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INTRODUCTION
The paper by Leung, Bhagat, Buchan, Erez, and Gibson (2005) makes a significant contribution to the international business (IB) literature by focusing on potentially paradigmatic advances in national cultural research that might reorient IB research. They suggest that their work facilitates such research by taking a more complex view of national culture and its effects, by considering its relationships with socio-economic-political variables and by emphasizing a multi-method, multi-level approach to it. Indeed, we strongly agree that researchers studying culture in IB have not been taking advantage of all the tools for characterizing culture, or for better pinpointing its effects. In this regard, we find their work is a useful starting point, as it refocuses IB on cultural as opposed to economic, legal and organizational issues.
Nevertheless, we depart from Leung et al., because the way they construe cultural effects does not free researchers from the constraints of national culture framing: ironically, what they are proposing ultimately limits rather than expands our research toolkit. They focus on national culture, and define it as the "values, beliefs, norms, and behavioral patterns of a national group" (p: 357). However, we argue that they fail to recognize that culture is a distinct, if related, construct. It may be seen as a web of significance or meaning that is formed into narrative (Geertz, 1973; cf. Earley, 2006). The key to this view is that it involves processes of sensemaking, meaning making or production (Adams & Markus, 2004; McIntyre, Lyons, Clark, & Kashima, 2004). In this regard, Adams and Markus (2004: 341) go beyond the constraints of group membership such as being a member of a national culture entails: they adapt a classic definition of culture based on that of Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952: 357), which will be applied here as it provides a more expansive basis for IB theory development than that of Leung et al.
Culture consists of explicit and implicit patterns of historically derived and selected ideas and their embodiment in institutions, practices and artifacts; cultural patterns may, on one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action.
This definition, Adams and Markus further emphasize, does not necessarily reside in group membership, but rather in such patterned worlds....