New publication by Martine Cardel Gertsen & Anne-Marie Søderberg

The article ‘Intercultural Collaboration Studies. On Narrative Inquiry and Analysis as Tools for Research in International Business’ can be accessed as an advance on-line publication in Journal of International Business Studies. In July 2011 it will appear in Vol. 42, Issue 5, a special issue on qualitative research in international business.  

Abstract:

The objective of this article is to show how narrative methods provide useful tools for international business research. We do this by presenting a study of stories told about the collaboration between a Danish expatriate manager and his Chinese CEO in the Shanghai subsidiary of an MNC. First, we explain and exemplify how narrative interviews are designed and conducted. In this connection, we consider the interviewers’ interaction with the interviewees and clarify our reasons for focusing on the two selected interviews. Second, we demonstrate how narrative concepts and models are able to elucidate intercultural collaboration processes by analyzing how each member of a dyad of interacting managers narrates the same chain of events. We show how the narratological concepts of peripeteia and anagnorisis are well suited to identifying focal points in their stories: situations where change follows their recognizing new dimensions of their conflicts, eventually furthering their collaboration. We explain how Greimas’ actantial model is valuable when mapping differences between and changes in the narrators’ projects, alliances, and oppositions in the course of their interaction. Thus, we make it clear how they overcome most of their differences and establish common ground through mutual learning.