COMMUNICATING ACROSS CULTURES AT WORK 3RD EDITION COMPANION WEBSITE CHAPTER NINE INTERNATIONAL INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION This chapter

r first discusses key conceptual topics for work communication at a distance: technology-mediated communication, knowledge sharing and transfer and co-ordination. It then applies these insights and others from earlier chapters to a consideration of five important applications for international work and management: working in virtual teams, offshoring, working in international alliances (including international joint ventures), communication issues in multi-national enterprises (MNEs) and international business-tobusiness (B2B) relations. ANSWERS TO THE CH.9 QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS ON THE EXERCISES Q.1 Those low in power can be expected to contribute more, as their inhibitions about expressing themselves in front of their superiors would be mitigated; those high in power might contribute less, as they might be reliant on their power to support their views and reluctant to risk being exposed (even if only to themselves) as wrong by contrary views. It could be that because the ideas contributed are anonymously, the release from fear of retribution enhances the benefits more than in countries whose culture is egalitarian to begin with. On the other hand, if people are not used to being asked for their ideas or opinions, this technology may not tap any extra intellectual resources. Q.2 Ranking would probably give the following order: internet videconferencing, voice responsive interactive language learning programmes, instant messaging, broadcast television, broadcast radio. However, rating might, for instance, place instant messaging and broadcast television together. Broadcast television gains over instant messaging by producing representations of objects, events and people that look and sound like produce representations of objects, events and people that look and sound like the real thing but instant messaging is interactive. A discussion which brings out the meaning of the term is what matters. Q.3 His or her willingness to suspend disbelief and amount of prior experience with the medium. (Prior use of the medium reduces the amount of social presence experienced.) Q.4 Inability to categorise the other party according to what is probably the negotiators most important criterion: their relative status and power. Lack of this information would inhibit, even paralyse negotiation; in low power distance cultures, only the knowledge that the other party has the authority to commit is important. In countries where hierarchies are strong, knowing the speakers authority level is important. If the speaker is ranked higher than you, you will listen more carefully and value the idea because of the authority of the speaker. Similarly, in countries where relationships are key, knowing who is speaking is important to negotiation in that you need to know whether this person represents a relationship worth investing in. Q.9 The less explicit, clear and able to be put into symbols the knowledge required for a process is and the more different kinds of people are involved, the less easily it can be transferred from one group to another. Q.10 It follows by simple logic from the definitions given on p.352-3. Q.11 Decision-support systems that do not allow for relationships and authority may not stimulate the contributions that they would in individualist societies. They would bump up against the collectivist preference for consensual group decision-making. Q.13 In a work context, people within structural and spatial boundaries share common ground and have learnt to over come the problems caused by socio-demographic difference. Although across structural and spatial boundaries the problems caused by socio-demographic difference are increased, this effect is not enough to outweigh the effect described in the first sentence.

Q.14 I think it might, as expressiveness affects communication functionality. Obviously, the consequences would be greater in cultures where extensive use of gesture and expressiveness are the norm. Q.15 Individualists prefer autonomy, collectivists prefer connectedness; either group is likely to experience prejudice and to practise discrimination against people exhibiting the opposite tendency; prejudice and discrimination are often shown by exclusion of different others from, for instance, informal networks; exclusion creates a sense of disempowerment. Q.16 The American could conclude that the Greek was lazy and/or over-dependent; the Greek could conclude that the American was impetuous or arrogant. The American attributes the Greeks inaction to be a sign of shirking, whereas the Greek views the American as arrogant and pushy. They consequently do not coordinate well; they do not check with each other when issues of coupling come up. The fact that they are unaware of their cultural differences leads them to dislike each other and not seek each others advice and counsel. Q.17 This is a real-life situation. The problems that actually arose are described in Box 9.6. Q. 20 The text explains on p.363. Q.22 Lack of ability to categorize participants can severely hamper the discussion, because the participants do not know whether to dismiss negative comments (if they are from someone not in authority) or to argue more strongly for the case (if they are from the authority). The need to know the speakers position is enhanced in cultures where authority is solid, less so in cultures that are more egalitarian, democratic, and where everyones opinion needs to be considered. Other issues include differences in time orientation, collectivism (dislike of overt conflict), power distance (lack of contribution from low power-members) and face. EXTRA MATERIAL AND COMMENTS ON THE TEXT 9.1 TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER AND CO-ORDINATION Technology-mediated communication p.348 Levels of apprehension, anxiety or difficulty did not, however, differ between genders There was substantial variability in the findings within each of these communicative measures

p.351 Knowledge transfer a. Crampton (2001) found that distributed teams often do not share sufficient contextual knowledge about their locations or their activities in their interactions and this frequently leads to low performance. We found that the ICT tools that attempts to replicate the richness of face to face communication (such as videoconferencing, or web conferencing) played a very limited role in remote coordination in offshore software service delivery. Instead, we found that ICT tools are primarily used to achieve tacit coordination coordination without the need for explicit communication. ICT tools generate common ground by enhancing information visibility across locations. Put differently, the common ground generating capabilities of ICTs can compensate for their weakness as direct communication channels and that the common ground generating capabilities are really the capabilities that make ICTs useful in software services offshoring.
Crampton, C. (2001). The mutual knowledge problem and its consequences for dispersed collaboration. Organization Science, 12(3), 346-371.

b. Work using the vertical-horizontal, individualism-collectivism categorisation of cultures has argued that the nature of the business nets also influences knowledge flows: in stable, well-specified demand/supply nets, such as Toyotas supplier net and Benettons franchised

distribution net, most knowledge-sharing problems arise and most attention should therefore be paid, to knowledge sharing, especially among horizontal collectivists and vertical individualists, whose communication orientations are furthest apart; in nets that are established but where modifications are made through intentional incremental and local change processes, such as those in multi-actor research and development (R&D), knowledge sharing takes place most readily among horizontal collectivists because they value knowledge that is historically and contextually grounded; in nets concerned mainly with the creation of new knowledge and radical innovations collectivists are likely to gain a more overall system view, whereas individualists are more likely to penetrate deeply into the core of technical innovations: since significant problems obtain in knowledge sharing between such different cultures, major attention needs to be paid to the issue.
Moller, K. and Svahn, S. (2004) Crossing East-West boundaries: knowledge sharing in intercultural business networks Industrial Marketing Management 33: 21928.

b. Significant knowledge transfer to the vendor team happens during the initial stages of a typical BPO offshoring operation, for instance through the vendor team studying how the process operates by observation, shadowing the work of current personnel or the vendor team trying to perform the work themselves under supervision of current personnel etc. These are supported by extensive documentation of both the policies and procedures of how the process is supposed to work, as well as how it actually works in practice currently. Often, this may be the first time such a documentation exercise has ever taken place for the process. At the next stage, the vendor team now manages knowledge transfer to other offshore personnel. When R&D is offshored, it is associated with reduced feedback from offshored plants to domestic labs as well as coordination problems between the offshored and domestic divisions of firms.
Chaudhuri, S. and Puranam, P. (2009) R&D services at Wipro Technologies: outsourcing innovation? The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. URL: www.wipro.com.

p.351 Box 9.3 It was claimed that new social-networking offerings being developed for the corporate world would create huge benefits for businesses. Without these benefits, it was claimed, The rise of vast, globe-spanning corporate empires with hundreds of thousands of employees has left many folk isolated in small work groups run by managers who care only about their particular fiefs. As a result, efforts are duplicated and valuable information ends up being hoarded, not shared. p.352 This is the extent to which knowledge is a function of the social and physical system in which it exists. In this research, system embeddedness emerged as a strong predictor of organizational structure.
Birkinshaw, J., Nobel, R. and Ridderstrale, J. (2002) Knowledge as a contingency variable: do the characteristics of knowledge predict organization structure? Organization Science, 13(3): 27489.

Co-ordination p.354 For instance, providing a system of appropriate signals or a history of interaction experiences [which is equivalent to common ground] is in place, co-ordination can occur without much shared knowledge More on common ground:

Procedural common ground Procedural common ground can be defined as the knowledge that interdependent individuals share about the procedures used by each other to make decisions regarding the joint task. When procedural common ground is available, interdependent actors are able to deduce the reasoning the other party will use to make a certain decision and hence anticipate it. Since they are able to make an informed judgement regarding the likely actions of the other party, they can adjust their own behaviour, leading to the anticipation effect. Knowing the reasoning the other person employs in reaching a decision also provides the ability to interpret any communications by trying to mimic the logic the other person follows. The tools for tacit coordination that give rise to knowledge of others action premises are standardized coding processes and rotation of personnel between locations. Cross-contextual common ground Cross-contextual common ground is defined as knowledge interdependent individuals have about each others locations. When crosscontextual common ground is available, interdependent actors are able to understand the constraints of the other actors which will allow them to anticipate their likely actions and hence adjust their own behaviour, and interpret their communications in light of the context they are facing. Tools for tacit coordination that gives rise to cross-contextual common ground are documentation that are part of standardized coding processes, technological tools used in the project and rotation of personnel between locations. While documentation provides a historical view of the context, technological tools provide a real-time view. Rotation is used when both the above tools are unsatisfactory as a means of producing cross-contextual common ground. Interpersonal common ground is defined as knowledge individuals have about the preferences/ strengths/weaknesses etc. of each other. When interpersonal common ground is available, interdependent actors have knowledge regarding the likely actions of each other as well as knowledge of their personal vocabulary/communication styles that allows them to anticipate likely actions and interpret their communications. The tools for tacit coordination that give rise to interpersonal common ground are staffing projects with personnel who have prior experience working with each other, technological tools used in the project and rotation of personnel between locations. While prior experience is a design choice, technological tools provides real-time knowledge, and rotation is used when both the above tools are unsatisfactory as a means of producing interpersonal common ground. The ability of groups with prior experience with each other is discussed in literature in the context of the importance of transactive memory systems (TMS) in achieving group coordination. Based on a series of experiments (Moreland, 1999; Moreland and Myakovsky, 2000), TMS is essentially described as knowledge of who knows what and achieves coordination by efficient task decomposition. For projects that cross firm boundaries, they rely much more on ongoing communication. Why? First, the data suggests that standardized coding processes, the most important of the tacit coordination mechanisms suggested by the respondents are inefficient when applied to projects performed by multiple firms. This is mainly because the different firms have their own processes, and this lack of standardization does not allow procedural common ground to emerge that allows for knowledge of others expected actions. The CMM processes are akin to a mandated artificial language that is kept in use within in a firm by use of administrative fiat and lack of common technological tools. Similarly, it is more likely for personnel belonging to the same firm to have worked together in other projects before and for this prior experience to generate interpersonal knowledge. Some of the constraints to the generation of common ground seem to be much more important across firms rather than within. Srikanth, K. (2007) Co-ordination in distributed organizations, URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=939786

p.355 9.2 WORKING IN VIRTUAL TEAMS Virtual groups, an extension of the networked organization, are physically dispersed groups and tend to exist only as long as the need exists. Global virtual groups are increasingly composed of people from contrasting cultures that often operate under vastly different social assumptions. Although trust is important in all work modes (e.g., face-to-face or virtual), it varies according to the work mode being used. Particularly, different social assumptions and the ephemeral nature of virtual groups make trust highly volatile and important to be fostered in global virtual groups. In sum, this study suggests that the level of individualism of group members, social presence, and group composition are important factors in trust building in both culturally homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. The development of interpersonal trust is particularly crucial and challenging when a group consists of high individualism members and/or when the group is culturally heterogeneous.
Lowry, B.P., Zhang, D.Z.L. and Fu, X. (2007) The Impact of national culture and social presence on trust and communication quality within collaborative groups, 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, January 3-6. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=958530

p.370 Intercultural B2B relations Australian SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) who attempt to build long-term supplier relationships with larger Japanese buyers find it difficult to adapt to the rigorous quality and monitoring culture, and the formalized systems of their Japanese partners.
Cooray, S. and Ratnatuga, J. (2001) Buyer-supplier relationships: A case study of a Japanese and Western Alliance, Long Range Planning, 34(6): 727-40.

p.355 9.2 VIRTUAL TEAMS

Research published in 2009 found that when lean CMC (computer-mediated communication, in this case an audience response system) was used in very large groups, interactivity and communication quality was dramatically better than in face-to face groups. CMC groups also had fewer negative status effects and higher process satisfaction than face-to-face groups. The practical applications are important because lean CMC is relatively inexpensive and requires minimal training and support. The results, it was claimed, may aid large global work group continuance, satisfaction, and performance in systems, product and strategy development, and other processes in which status effects and communication issues regularly have negative influences on outcomes.
Lowry, P.B., Romano, N.C., Jenkins, J.L. and Guthrie, R.W. (2009) The CMC interactivity model: how interactivity enhances communication quality and process satisfaction in lean-media groups, Journal of Management Information Systems, 26(1): 15595.

A pilot study compared the effects of group decision making, both with and without Group Decision-Making Support System (GDSS) technology on multicultural and homogeneous groups. Findings revealed that multicultural groups achieved a statistically higher number of ideas in the GDSS environment in comparison with homogenous groups in the same environment, suggesting that the GDSS environment overcame the resistance to contributing found in face-to-face heterogeneous groups. Both multicultural and homogeneous groups had significantly higher levels of perceived contribution in the GDSS environment and there were no significant differences in terms of perceived contribution, commitment or personal influence between multicultural and homogeneous groups in either environment.
Daily, B.F., Whatley, A., Ash, S.R. and Steiner, R.L. (1996) The effects of a group decision support system on culturally diverse and culturally homogeneous group decision making, Information and Management, 30(6): 281 89.

It is fair to say that these two findings run counter to the majority at this time.

p.357 9.3 OFFSHORING Fourteen strategies to help managers collaborate more effectively across cultures have been derived from a cultural sense-making approach to analysing intercultural situations that presents a framework for analysing cultural differences that combines value dimensions and communication styles. Using these concepts, the approach explains cultural barriers to trust, a key component in collaboration, and demonstrates how cultural sense-making is useful in intercultural collaboration.
Bird, A. and Osland, J.S. (2005-6) Making sense of intercultural collaboration, International Studies of Management and Organization, 35(4): 115132.

p.373 Q.15 Research has found problems of autonomy-connectedness However, a case study of an intercultural virtual teams found that cultural effects were not evident in perceived levels of trust, suggesting that the lack of nonverbal cues eliminated evidence of cultural differences, such as different ways of dressing, greeting and others. The researcher suggested that electronically facilitated communication may make cultural differences non-salient. In addition, the fact that communication is asynchronous (not occurring in the same period of time) gives individuals more time to process messages; this, too, it is suggested may make cultural differences less noticeable.
Kayworth, T.R. and Leidner, D.E. (2001/02) Leadership effectiveness in global virtual teams, Journal of Management Information Systems, 18(3): 740.

p.362 9.4 WORKING IN INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCES a. Multinational enterprises' transfer of R&D capabilities to their international joint ventures in the less developed countries has been an emerging phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to understand the transfer of R&D capabilities between organizations embedded in drastically different organizational contexts using a network perspective. We identified different networks involved in the R&D capability transfer process from the perspectives of source organization, recipient organization and the interface between them, and analyzed the impact of different attributes of these networks on the effectiveness of R&D capability transfer, based on the notion that R&D capabilities are largely collective knowledge.
Zhao, Z., Anand, J. and Mitchell, W. (2001) A Network perspective on inter-organizational transfer of R&D capabilities: a study of international joint ventures in Chinese automobile industry. William Davidson Institute Working Paper No. 362. URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=261565 or doi:10.2139/ssrn.261565.

b. Sino-American joint ventures, renowned for conflict, were examined to judge the effect of the nationality of the general manager. In 67 such joint ventures it was found that when the general manager was Chinese, there was more conflict over daily personnel management issues, though not on strategic and contract issues. Overall levels of partner satisfaction and relationship commitment were also lower in this situation.
Xiaohua L. (2008) Appointing a general manager in Sino-US joint ventures: Partner competence and organizational consequences, International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 15(2) 15265.

c. Fryxell et al (2002) found from a study of 129 US-based international joint ventures (IJV) that social control mechanisms, provided affect-based trust obtained between the parent companies, outlasted formal control mechanisms over the life of the IJV in their positive influence on general managers perceptions of the IJVs performance. Social control, of course, depends on communication and, indeed may require a sharing of goals and values, implying a higher degree of integration than formal control.
Fryxell, G.E., Dooley, R.S. and Vryza, M. (2002) After the ink dries: the interaction of trust and control in USbased international joint ventures, Journal of Management Studies, 39(6):865-86.

Cultural differences affecting international alliances

p.362 Most managerial research about mergers has assumed that cultural differences imply acculturative stress a. The Calori study whose findings were described in the text consisted of two random samples of 155 French and 191 British acquired firms were drawn from a list of European mergers published in the Acquisitions Monthly during three recent years (1987, 1988, 1989) that met the following criteria: the acquiring firms were from either France, Britain, or the United States; the price of the acquired firm was at least S10 million; and the names and addresses of at least two (and as many as five) top managers affiliated with the acquired firm before the merger were publicly available. We found that acculturative stress is a complex phenomenon, sometimes influenced by national cultural differences, but not necessarily in the expected direction. Indeed, depending upon the dimension of acculturative stress, and the home countries of the buying and acquiring firms, some examples of cultural differences elicit perceptions of attraction rather than stress. According to an anthropological theory referred to as social movements, people hold expectations of how things ought to be, and experience stress when these expectations are not being met. Procedural justice theory also suggests that a sense of community or social harmony among an organization's network of subsidiaries occurs only when the headquarters' procedures and values are perceived by the subsidiary managers to be fair and just. The point of introducing these two theories is to make the case that acculturative stress (and procedural injustice) is not based on some objective state of affairs. Rather, as social movements theory posits, it is based on three judgments: Are our present circumstances as favorable and just as someone else's circumstances; are our present circumstances as favorable and just as our past ones; and, will our future be as favorable and just as our present? In other words, the objective fact that two merging organizations' cultures differ does not necessarily imply that the selling firm will naturally resist any postmerger consolidation attempts. Indeed, the acquired firm, for various reasons, may be attracted to the buying firm's values, and may willingly assimilate their ways.
Very, P., Lubatkin, M. and Calori, R. (1996) A Cross-national assessment of acculturative stress in recent European mergers, International Studies of Management and Organization, 26(1): 5986.

b. A study in a German-Japanese joint venture concluded that equally strong influences as those from culture came from structural and contextual influences. Thus, the authors concluded that in complex organisations, national culture cannot be used to predict organizational culture, but we can understand the process of cultural negotiation and so be better prepared to monitor and manage in culturally diverse settings.
Brannen, M.Y. and Salk, J.E. (2000) Partnering across borders: Negotiating organizational culture in a GermanJapanese joint venture Human Relations, 53(4): 451487.

p.363 The success of international alliances depends on the ability of both companies to work together. There is some agreement among scholars that positive inter-group relations can be brought about if members of two groups have a superordinate shared identity. This is because former outgroup members can then be recategorised as ingroup members. Some scholars see the salience of the shared identity as key, others think perceived relative prototypicality is more appropriate than salience b but both agree on the main phenomenon.
Weber, U., Mummendey, A. and Waldzus, S. (2002) Perceived legitimacy of intergroup status differences: its prediction by relative ingroup prototypicality, European Journal of Social Psychology, 32: 44970.

p.363 Differences in the cultural backgrounds of partners cause problems in international joint ventures (IJVs). Abramov et al (1997) identified issues for Russian-West European joint ventures in the following areas: Price setting: The difficulties encountered in setting prices can be easily understood if one remembers that Russians, until quite recently, had no notion of a market. A company selling at a higher price than another was simply stealing from consumers. Investment policies: Russian partners seem unwilling to make investments. Instead, they expected the Western partner to do so. This expectation was based on the Russians' belief that WECs have large profits in Western Europe, which they expected to be invested in Russia. Also, Russian managers had to be talked into investing with some prospect of profit, not just to serve central plans. Cost analysis and control: The Russian and Western accounting systems are designed for different purposes. Accounting in Russian companies serves a number of purposes other than being an analytical tool for management; it is used mainly for control purposes, including labor information and tax estimation. Cost control by product line is a new concept to Russian companies. Because of these differences, most partnerships had to maintain a dual accounting system one for local purposes and the other to allow the WEC to control operations. Quality control: Product quality was not an issue in the former Russian economic system. People consumed whatever was offered to them, and this was prespecified in the form of production standards set down for the companies by government agencies. Hence, there was no need for companies to pursue quality, much less to control for it. As one interviewee from a confectionery manufacturer described it, their Russian partner was really a factory, not a company in the full sense of the word. As a consequence, production was considered as a totality to be looked at in terms of volume but not in terms of quality. An important difficulty for this Western firm had been convincing their Russian partner that the color of a candy should match its flavor. In the automotive partnership, the Western company suggested to one supplier some ways of improving the quality of components. When the time came to invest, the supplier abandoned the effort.
Abramov, M. Arino, L. and Africa O.G. (1997) Partner selection and trust building in West EuropeanRussian joint ventures, International Studies of Management & Organization, 27(1): 1937.

p.364 Co-operation between organizations creates mutual dependence and requires trust in order to succeed. a. Trust in cross-border partnerships becomes particularly important in explaining market performance when conditions exist for opportunism for the partner firm. In particular, when the focal firm has invested in substantial assets specific to its relationship with the foreign partner, trust in the relationship counterbalances the possibility of opportunistic behaviour, and thus has positive implications for partnership performance. However, the lack of a significant direct relationship between trust and performance should not trivialize the role of trust-building in inter-organisational partnerships. In particular, results found by Aulakh et al (1996) show that U.S. firms partnerships in Asia and Europe are characterized by higher level of trust than those in Central/South America. Although no hypotheses were proposed regarding region-specific effects, and the size of the sample precluded a systematic analysis of the regional differences, it seems that the role of trust in interorganizational partnerships and its underlying dynamics may vary according to the internal organizational cultures of the partner firms as well as the macro-cultural

environment that surrounds the partnerships. Second, our study has found that the ownership level and partnership performance are not statistically related. This finding contradicts a widely held assumption in the international business literature that suggests that ownership is necessary for effective control of a firm's partners, implying that their performance depends on the focal company's ownership control. (In contrast to social control), neither output nor process control, which are formal mechanisms initiated by the focal firm to specify the outcomes and monitor the behavior of the partner firm, has a significant effect on relationship trust. Although formal monitoring mechanisms may be put in place by the focal firm to reduce its own ambiguity about the actions of the partner firm, imposing specific goals in the form of output control is actually detrimental to partnership performance. Although it was not shown that trust has a direct effect on performance, it may have other consequences, such as the efficiency and longevity of the partnership.
Aulakh, P.S., Kotabe, M. and Sahay A. (1996) Trust and performance in cross-border marketing partnerships: a behavioral approach, Journal of International Business Studies, 27: 39412.

b. Dhanaraj et al (2004) showed that the social relationship (the level of social embeddedness) between the foreign parent and the IJV is crucial for the transfer of knowledge, which in turn is at the heart of competitive advantage for multinational enterprises. They define social embeddedness in joint ventures as a function of the strength of the foreign parent-IJV ties, trust, and shared values and systems. Trust, strong parent-IJV ties, and shared values and systems enhance the transfer of tacit knowledge, which typically is the more difficult type of knowledge to transfer, but less so for the transfer of explicit knowledge. They found that social embeddedness affects knowledge transfer in different ways as an IJV matures. While the literature has rarely distinguished between young and mature IJVs, their results indicate that there may be differences in knowledge acquisition and transfer capabilities based on the IJV's age.
Dhanaraj, C., Lyles, M.A., Steensma, H.K. and Tihanyi, L. (2004) Managing tacit and explicit knowledge transfer in IJVs: the role of relational embeddedness and the impact on performance, Journal of International Business Studies, 35: 428-442.

c. Examining a large sample of international joint ventures, Pothukuchi et al. (2002, p. 258) found that 'the presumed negative effect from partner dissimilarity on IJV performance originates more from differences in organizational culture than from differences in national culture'. Pothukuchi et al.'s (2002) findings suggest that a more generalized effect may exist: partners' cultural differences may have more influence on international alliance performance as those differences become more directly related to the alliance's primary value-creating activities.
Pothukuchi, V., Damanpour, F., Choi, J., Chen, C.C. and Park, S.H. (2002) 'National and organizational culture differences and international joint venture performance', Journal of International Business Studies 33: 243-265.

d. International alliances also bring challenges not found within domestic alliances. Research has shown that differences in national culture can disrupt collaboration and learning between alliance partners. However, the conclusion that national culture differences alone disrupt knowledge sharing between partners recently has been questioned. Building on the findings of Pothukuchi et al. (2002), Sirmon and Lane (2004) argued that the more salient the cultural differences are to the value-creating activities of an alliance, the more disruptive those differences will be on the alliance's value-creating activities. Thus differences in organizational culture and professional culture not just differences in national culture need to be assessed.
Sirmon, D.G. and Lane, P.J. (2004) A model of cultural differences and international alliance performance, Journal of International Business Studies, 35: 30619.

p.365 9.5 COMMUNICATION ISSUES IN MULTI-NATIONAL ENTERPRISES (MNEs)

Becker-Ritterspach (2006) argued that to understand knowledge integration, we need to ask on the micro-level, how specific actors are differently affected and able to shape such processes based on their social-systemic positioning.
Becker-Ritterspach F.A.A. (2006) The social constitution of knowledge integration in MNEs: A theoretical framework, Journal of International Management, 12(3): 35877.

p.366 To fully understand the process of knowledge transfer, it is important to include characteristics of the individuals involved in the transfer process as well as characteristics of the context in which knowledge transfer takes place. This paper aims to look at the issue of culture's role in knowledge transfer within multinational corporations (MNCs). Studies of MNCs have hinted at the importance of culture to the performance of subsidiaries. Using Hofstede's cultural dimensions of power distance, individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity/femininity, it is argued that the location of subsidiaries along each of these cultural dimensions will significantly impact the possibility of knowledge transfer occurring between subsidiaries.
Lucas, L.M. (2006) The role of culture on knowledge transfer: the case of the multinational corporation, The Learning Organization, 13(3): 25775.

p.369 9.6 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS (B2B) RELATIONS Inter-cultural buyer-seller relationships are influenced by the sources of power held by overseas distributors in their relationships with export manufacturers, research has shown. An overseas distributor's use of reward is positively related to its informational, referent, legitimate and expert power sources, as is perceived by export manufacturers. It has also been found that there is a negative relationship between an importer's use of coercion and its informational base of power over the exporter. Moreover, specific reward and punishment elements are identified that play an important role in influencing the pattern of interactions in manufacturer-overseas distributor relationships.
Katsikeas, C.S., Goode, M.M.H. and Katsikea, E. (2000) Sources of power in international marketing channels, Journal of Marketing Management, 16(1): 185202.

p.370 When exporters from the low-context communication (LC) US culture dealt with foreign distributors from high-context communication (HC) cultures, old fashioned fax and telephone communication took place much more frequently than when the US exporters dealt with foreign distributors from LC cultures. The authors admitted that Of course, in this study, the US exporters and their foreign distributors were not yet part of an Internet-based electronic network. They were linked only in the sense of having established trading relationships in conventional channels of distribution. Thus, one might argue that if these same firms were to become part of a B2B ecommerce network their communication patterns would automatically change. But they asserted the conclusion in the text nevertheless.
Rosenbloom, B. and Larsen, T. (2003) Communication in international business-to-business marketing channels Does culture matter?, Industrial Marketing Management, 32 30915.