Inventing cultural others in organizations: a case of anthropological reflexivity in a multinational firm
Article Abstract:
This article analyzes a case of "sexual harassment" in an American subsidiary of a Japanese multinational firm, and captures a "movement of meanings" concerning gender, race, and class within the bi-national politics between Japan and America. It argues that organization theories must incorporate the political process of cultural representation, with a sensitivity to multiple self-identities and to intra- and inter-subjective dialogues about organizational control. This study dismisses the ethnocentric, frozen gaze of an outside observer, and instead employs the "emic" analysis of the native's ethnologic, taxonomic, and affective discourses and categorizations. It denounces the elitist, management-centric, or author-centric monologue on organizational reality that often has a powerful silencing effect on the "cultural others." It calls attention to the complexity of cultural juxtapositions within the postcolonial, postmodern, and global organizational world, and demands a new, more flexible, paradigm for social research. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
Publication Name: Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
Subject: Social sciences
ISSN: 0021-8863
Year: 1995
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Organization and personal dimensions in diversity climate: ethnic and gender differences in employee perceptions
Article Abstract:
This article reports results from an organizational evaluation examining gender and racial/ethnic differences in the diversity perceptions of 2,686 employees of an electronics company located in a multicultural community. Based on social identity and intergroup theories, the authors explore employees' views of the organizational dimension as well as the personal dimension. A factor analysis of the 16-item diversity perceptions scale uncovered four factors along the two hypothesized dimensions: Fairness and Inclusion factors comprising the organizational dimension and Diversity Value and Personal Comfort factors comprising the personal dimension. The analysis revealed that Caucasian men perceived the organization as more fair and inclusive than did Caucasian women or racial/ethnic minority men and women; Caucasian women and racial/ethnic minority men and women saw more value in, and felt more comfortable with, diversity than did Caucasian men. The article discusses implications for practice and future research. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
Publication Name: Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
Subject: Social sciences
ISSN: 0021-8863
Year: 1998
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Two aspects of Japanese and American co-worker interaction: giving instructions and creating rapport
Article Abstract:
This study uses ethnographically contexted microanalysis of natural conversation to investigate communication in the bicultural workplace. Audiotapes and videotapes were made of conversations between Japanese and Americans who work together at three firms in Tokyo. Transcriptions of the data are used to help locate misinterpretations that can arise from differing assumptions about the communicative task of giving instructions. The data also provide evidence for how co-workers create rapport despite cultural differences. Some of these group-bonding strategies are joking and teasing, cooperative complaining, conversations in a form of mixed English and Japanese ("code switching"), doing appropriate listening, and producing talk that has an echoing effect. The findings suggest that a context-sensitive, interactional approach to situated talk will enable us to locate pragmatic misunderstandings and other important communicative phenomena that other methods will fail to identify. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
Publication Name: Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
Subject: Social sciences
ISSN: 0021-8863
Year: 1995
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