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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton May 4, 2011

“Why can't they do as we do?”: a study of the discursive constructions of “doing culture” in a cross-border company

  • Inger Askehave EMAIL logo and Lise-Lotte Holmgreen EMAIL logo
From the journal Text & Talk

Abstract

Taking its point of departure in ten semi-structured interviews with ten members of staff in a Danish-owned, cross-border software company, Softia, this article analyzes how members of staff talk about and make sense of ways of “doing culture” in a corporate context. The article adopts a discourse analytical perspective and applies systemic functional grammar in order to identify the characteristics of three major discursive constructions which members of staff draw on interchangeably, and to a greater and lesser extent, to give expression to their intercultural practices in Softia. This text-focused, practitioneroriented, discursive approach provides valuable insights into the practitioners' understandings of intercultural practices, and, therefore, offers a welcome contribution to the ever-growing, but less text-focused, literature on intercultural business communication and cross-cultural management.


Address for correspondence: Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajers Vej 5, 9220 Aalborg Ø, Denmark
Address for correspondence: Department of Culture and Global Studies, Kroghstræde 3, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark

Published Online: 2011-05-04
Published in Print: 2011-May

© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York

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