Asian management research needs more self-confidence: Reflection on Hofstede (2007) and beyond

Abstract

Hofstede’s cross-cultural paradigm has stimulated academic interest in value and behavioral variations across national borders and helped practitioners to capture national cultural stereotypes in concrete and measurable terms. Nevertheless, the Hofstede paradigm with its focus on cultural differences can hardly capture today’s new cross-cultural management environment characterized by change and paradox in borderless and wireless cultural learning, knowledge transfer, and synchronized information sharing. In the twenty-first century, management faces new challenges because people in the twenty-first century are increasingly no longer bipolarized and isolated creatures but of multicultural identities and multicultural minds. Asian management researchers need to learn from the West but at the same time need to have self-confidence and courage in using indigenous knowledge to make contributions to theory building with global relevance.