MNC Localisation and Value Integration in Emerging Markets

Meng Zhao, Marie Harder, Seung Ho Park

The study investigates how values related to organizational purpose take on different meanings in the western and Chinese business contexts. Managers in different cultures are likely to understand common abstract values (e.g., integrity, efficiency) in different ways, tend to contextualise their meaning in their own organisations, and tend to develop a localised understanding of the relevance and importance of foreign values. As a result, while management scholars and business leaders throughout the world evangelise the idea of value-driven and purpose-driven management, it is complicated to communicate and disseminate values across cultural boundaries. The communicated values might not reach a consensus across cultures on what they mean and how to act. A fundamental basis of building a world of good business is making visible and connecting the gaps between localities that construct and enact values in their own ways. This project will reveal the processes and mechanisms underlying the change of the values’ meanings and try to inspire an effective way of communicating and managing values across cultural contexts. We attempt to generate knowledge that enables managers to grasp the patterns of how values are constructed, contextualised and localised in local business communities so that they can adequately identify the opportunities and risks in cross-cultural management, rather than taking on a self-centric approach to simply translate or impose their embraced values into a foreign market.​