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...both epistemological and methodological issues in cross-cultural research. Based on extant literature, major drawbacks are discussed and some suggestions for future research are presented.
Introduction
Over the last decades researchers have shown an increasing interest in cross-cultural studies. Despite this interest, research in the field of cross-cultural management seems to lag considerably behind other fields of management science. In this respect, it has been argued that cross-cultural research suffers from many drawbacks creating impediments for further advances (Cavusgil and Das, 1997; Tayeb, 1994; 2001, Sekaran, 1983). We believe that difficulties encountered in cross-cultural research are various in nature and they may go beyond methodological and practical limitations. While some of these problems can be identified solely as methodological issues, others may be considered as problems related to epistemological positions. Against this backdrop, our objective in this paper is to discuss both epistemological and methodological issues.
The first part of the paper examines epistemological positions underlying cross-cultural research. It is argued that epistemological orientations determine methodological approaches and shape the research process. Therefore, discussing epistemological issues can provide us with awareness of inherent limitations related to created knowledge and direction of future research. The second part of the paper discusses methodological drawbacks and makes some suggestions for addressing them.
Epistemological Issues
Epistemology or theory of knowledge is concerned with the nature. sources and limitations of knowledge. Epistemological orientations shape and determine our particular view of the world and of reality. They also provide us as researchers with the guiding principles upon which we may base our methodologies (Guba and Lincoln, 1985). Therefore, the epistemological positions are in close relations with methodological approaches and they, affect research process in that they permit us to develop questions, design the study and adopt appropriate research strategies.
Most of cross-cultural research is based on a realistic perspective both at ontological and epistemological levels. Ontological realism implies that there is an external reality which does not depend upon cognitive structures of human investigators. On the other hand, epistemological realism assumes that the external reality is cognitively accessible to researcher (Johnson and Duberley, 2000). The realism ontology views cultures as existing, stable and real systems of beliefs and practices. Therefore, it is argued that culture as an independent and objective phenomenon can be accurately measured, observed and investigated. This view of culture leads to an analytical/positivistic research strategy. In this way, the researcher perceives reality as tangible, concrete, stable, hard and real with deterministic relations among its constituent parts (Arbnor and Bjerke, 1997). The goal of analytical/positivistic research is to explain (erklaren) objective reality as fully as possible, and most of the time it is assumed that there is only one possible answer to a research question. Influenced by triumph of natural sciences, the proponents of the positivistic approach insist on methodological unity of all sciences and deny fundamental differences between natural and social sciences.
The researchers who make a distinction between the methods of the classical natural sciences and those of the social sciences are often called hermeneutics. The hermeneutics maintain that natural science methods are essentially unsuitable in social science domains (Arbnor and Bjerke, 19997). They underline a decisive difference between two domains. The difference of these two perspectives is, however, more than divergence in methods being used to create knowledge. The very essential difference between the two paradigms can be considered in terms of their objectives in creating knowledge. While the positivists attempt at explaining the phenomena (erklaren), the hermeneutics aim to understand them (verstehen). The explanation (erklaren) and understanding (verstehen) may have some blurred boundaries, but they have substantive differences. To explain (erklaren) is to present general relations among characteristics, behaviours or both (Arbnor and Bjerke, 19997). By, contrast, understanding (verstehen) is interpretative understanding of the meaning of actions through some form of contact with actors. In other words, explanation (erklaren) is to provide a deterministic account of external causal variables which shed light on an observed behaviour (Johnson and Duberley, 2000). The explanations should contain operational definitions as far as possible. Otherwise, these results (explanations) might be based on concepts that are not related to objective reality, something that may lead to misunderstanding and confusion (Johnson and Duberley, 2000).
A review of the literature shows that most of the cultural/organizational research is based on a realist perspective and adopts a positivistic approach (E.g. Hofstede, 1980). However, the extent to which positivistic approach can be used to examine a complex concept such as culture has been questioned by many researchers. It is argued that man and his culture are historical concepts that should be understood in social context and they cannot be studied in vacuum. Some critiques assert that positivistic approach has rendered cultural phenomena ahistorical, linguistically naive and psychologically unaware (Arbnor and Bjerke, 19997). Other scholars (Von Krogh and Roos, 1995) assert that the positivistic research can be employed to produce meaningful quantitative measures, but the nature of culture renders its understanding through these research techniques very difficult. The positivistic approach emphasizes the importance of generalizations and universal laws, however, cross-cultural research based on this approach has established quite a few generalizations. Most importantly, these generalizations are neither very general nor exact as those in natural sciences. So, how can we rely on them as knowledge? How can they be applied by other researchers el practitioners? Among so many cross-cultural researches, we know few that can provide us with clear, exact and reliable results. Moreover, the findings of such studies should be viewed as highly embedded in social context. Once removed from their original context, these results are hardly replicable to other cases.
Since culture is a very complicated and fuzzy concept, the researchers adopting a positivistic/analytical approach try to choose for parsimonious models (e.g. Hofstede, 1980) utilizing as few variables its possible, with the variables being of an objective kind. On the other hand, by operationalization, they try to reduce the complex concepts such its culture to concrete indicators. Of course, these parsimonious and highly operationalized models may facilitate the research design, but at the same time they may distort the concepts and reliability of results. Some researchers hope to find cause-and-effect relations by incorporating only a few operationalized variables. However, by trying to increase the internal validity of the research (whether or not what has been identified as the cause produces the effect), they may sacrifice the external validity (the extent to which the research findings can be extrapolated to other cases). Since much of this research is looking for a supposed narrow causal relationship, it focuses only on very limited aspects of phenomena under investigation and fails to provide an in-depth understanding of cultural phenomena. In that way, the impetus of researchers is to make a priori predictions and test hypotheses rather than understanding and explaining the nature of cultural phenomena (Earley and Singh, 1995).
Despite all the criticism, it should be acknowledged that positivistic studies are characterized by rigor, internal/external validity and intelligible results. Since...
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