional differences within nations are then considered. We conclude by suggesting ways forward to simultaneously study the implications of multiple geographical boundaries around cultural groups rather than to embrace or abandon any one kind of boundary by overly overly simplifying cultural forces.

Speaker’s Biographical Sketch:

Dr. Mark F. Peterson is Professor of International Management at Florida Atlantic University and holds the Hofstede Chair in Cultural Diversity at Maastricht University. His principal interests are in questions of how culture and international relations affect the way organizations should be managed. He has published over 100 articles and chapters as well as several books. The articles have appeared in major management and international management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Leadership Quarterly, Human Relations, and Organization Science. He has also contributed international management themes to the basic social science literature through chapters in the Annual Review of Psychology, the Communication Yearbook, the Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and a Consulting Editor for the Journal of International Business Studies. He has just completed a second edition of the Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate co-edited with Neal Ashkanasy and Celeste Wilderom, and is co-editing a special issue of the Journal of International Business Studies about multilevel research. Specific topics in his writings include the role different parties play in decision making in organizations throughout the world, the effects that culture has on the role stresses that managers experience, the way immigrant entrepreneur communities operate, and the way that intercultural relationships in multicultural teams and across hierarchical levels should function.

Welcome to attend!