Page 46 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

assembled data of IBM employees from subsidiaries in 40 countries can’t represent any NC since the database implemented did not represent the population in the respective countries. The authors also suggest that the concept of NC is problematic, since in reality there is no alignment between culture and the nation-state. For example, only from the first decades of the twentieth century, after the collapse of the Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian, French and British empires, the developed world could be organised as nation-states (Encyclopaedia Brittanica 2000). A mismatch occurs between recent developments (i.e. the nation-state) and a “culture”, developed and existing for at least centuries. Another critical point is the continued and evolving changes in form and appearance of the nation-state in the contemporary era. New nation-states are formed after the implosion of the Soviet-Union, and the outcome of the Balkan wars. The older nation-states founded by the end of the 19th and the early 20th centuries, recently experienced not only substantial changes in their physical borders but also the ethnical and racial mix of their population. Additionally, there is no distinct, separate “culture” for each nation-state, since there is no necessary connection and alignment between a political entity, as a construct and culture. A vast part of the contemporary nation-states is composed of multiple cultures and a diversity of sub-cultures. What is more, according to Huo and Randall (1991), and Peppas (2001) the same cultural group may span in various locations and exists in several nation-states. As argued by Tayeb (1994, p. 431) “Throughout history, national political boundaries have been arbitrarily drawn, cutting across cultural/linguistic groupings”. The nation-state is essentially a Western invention. Elsewhere, on other continents, it is a novelty and corresponds even less to any idea of cultural homogeneity or identity.
Another point of discussion, which does not find supporters among authors of cultural and anthropological research is Hofstede’s view of culture as the identifier and differentiator of a single group/category from another. Hofstede’s point of view is seen as a “static synchronic version” by contemporary scientists (Billing & Alvesson, 1994 p. 659). McSweeney (2002) argues that Hofstede defines culture in a national basis as it is assumed that cultures are determined by nationality and there is no differentiation within NCs. According to him, extreme singular theories such as Hofstede’s concept of NC are heavily debatable. Hofstede’s conflation and one-level analysis excludes the consideration of existing interplay between macro level and micro levels of culture, as well as between the cultural and non-cultural. Baskerville’s (2003) review identifies three main problems. The first is the assumption of equating nation with culture. The second is the difficulties of, and limitations on a quantification of culture represented by
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