Abstract
This paper's main purpose revisits the traditional vision of a cultural approach to international management, and hence proposes some new insights with regard to the present context of transforming societies. Starting from the examination of cultural distance paradoxical effects, we show that both Hofstede's (1980) ideological perspective and Kogut and Singh's (1988) mathematical conceptualization cannot fully explain intercultural interactions. Hofstede's methodology will be discussed to point out some fallacies and how to overcome them; apart from the (ir)relevance of individualism and masculinity indexes, we argue that cultural distance must be regarded entirely independent from uncertainty avoidance. Besides, we suggest that Kogut and Singh's mathematical index is inadequate unless some key properties are included in the construction of such the index. We suggest that temporal instability, asymmetry, intra-country heterogeneity, and transitivity of cultural distances are useful in understanding the process of sociocultural adjustment.
Disciplinary: Multidisciplinary (Management Science (Cultural-based Business Management, International Business Management), Intercultural and Cross-cultural Studies, Globalization Study). (C) 2020 INT TRANS J ENG MANAG SCI TECH.