Linguistic Sensitivity in Cross-cultural Organisational Research: Positivist/Post-positivist and Grounded Theory Approaches

Abstract

Organisational constructs (e.g. job satisfaction) are at least partially perceptual or latent and the constructs and theories are themselves cultural inventions. People's perceptions, beliefs and attitudes are undoubtedly embedded in the mental programming of culture (Hofstede, 1980). Hofstede (1993: 81) notes that much of the academic field of management (including organisational behaviour) is an 'American invention'. Many of the concepts and theories themselves are derivative of the American culture and language. While the constructs and theories may apply in other cultures, as some researchers in the field of organisational behaviour (e.g. Cheung & Rensvold, 1999; Mullen, 1995; Riordan & Vandenberg, 1994) suggest the magnitude, dimensionality, dynamics and even meaning may vary. When doing cross-cultural research on phenomena that are rooted within a given culture, we must proceed with caution (Weidong, 1999). This paper raises the question of how to improve cross-cultural research of organisational constructs and theories derived from a specific culture. The approach advocated here is one that explicitly considers both culture and language. This paper reviews traditional positivist/post-positivist methodology and then proposes grounded theoretic qualitative methods as an alternative (Locke, 2001; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Grounded theory provides the advantage of not stripping cultural context from the analysis.