In this research article the methodological and philosophical implications of cross-cultural

management research have been examined, comparing a field study which was conducted
collaboratively in the United Kingdom and China. The observations were compared with the
account of a nomothetic study provided by Teagarden and colleagues (1995), identifying
points of similarity and difference.

The two cross cultural collaborative research differs from each other. There are two important
respects in which both the studies differ. First, the design of Teagarden study was nomothetic
whereas the other one was idiographic. The researchers of Teagarden study relied on a single
survey instrument to gather data on human resource management practices from a large
number of organisations in ten different countries, in order to describe general patterns and
practices in these countries. The other study involved extensive fieldwork within a small
number of organisations conducted to investigate major capital investment and human
resource decisions. Second, the Teagarden study involved central design, coordination, and
analysis of data, with the first author passing out responsibility for data collection to her
research colleagues in other countries. Whereas the other study was carried out in such a way
that responsibility for financial support, resourcing, design, and execution of the study was
shared between the Chinese and U.K. teams from start to finish.

The story discussed in this article revolves around five phases, which modify and expand the
four phases described by Teagarden and her colleagues. These were forming a research
association, generating research questions and constructing a survey, doing the research, and
making sense of the findings. The five phases are: harnessing networks, focusing the project,
accessing data, interpretation and writing and dissemination. The second last section of this
article draws together, and sets within the framework of relevant literature, the emergent
themes of power differences and differing conceptions of research. In the final section, the
insider outsider problem in cross-cultural research is considered and it has been suggested
that it can be resolved through adopting a reflexive methodology.

In this article, the insider outsider problem that researchers face from one culture wishing to
conduct research on another culture is that the outsiders' past experiences will not have
equipped them to make sense of events in the same way that insiders would. This problem is
discussed not in relation to the object of study, but in relation to the research process itself.

There are various different concepts and aspects in writing on reflexivity. Critics of the use of
reflexivity as a research method point to its recursive nature and question whether it can
produce valid knowledge about the world. Siegle (1986) provided a partial answer.
According to Siegle something that is reflexive "must turn back on itself and then turn back
on its turning" (1986: 2). In the present article, the authors started by reflecting back on their
own experiences in conducting cross-cultural research, using Teagarden and colleagues'
(1995) publication as a basis for constant comparison, and then incorporated, through
dialogue, the viewpoints of their Chinese colleagues. This dialogue started with exchanges
about how members of each national group saw and experienced the research process, which
led to their attempts to make sense by sharing some of their own assumptions, motivations,
and external expectations. Reflexivity involves using information from another to gain
insights into oneself, and in the present case they used two processes that can be labelled as:
mirroring and contrasting.

In mirroring, observation of another leads to the realization that the features observed can
also be attributed to the observer. The second method, contrasting involves an observer's
focusing on another in order to understand how the observer is different. Thus, the
application of reflexive analysis has enabled insights to be obtained both about the others
within a cross-cultural project and about ourselves, but these have in the main been obtained
after the event.