Navigating the national-organisational cultural duality and its contingency in multinational companies: the case of communication in a Vietnamese subsidiary

Hoang, Thi Xuan Anh 2024. Navigating the national-organisational cultural duality and its contingency in multinational companies: the case of communication in a Vietnamese subsidiary. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

The dynamics between home and host country’s culture in multinational companies’ foreign subsidiaries have been increasingly attracting the attention of researchers in the field of cross-cultural management. Studying how local employees navigate between their national culture and their company’s organisational culture can deepen our understanding of the global-local tension in multinational companies and assist managers in better implementing management practices, managing the local workforce and successfully operating foreign subsidiaries. However, current literature offers limited theoretical and empirical works on the influence of such cultural duality on employees’ behaviour or the cognitive process through which individuals navigate these cultures in daily operations. Aiming to fill this gap, this research examines how local employees at a Vietnamese subsidiary of a US-based multinational garment manufacturer navigated the Vietnamese culture and the company’s organisational culture in interpersonal communication at work– an aspect that is the backbone of any organisation especially a culturally diverse one. Through conducting semi-structured interviews with 35 local employees, this research has found a dynamic cultural hybridity that stemmed from the changes in employees’ engagement with their national and organisational cultural values. It has specified eight contextual and individual factors that could intrinsically or extrinsically impact individuals’ cultural manifestation. The research has also discovered how the different magnitude of national cultural values and the distance between national and organisational values interfered with individuals’ cultural negotiation and resulted in four types of cultural configurations. This research has contributed to the knowledge of cultural duality in foreign subsidiaries as well as the study of cultural contextualisation and contingency. It has also added to the literature on intercultural communication by offering insight into how individuals’ unique cultural profiles impact their daily communication. Managers can benefit from this research to develop and adjust strategies to manoeuvre employees’ cultural tendencies and effectively realise their organisational agenda.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Submission
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Date of Acceptance:	17 January 2025
Last Modified:	17 Jan 2025 14:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/175353

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