Future Directions for Management Theory Development

Author(s): Robert Doktor, Rosalie L. Tung and Mary Ann von Glinow
Source: The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 362-365
Published by: Academy of Management
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? Academy of Management Review
1991, Vol. 16, No. 2, 362-365.

FUTUREDIRECTIONSFOR MANAGEMENT
THEORYDEVELOPMENT

Although it is difficult to speculate on the form and substance of

management theories in the 21st century, we will venture to project what
we see as major trends that will dominate our research and thinking in
the years ahead. We see at least two major trends that are worth mention-
ing.
To begin, we see different organizational forms and structures that re-
flect a global sensitivity. In the 1970s, emphasis was on domestic North
American firms almost exclusively; the 1980s witnessed the rise of the newly
industrialized countries (NICs). In the 1990s, there is a move toward the
formation of global strategic alliances to reflect the new calculus in world-
wide competition. This move toward transnationalism requires new ap-
proaches to our theory, research, and practice. New organizational forms
and paradigms must be developed to explain the functioning and perfor-
mance of these global strategic alliances.
In our introduction, reference was made to the emerging phenomenon
of global regionalism where several economic giants, instead of one super-
power, can affect world economic trends and developments. More specifi-
cally, we see both a united Europe and Japan as posing a very formidable
challenge to the hitherto U. S. economic supremacy and might. As we noted
previously, our management theories to date have been developed within
the context of a North American society. Thus, our existing theories may not
be able to reflect adequately the realities of the new economic world order.
A second trend calls for the development of management paradigms that
can encompass and/or integrate the complexity and richness of manage-
ment thought and principles in Europe and Japan.
As multinational organizations become more global in their operations,
difficulties arising out of the cultural diversity of the organization's members
and clients become more apparent to the managers of these organizations.
Management behaviors are based upon cultural assumptions. As organi-
zations operate across multiple cultures, these assumptions vary. Manage-
rial behaviors that are appropriate under certain cultural assumptions rriay
become dysfunctional under other cultural assumptions. For example,
cause and effect relationships are significant elements in any management
approach. Most North American management perspectives, theories, and,
therefore, behaviors are based upon North American cultural values, at-
titudes, and mental/cognitive models of cause and effect relationships. It

362

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1991 Doktor, Tung, and Von Glinow 363

is apparent that other cultures hold different values, attitudes, and mental
models of cause and effect relationships, and therefore the management
behaviors prescribed in a given situation by North American management
perspectives and theories are likely to be inappropriate in some other cul-
tural milieu (Hofstede, 1980).
Thus, there exists the need to develop management theories that are
effective and functional when applied in multiple culture settings. This is a
rather difficult task.
Some support of this effort may come from the knowledge that many
commonalities exist across culture. After all, we are all Homo sapiens, have
similar physical characteristics, and primarily have common mental func-
tioning. Further, people around the globe know more about each other than
ever before. Modern information and communication technologies have
given us the opportunity to know of each other and of our diverse cultural
heritages. Radio and television, newspaper and movies, telephone and fax
have all speeded the sharing of knowledge about each other. Americans
study the Japanese tea ceremony on their subway commute. Levi blue jeans
are as popular in Moscow as they are in Paris. The music of Brahms may be
the background environment of a fine restaurant in Delhi or Rio.
Despite all these commonalities, there are still significant differences.
For example, although human beings may hold a common need to en-
hance their self-esteem, the appropriate behaviors to be undertaken by a
manager to accomplish enhancement of subordinate self-esteem varies
greatly from culture to culture. Praise before a group of peers may be
effective in one cultural setting, yet disastrous in another.
Thus, the key to a cross-culturally applicable management theory ap-
pears to lie in cultural contingency. That is, theory must specify its domain.
Therefore, management theorists must enhance their own knowledge of the
cultural domain of applicability of their management theory. In addition,
management theorists must immerse themselves in multiple culture milieu,
in order to better understand their own cultural assumptions as well as those
of others.
In reality, as management researchers construct theory, they are, in
fact, attempting to build a model that describes, predicts, and helps them to
understand the world that they perceive about them. Thus, it is but the
perceived world about them, and only that, which is the domain in their
theory. If North America is their domain, then it is but North America to
which their theory may be applied, and application of that theory beyond
the boundaries of the North American domain greatly enhances the possi-
bility of making Type I and Type II errors.
Therefore, theorists must expand their perceptions to include any given
domain before the theory that they construct can reasonably be applicable
in said domain. It is also clear that though such expansion of perceptual
domain on the part of the theorist is a necessary condition for theoretical
applicability in said domain, it is also certain that the act of perceptual

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364 Academy of Management Review April

domain enhancement is not a sufficient condition for valid theory construc-

tion within the enhanced or new domain.
In his 1987 book, Making History: Pukapukan And Anthropological Con-
struction Of Knowledge, Robert Borofsky shed further light on this issue of
domain validity. He notes that both Pukapukan (a South Pacific Island cul-
ture) and Western historians, observing a series of events during a common
time frame, write very different histories of those events. In effect, both the
Western and Pukapukan historians are constructing knowledge, but these
become two different and dissimilar sets of historical knowledge based on
the same set of facts. Thus, Borofsky demonstrates that the two historians,
viewing the same facts, process the information differentially and, thus,
create two distinct and conflicting histories of the events. This differential
processing of the common fact set results, claims Borofsky, from culturally
learned differences of information processing present in the Pukapukan and
Western historians.
Thus, the dilemma becomes apparent that familiarity alone with the
new domain is insufficient. In order to improve the validity of the theory
within the new or enhanced domain, it may be necessary to include an
indigenous member of the new domain in the theory-construction activi-
ties. This suggestion implies that management theory construction in do-
mains beyond North America ought to be undertaken by research teams,
the members of which are representative of the new domains to be included
as applicable to the theory so constructed. To accomplish this objective,
management theorists should reach out and form global alliances of their
own.
Of course, this is not a new idea. There have been numerous examples
of such teams in our literature. However, more often then not, such multi-
domain research teams produced empirical rather than theoretical contri-
butions. The logic of this is obvious. The researchers needed help in col-
lecting data in different cultural locales, and so they recruited diverse na-
tionals to aid in that process.
Although these new research team members assisted with the collec-
tion of data and the analysis of findings, quite often, the major theoretical
dimensions of the study had been determined prior to the inclusion of the
foreign researchers. In order to enhance the validity of our theories beyond
North America, indigenous members of the new domain should be involved
in all phases of the process of theory construction.
We hope that the articles included in this special theory-building forum
will challenge us to reconceptualize our conventional theories of manage-
ment to reflect the realities of the late 20th and the early 21st centuries,
namely, the dual phenomenon of global integration, on the one hand, and
global regionalism, on the other. We have ventured to identify two major
trends of management research in the 21st century and have offered some
suggestions on how we can improve the validity of our management theory-
construction efforts beyond national borders.

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1991 Doktor, Tung, and Von Glinow 365

Guest Editors:
Robert Doktor, University of Hawaii
Rosalie L. Tung, Simon Fraser University
Mary Ann Von Glinow, University of Southern California

REFERENCES
Hofstede,G. 1980.Culture'sconsequences: International differences in work-related values.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Borofsky,R. 1987. Making history: Pukapukan and anthropological construction of knowl-
edge. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

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