L'entreprise multiculturelle (The multicultural entreprise)

Citation

Pesqueux, Y. (2008), "L'entreprise multiculturelle (The multicultural entreprise)", Society and Business Review, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 261-263. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465680810907332

Yvon Pesqueux is Professor at Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers (Cnam Paris). His works are about organizations and management that are analysed from a critical point of view.

The objective of this book is to show how multinational business managers and CEOs impose a limited vision of the world in which a homogenous society supersedes diversity in the name of effectiveness and productivity. As a result, one can wonder about the essence of culture and cross‐cultural management and the role of stereotypes.

Yvon Pesqueux asks whether multinational businesses have a nationality affiliated to their country of origin, key feature of their identities (of their culture). He also explains the notion of “multi‐sited ethnography” developed by the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, as well as the notions of “cultural relativism” which deal with biases related to identity.

The author raises the issue of multicultural enterprises or local organizations confronted with the management of different populations, as well as the question of the multicultural enterprise as a vision of society and representation of a specific set of values. Cross‐cultural management, management of expatriated executives, the organization of businesses in foreign countries, etc. are essential in today's globalized world. The multicultural enterprise embodies a project for business leaders throughout a “global” world where profits and productivity, in a homogenized universe, are opposed to identity claims and local cultures.

Hence, the multicultural enterprise stems from the interaction between different types of cultural components: a local, a national as well as a professional culture. The author strives to gauge the role of the enterprise in the society, the philosophical principles of management, the nature of organizations, the dichotomy between individualism and collectivism and the manager's role. This standpoint can also be applied to management education because of which students reproduce the flaws of the system, caused by a unidirectional teaching of business management methods implemented in their enterprises in the name of effectiveness and standardization of managerial behaviors.

Pesqueux engages students and business stakeholders to understand terms and concepts used in this field, a focused approach of tools related to multicultural management. To this effect, this book enables us to improve our reflection and our cultural level by making constant references and calling into question key models and traditional teaching based on case studies and stereotypes on management practices.

The book consists of four chapters. Chapter 1 titled: Globalization and culture. This chapter questions globalization from an ideological perspective, the Anglo‐Saxon model followed by most business companies. Using an anthropological approach to territorial studies and showing how globalization results from capitalism that emerges in the late 15th century, the author makes references to Fernand Braudel and his analytical frameworks on capitalist growth cycles as well as the anthropological perspective of Arjun Appadurai's “Global Cultural Flows” (in reference to his five concepts: the ethnoscape, technoscape, finanscape, mediascape et ideoscapes).

Chapter 2 titled: The management of national culture. This chapter starts with a reference to Geert Hofstede's reflection on national cultures and organizations in companies. It goes on with the theories developed by Philippe d'Iribarne who advocates new management methods adapted to each national context. The author also mentions Pierre Bourdieu's reflection on the relationship between the “habitus” and the “doxa” (in other words, the dominants' vision) imposed on everyone as a universal perspective. Furthermore, there are references to Fons Trompenaars and his seven dimensions in cross‐cultural management; an analysis of other theories on national culture exposed by Edgar E. Schein, as well as the study of different models of strategic management, such as the notion of “controlling” (centralized and formalized) and of “adapting” (decentralized and informal) and, finally, the author wraps up the chapter with the study of the concept of intercultural and multicultural while resorting to two approaches, the culturalist and the organizational ones.

Chapter 3 titled: The ambiguity of culture. This chapter tackles the concepts of “cultural relativism” and the notion of multiculturalism. The author examines:

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  the model developed by Jean‐Louis Martres and his interpretation of Chinese culture; the culturalist perspective pervasive in “organizational sciences”;

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  the concepts of “tribalism, localism and land”;

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  the notion of acculturation developed by Roger Bastide and his concepts of assimilation, counter‐cultural integration, competition, adaptation and social integration as well as the relationship between dominant and dominated cultures, linked with social and cultural hierarchies;

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  the notions of cultural diversities and ethnocentrism beginning with its relations between “identity and otherness”;

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  the one between multiculturalism and communautarism; and

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  finally the definition of “tolerance” using different examples.

Chapter 4 titled: The definition of culture. This chapter exposes the different definitions of culture from an anthropological point of view and its contribution to business: the notion of civilization, the relations between nature and culture, barbarism and civilization, sociology and culture, culture and mass media, culture and techniques, culture and organization and culture and identity, in reference to the most important specialists who have dealt with these issues: Claude Lévi‐Strauss, Edgar Morin and Max Weber among others.

In his conclusion, the author makes references to the work of Confucius (perception of things, social order, Chinese culture and management) and of Aristotle (his concept of the Golden Mean) to help the readers understand today's world, by offering them a comparison between the two philosophers, based on their respective concepts linked with the notions of organization (hierarchy, relations, behaviors), management (its philosophy, its style) and its way of life (order systems and social norms).

Lastly, the goal of this book is to give a larger vision of multiculturalism by establishing links between culture, managerial practices and businesses, and by suggesting a multiculturalism that recognizes the impact of diasporic matters (the Other at home: the expatriated leaders, his products and his services), imperialism (one in somebody else's country: subsidiaries that duplicate the structures and functioning of the parent company) as well as the drift of universal assimilation. The Multicultural Enterprise by Yvon Pesqueux is a mandatory reference book if we want to start a critical discussion on this globalized world of standardized consumers in which cross‐cultural issues symbolize a transcultural reality related to the social, political and economic sectors of international businesses.

Carlos A. Rabassó and Fco. Javier Rabassó

Université de Rouen and Groupe ESC Rouen, France