Onion to Ocean

FROM “ONION” TO “OCEAN” 71
71
Tony Fang is assistant professor of international business at Stockholm University,
SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden (tel.: [phone]; fax: [phone]; e-mail: [e-mail]). The author thanks Urapa Joy Watanachote (Thailand), Joost
Stel (Netherlands), George Kakhadze (Georgia), Satu Penttinen (Finland), and Gabriel de Mello Pratellesi (Brazil) for personal communications about their respective countries discussed in this paper. The author also thanks Dr. Anton Kriz and many others, including the editor of ISMO and this issue’s guest editors, for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Int. Studies of Mgt. & Org., vol. 35, no. 4, Winter 2005–6, pp. 71–90.
© 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 0020–8825 / 2006 $9.50 + 0.00.
TONY FANG
From “Onion” to “Ocean”
Paradox and Change in National Cultures
Abstract: Differing from the dominant bipolar paradigm of analyzing national cultures, this paper champions a dialectical approach that sees each national culture as having a life of its own full of dynamics and paradoxes. The paper calls for shifting our mindset from the Cold War “onion” way of analyzing culture to a new
“ocean” way of understanding culture to capture the dynamics of national cultures and international cross-cultural management in the age of globalization.
For decades, the field of international cross-cultural management has been dominated by a functionalist bipolar or dimensional paradigm of analyzing national cultures (e.g., Hofstede 1980, 1991, 2001; House et al. 2004; Trompenaars
1994). Two profound perspectives have prevailed in this paradigm. First, national cultures are divided into individualist or collectivist, feminine or masculine, and so forth. As Hofstede stated: “The vast majority of people in our world live in societies in which the interest of the group prevails over the interest of the individual. I will call these societies collectivist.

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