Be global or be gone: Global mindset as a source of division in an international business community

• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12300
• Author: François Goxe,Nathalie Belhoste
• Published date: 01 September 2019

Be global or be gone: Global mindset as a

source of division in an international

business community

FRANÇOIS GOXE

1

and NATHALIE BELHOSTE

2

1

University of Versailles SQY, France

2

Grenoble Ecole de Management, France

Global mindset isusually considered as a positive skill or resource that helps individualsand companies succeed

internationally. We arguethat it is also a collective schemeof thought that bringssome actors together and setsothers

apart. We investigate this perspective through a qualitative study of French MNC managers, internationalisation

support providers,and SME owners and managers attempting to create or grow their businessin China. We reveal

that global mindset is a double-edged concept: it is not solely an instrument for integration, but also a doxa, a

particular viewpoint imposed to identify and reject outsiders through symbolic struggles. This alternative

conceptualisation is necessary to rethink the social forces at work in the field of international business. It is also

necessary to encourage educators and practitioners to acknowledge the struggles that result from the imposition of

certain views and behaviours and to adapt education, support and training programs accordingly.

Keywords: global mindset; business elite; international business; doxa; Bourdieu

Introduction

Usually characterised as an ability to articulate multiple

cultural and strategic realities on both global and local

levels (Levy et al., 2007a), global mindset has become a

key concept in research on global leadership and

international management and ‘an important competitive

tool for today’s managers’(Javidan et al., 2007: 222). A

large number of handbooks, magazines, courses,

professional and scholarly publications have promoted

its virtues, considering it an individual and inherently

positive asset that bothindividuals and companies should

possess or develop in order to succeed on the

international stage (Black et al., 1999; Gupta and

Govindarajan, 2002).

Following Bourdieu’s (1977: 3) call for an

‘epistemological break’,‘a break with primary

knowledge, whose tacitly assumed presuppositions give

the social world its self-evident and natural character’,

we question whether global mindset is always beneficial

to individuals andcompanies venturing abroad. We argue

that by focusing on a single level of analysis, existing

research neglects the social context of global mindset, its

social developmentand its potentially detrimental effects.

We propose an alternative critical conceptualisation of

global mindset by providing insight into the social

divisions that it can generate and revealing some of the

unintended consequences for individuals and, more

broadly, for communities of actors in international

business. This research thus answers two related

questions. First, as a collective scheme of thought, how

is global mindset socially constructed? Second, how can

global mindset become a factor of social divisions among

international actors?

We address these questions by exploring global

mindset from a relational perspective, reasserting the

need for a broader social-contructivist approach and

proposing a conceptual framework. Based on the theories

of Bourdieu, we grasp the complexity and equivocal

nature of global mindset using the concept of doxa

(‘a particular point of view, the point of view of the

dominant, which presents and imposes itself as a

universal point of view […], which has more often than

not been imposed through struggles against competing

visions’, Bourdieu, 1998: 56–57). The conceptualisation

of global mindset as a worldview imposed by an

elite is then analysed through an empirical qualitative

study of experienced multinational corporation (MNC)

Correspondence: François Goxe, University of Versailles, ISM Graduate

School of Management, 47 boulevard Vauban, 78047Guyancourt Cedex,

France. E-mailfrancois.goxe@uvsq.fr

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12300

©2018 European Academy of Management

European Management R eview, Vol. 16, 5

617–632, (2019)

managers and international support providers

1

working

in or with China, and French small business owners

and managers with little or no previous international

experience attempting to set up or develop their business

in that country. Empirical data were collected through 35

semi-structured interviews conducted in France and

China. In particular, the researchers studied the opinions

of internationally experienced foreign managers in China

(the global elite) regarding newcomers to the field, in

order to understand how a shared worldview is

constructed and imposed. Reciprocally, the opinions of

newcomers (aspiring global actors), their experience of

the internationalisation process, and their reactions to

the confrontation with their more experienced

counterparts were then analysed and compared with the

views of the latter.

This new approach to the notion of global mindset

makes two notable contributions. First, breaking with

previous research, we conceptualise global mindset not

only as an individual or organisational-level cognitive

structure, but also as a process by which a group of

individuals identifies, welcomes and integrates others

like themselves and, conversely, identifies and

influences, but ultimately rejects others not like

themselves. We consequently contribute to broadening

the definition of global mindset, which should not

continue to be analysed solely as an individual and innate

capacity, but rather as a co-construction of a collective

scheme of thought shared by a group of dominant actors

and imposed by them.

Second, we show that global mindset can be an

instrument of discrimination and reveal the power games

and symbolic struggles among actors in the global field.

In contrast with previous research, we demonstrate that

global mindset is a double-edged concept: it is not solely

an instrument for achieving integration but also one used

to discriminate against and reject newcomers to an

international business community. Our subsequent

discussion in the paper reveals that this new perspective

on global mindset has profound implications for

international business (IB) and global mindset scholars

and for practitioners. For scholars, this alternative vision

of global mindset as a social construct encourages us to

rethink the international business arena as a field where

actors compete to defend or impose their respective

positionsand worldviews. For educatorsand practitioners,

this study sheds light on the existence of symbolic

struggles that result from these social forces and suggests

ways to adapt international business education and

training programs.

Taking stock of global mindset

Although the literature on global mindset is substantial,

the nature of the concept remains uncertain. The literature

is dominated by individual-based, objectivist studies that

define global mindset as a highly positive skill or a

strategic resource for MNCs and managers (Javidan and

Teagarden, 2011). Some alternative social-constructivist

studies have begun to consider it at a broader level,

insisting on its social embeddedness, complex social

networks and forces (Mayrhofer et al., 2004).

An overly positive approach to global mindset. In their

seminal work, Levy et al. (2007b) highlighted two main

types of definitions for global mindset: cultural and

strategic.

Cultural definitions focus on global mindset as a

personal skill or an individual state of mind. According

to this perspective, global mindset is a combination of

attributes (Javidan and Teagarden, 2011), including

curiosity, cultural empathy, orientation toward others,

open-mindedness (Kedia and Mukherji, 1999), cross-

cultural competence (Wang et al., 2014), cultural

intelligence (Earley and Ang, 2003; Story et al., 2014)

or cultural agility (Caligiuri, 2013), listening skills,

willingnessto learn from others, ability to reconcileglobal

and local levels (Nummela et al., 2004), acceptance of

complexity and system thinking (Srinivas, 1995),

opportunity seeking ability (Murtha et al., 1998),

incorporation of foreign values (Gupta and Govindarajan,

2002) and aversion to cultural essentialism (Vertovec and

Cohen, 2002).

These attributes are thus quite diverse, but can be

regrouped into two related categories. First, in the

literature, ‘global’means relating to, or involving the

world and its various cultures. The vast majority of

research has considered global mindset in geographic

terms, as an understanding of business operations

worldwide, the ability to interact effectively with people

who are culturally different (Wang et al., 2014). It is also

‘the ability to develop and interpret criteria for personal

and business performance that are independent from the

assumptions of a single country, culture, or context; and

to implement those criteria appropriately in different

countries, cultures, and contexts’(Mazneski and Lane,

2004: 172). This perspective thus relates global mindset

to earlier terms for the same concept such as

cosmopolitanism and transnationalism (Vertovec and

Cohen, 2002). Second, ‘global’means ‘broad’,relating

to, or applying to a whole. ‘A global mindset means the

ability to scan the world from a broad perspective, always

looking for unexpected trends and opportunities […]to

achieve personal, professional or organisational

objectives’(Rhinesmith, 1995: 24). Individuals with a

global mindsetare supposed to see the world and business

1

Members of public and private export/trade promotion agencies, the bodies

responsible for implementing programmes to support the internationalisation

of SMEs.

618 F. Goxe and N. Belhoste

©2018 European Academy of Management