Journal of International Business Studies (2011) 42, 654–671
& 2011 Academy of International Business All rights reserved 0047-2506
Holistic ethnography: Studying the impact of
multiple national identities on post-acquisition
organizations
Fiona Moore
School of Management, Royal Holloway,
University of London, Egham, UK
Correspondence: F Moore, School of
Management, Royal Holloway, University of
London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK.
Tel: þ 44 1784 276 116;
Fax: þ 44 1784 276 100;
E-mail: fiona.moore@rhul.ac.uk
Received: 17 September 2009
Revised: 19 December 2010
Accepted: 27 December 2010
www.jibs.net
Abstract
Ethnographic research in international business studies focuses mainly on small
group case studies, ignoring other genres of ethnography and limiting its role. I
argue, based on a study of BMW MINI, that holistic ethnography allows
multiple perspectives on the organization, making it particularly useful for
studying cross-border acquisitions. I analyze cross-cultural relationships in the
organization, the interaction of manager and worker perspectives, and the
expression of national identities within the firm as its culture is negotiated,
allowing for greater understanding of the conflicts that, in its managers’ view,
affected the integration of the acquired subsidiary.
Journal of International Business Studies (2011) 42, 654–671.
doi:10.1057/jibs.2011.11
Keywords: qualitative/quantitative comparisons; national culture; role of local cultures;
labor/management issues; post-merger/acquisition integration; ethnography
INTRODUCTION
Although the benefits of ethnographic research for achieving a
detailed, experiential perspective on organizations have often been
recognized, it is, as Hodson (1998) notes, still underutilized, and
ethnographic studies in international business (IB) tend to be of
limited methodological range. I will here argue, based on a case
study of BMW MINI, that “holistic” ethnography allows explora-
tions of tacit discourses of national culture that are hard to obtain
by other qualitative methods. Through this, I will contribute to IB
by elucidating the roles played by multiple national identities and
the complex layers of culture in organizations in shaping post-
merger and acquisition (M&A) organizations, and the impact that
worker perspectives have on the formation of culture in multi-
national enterprises (MNEs).
The research questions under discussion are
How do tacit aspects of discourses of “national culture” between different
groups in an acquired organization affect its integration into a multinational
enterprise (MNE), and can holistic ethnography provide better insights into this
than more traditional qualitative methods?
In order to answer these, I intend, first, to demonstrate that a
holistic ethnographic perspective on the organization, obtained by
studying multiple groups within it in relation to each other,
provides different insights into the tacit aspects of the negotiation
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
of discourses of national culture than other
qualitative methods, through a literature review.
Second, I will use holistic ethnography to explore
the negotiation of such discourses in an acquired
organization, and their impact on its integration,
through a case study of BMW MINI. Finally, I will
combine the two to argue that holistic ethnography
has advantages that make it more useful than
surveys, in-depth interviews or small-group ethno-
graphy in examining cross-cultural management in
a post-acquisition organization.
The contribution of this article to the IB literature
is, first, to explore the role played by national
identities in cross-border M&A, considering cross-
cultural relationships, the multiple and complex
identities within the firm, and their impact on the
integration of the branch, building upon Brannen
and Salk’s (2000) work on “negotiated culture” in
international joint ventures. Second, I will eluci-
date the way that the perspectives of workers, and
not only managers, have a qualitative impact upon
integration in acquired organizations. The contri-
bution of this article to methodological literature in
IB is to highlight the usefulness of ethnography in
providing insights into cross-cultural phenomena,
and to demonstrate that ethnographic techniques
have wider applications than is currently the norm
in IB. In particular, I will demonstrate how holistic
ethnography can be used for studying issues in
cross-cultural management that require a broad-
based but experiential approach, for instance dur-
ing a merger or acquisition.
In order to achieve this, I will, first, analyze
holistic ethnography through a literature review;
second, provide a case study of holistic ethnogra-
phy in context; and, finally, bring the two together
to consider the theoretical and methodological
implications for IB.
LITERATURE REVIEW: HOLISTIC
ETHNOGRAPHY, CROSS-CULTURAL
MANAGEMENT AND MERGERS AND
ACQUISITIONS
Definitions and Uses of Ethnography in IB
“Ethnography” refers to a research process in which
the researcher’s experiences, as observer and parti-
cipant, form the core of the methodology and
analysis (Sanday, 1979). It should be distinguished
from other qualitative methods that contribute a
similar level of detail but lack the experiential
aspect, such as interviews and narrative studies (van
Maanen, 1979a). Ethnography can be defined for
Fiona Moore
655
the purposes of this article as experiential data
collection, with the researcher him/herself as a tool
for gathering information and analysis through
their own experiences, tempered by adherence to
standards of observation.
Ethnographic research has formed a part of IB
studies since the late 1970s (see Baba, 1998). Its
value is, first, that it allows researchers to under-
stand the activities of organizations, fleshing out
the lived experience that underlies ideal-typical
descriptions of work (Chapman, 1997: 15, 21; see
Barley, 1996; Morris et al., 1999: 781–782). As
Gephart (1978: 554) notes, “[quantitative studies]
do not, and perhaps cannot, explore the micro-
sociological processes which occur in situated,
face-to-face interactions.” Second, it is useful for
uncovering tacit (as opposed to explicit) discourses
– that is, things that are not directly spoken about,
perhaps because they are “taken for granted” by
people within the organization (van Maanen,
1979b: 544–548), because people are not con-
sciously aware of them (ibid: 546–547), or else
because the subject is taboo. Finally, it is often used
as part of a process of “triangulation,” combining
and comparing data obtained from qualitative and
quantitative methods to obtain a balanced image of
organizational culture (Harris, 2000; Jick, 1979).
However, its use has been limited: little has
changed since Hodson (1998: 1174) noted that
“ethnographies are used to provide ‘texture’, and
sometimes to generate new concepts. Less often
are they used to test hypotheses derived from
other methods.” Although anthropological uses of
ethnography are varied, including such genres as
the life history (Black Elk & Lyon, 1990), experi-
mental anthropology (McFeat, 1974), ethnohistory
(Douglas, 1993) and single-incident case study
(Gluckman, 1958), ethnography in management
studies has largely been limited to the (relatively)
long-term study of a single group, by a single
ethnographer or (as in Miles, 1979), a small team
(see, for instance, Barley, 1983, 1990, 1996; Gephart,
1978; Moore, 2005; Sakai, 2000). While a detailed
discussion of how this has come to pass is outside
the scope of this article, one can briefly explain
it as partly an artifact of the research process, as
ethnographic data take a long time to collect, and
partly due to the use of ethnography in IB as a
means of generating case studies and/or exploring
hypotheses produced by other methods. The assum-
ption is that wider perspectives on organizations are
provided by quantitative methods, or broader-based
qualitative methods, and ethnographies serve
Journal of International Business Studies
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
656
mainly as means of fleshing these out (Miles, 1979;
Sackmann & Phillips, 2004).
Holistic Ethnography
Some anthropological studies exist, however,
which indicate that it is possible to integrate two
or more perspectives on the same group using
“holistic” ethnography. I define a holistic ethno-
graphy as one that combines the detailed, experiential
perspectives of multiple groups within a social unit, by
developing an overarching narrative through participant
observation in these groups, to obtain a fragmented and
integrated perspective on the social unit (cf. Pentland,
1999). This can range from Gluckman’s (1958) use
of a particular event as a lens through which to
reveal different elements of a society, to Mayer
and Mayer’s (1961) research on the complicated
cultural discourses among urban laborers in
Southern Africa. Their monograph, in Spiegel and
McAllister’s (1991: 2) words, “showed how and
why social and cultural diversity occurred within
a population that would otherwise have been
regarded as culturally homogeneous,” indicating
the research value of this type of ethnography.
A few examples of holistic ethnography exist in
the anthropology of work. Lo’s Office Ladies, Factory
Women (1990) is a study comparing the experiences
of two types of workers at a Japanese company.
Barley’s (1986, 1990) longitudinal study of the
introduction of scanning technology in hospitals
considers how radiologists and radiological tech-
nologists reacted to this development, and how
they interacted with each other in line with their
different roles. More recently, Sharpe (2006: 318)
obtains a holistic picture of an Anglo-Japanese MNE
by studying “strategies of control and resistance of
key actors at the point of production.” Studies in
which different groups can be seen interacting
within a wider system through the use of holistic
ethnography thus are demonstrably useful in IB
studies.
Holistic Ethnography and Issues in Mergers and
Acquisitions
I argue that holistic ethnography, comparing the
perspectives of different groups within organiza-
tions in the context of the wider system, can be
valuable for understanding cross-cultural issues
in the integration of acquired organizations.
That national and organizational cultures have
an impact, positive and negative, on integration
and on post-acquisition performance has been
documented by non-ethnographic research, both
Journal of International Business Studies
Fiona Moore
quantitative and qualitative (e.g., Hebert, Very, &
Beamish, 2005; Kristensen & Zeitlin, 2004;
Morosini, Shane, & Singh, 1998; Schweiger &
Goulet, 2005; Vaara, 2003; Vaara & Monin, 2010).
In particular, culture is said by these studies to
affect knowledge transfer (Hebert et al., 2005),
communication between groups (Morosini et al.,
1998), and the ability of the acquired organiza-
tion to develop a good “fit” with its acquirer, in
unpredictable ways (Vaara & Monin, 2010). How-
ever, quantitative methods are not so useful for
exposing the processes whereby explicit discourses
about national identity and culture become, at the
tacit level, sites for dominance, for resistance and
for collaboration, the very factors that contribute
to the unpredictability of the outcome of M&A
(see Zollo, Reuer, & Singh, 2002: 701). Schweiger
and Goulet (2005: 1478) note that while national
culture documentably contributes to the success
or failure of an acquisition, the way in which it
contributes varies unpredictably from case to case,
suggesting that there is something about the
impact of national culture that cannot be discerned
by methods focused on explicit discourses. While
many methods can reveal explicit aspects of culture
in organizations, the active role of the researcher
as interpreter is needed to reveal the tacit ones
(Gephart, 1978), and holistic ethnography can
provide a major contribution in exposing the
tacit discourses underlying explicit discourses of
national culture, as well as providing a more
ambiguous, less positivist view of culture, which
might be of greater use in analyzing its effect on
M&A.
Other qualitative methods, such as those used in
Kristensen and Zeitlin’s (2004) historical study or
Vaara and Monin’s (2010) critical analysis of inter-
views, do more to examine these processes, but still
are not ideal for accessing the tacit knowledge
and beliefs within the organization that influence
the processes in question (van Maanen, 1979b). A
traditional ethnographic study is likely to yield
only a single perspective on the organization, as in
Moore (2005). Vaara (2003), however, conducts a
kind of holistic ethnography, employing mixed
methodologies, including participant observation,
to analyze sense-making processes in the Finnish
acquisition of three Swedish companies. He thus
demonstrates that an ethnographic approach that
takes more than one perspective can allow for the
study of complex cultural discourses in a post-M&A
situation, again indicating that holistic ethnogra-
phy can make a genuine contribution in this area.
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs Fiona Moore
657

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY Table 1 Ethnic and gender composition of the plant labor force
(2003; permanent contracts only)
Methodology Ethnic origin Female Male
This article is based on participant observation,
interviews and archival research at an Anglo- Asian 4 59
German automobile factory (cf. Leonard-Barton, Black 6 54
Black Caribbean 0 3
1990). The resulting data were analyzed, using close
Black other 0 1
reading techniques, by an anthropologist trained in No information available 0 8
the structuralist, Marxist and postmodern schools Oriental 0 4
of thought, who has worked in critical manage- Other 1 21
ment studies, leading to a combination of internal White 52 725
and external perspectives on the organization (cf. White European 2 17
Morris et al., 1999). White other 0 1
The first part of the study took place over a White UK 5 133
9-month period in 2003, 3 months of which I spent Total 70 1026
working on the line in the Final Assembly Area Source: Human Resource Department survey.
(“Assembly”) as a temporary employee of the firm,
with the permission of the management. The
workers on the team were informed once I had Table 2 Demographics of sample team (permanent and tem-
sufficient grasp of its micropolitics to do so without porary contracts, 2003)
causing misunderstandings (see Briggs, 1986). The Ethnicity Female Male
aim of the study was to identify reasons why the
firm was, at the time, having difficulty recruiting Asian 0 2
and retaining female employees. As statistical Black African 0 1
Black Caribbean 0 2
instruments and interviews were generating incon-
White Eastern European 1 0
clusive results, it was determined that an ethno- White UK 0 5
graphic approach using a female ethnographer White other 1 1
would assist the identification of the tacit, uncon- Total 2 11
scious aspects of working as a woman in the factory
that were causing problems (van Maanen, 1979b;
see also Hodson, 1998). I also gained permission to
gather data on national and ethnic identity to managers with the Human Resources (HR) division
further my own research on ethnicity in MNEs, or the temporary labor agencies’ on-site HR teams,
and which provides the data analyzed here in selected because they were involved with recruit-
the context of national identity in acquired ment and retention. Three were shopfloor man-
organizations. agers or trainers, who provided information on
I was restricted in my ability to select a team; shopfloor practices. Most interviewees were from
however, the team I worked in was unusually Assembly, with four from the Paint Shop and one
ethnically diverse (compare Tables 1 and 2), which from Body in White (the area where the unpainted
allowed me good access to discourses regarding car is assembled), to provide an element of compa-
ethnicity and national culture. To provide the rison with different areas of the organization. In
context for subsequent analyses, I will briefly cases in which the allocated time had not allowed
indicate the ethnic makeup of the workforce all relevant issues to be covered, or in which the
(adapted from an in-house survey using contract interview had thrown up new lines of inquiry,
workers, about one-third of the workforce, as an follow-up interviews were conducted. Until the end
indicative sample) and of the team that I studied. of 2003 I lived in Oxford, meaning that I was
Following accepted ethnographic practice (see able to observe how the plant interacted with its
Sanday, 1979), detailed field notes, with a focus on community, following Sharpe’s (2006) approach.
gender and ethnic identity, were made as soon after Ethnographic interviews (informal, unrecorded
each working session as possible, with notes being discussions; see Briggs, 1986) were held with work-
made whenever opportunities arose. Formal inter- ers on the line and in the canteen. The workers with
views were conducted with 18 staff members (see whom I regularly spoke consisted of my team
Ferner & Quintanilla, 2001: 712). Six were office members and about 10 individuals from other

Journal of International Business Studies

 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
658
teams whom I approached in the canteen, selected
to include as wide as possible a range of age, gender
and ethnic groups. This approach was taken
because my earlier research had confirmed Briggs’s
(1986) findings that people in the lower strata of an
organization prefer informal discussions to inter-
views. As these took place repeatedly, they provided
longitudinal data regarding individuals’ opinions.
The second phase involved 18 months’ intermit-
tently working with managers from the HR depart-
ment on two related projects, one involving the
development of a management education program
based on ethnographic techniques, and one
aimed at assessing and improving the plant’s extant
management culture, meaning that I had a specific
mandate to gather data on culture and identity
among the managers. I attended five meetings
more or less evenly spaced out over this period,
attended by between three and ten managers
and myself, and conducted two group interviews
with two sets of three managers, selected from the
different divisions of the plant in order to obtain a
diverse range of opinions on management style, as
well as keeping in touch with the project members
via phone and e-mail. During this phase I was able
to follow up my research in Assembly through
visiting one of the company’s German plants
and interviewing five former expatriates, mainly in
HR, chosen because they had been involved in the
initial restructuring of the plant, and thus could
provide perspectives on HR practices in the wider
organization. The firm did not ask for confidenti-
ality, and, given its unique position in the market,
it would be impossible to conceal its identity;
however, for partial confidentiality, I have dis-
guised the identities of participants.
The Organization: Cowley Works
The plant at which the study was conducted,
Cowley Works, was established by a domestic
British car manufacturer, Morris Motors, in the
early 1910s (Newbigging, Shatford, & Williams,
1998: 12). It was a focus of social activity for its
workers, developing its own sports teams, volunteer
organizations and clubs (Bardsley & Laing, 1999:
86, 95–104; Newbigging et al., 1998). While the
company prospered initially (Whisler, 1999: 49–52,
342–346), it was hit by the decline that affected
industrial Britain from the early 1960s. Nationa-
lized in 1968, it continued to decline, and was
reprivatized in the 1980s as part of the Rover Group
(Chapters 3, 10), owned by BAe (with Honda later
acquiring a 20% stake), finally being acquired by
Journal of International Business Studies
Fiona Moore
BMW in 1994 (Financial Times, 1998; Greenhalgh &
Kilmister, 1993. A useful timeline compiled by
Rover enthusiasts can be found at http://www
.aronline.co.uk/index.htm?histindexf.htm), giving
the plant a history of acquisitions of varying
degrees of friendliness.
Although BMW initially took a hands-off
approach to Rover, the company’s poor financial
performance meant that the decision was taken to
sell parts of it around the turn of the millennium,
although it kept Cowley Works and the MINI, a car
based on Morris’s original Mini. As Cowley Works
produces this make of car exclusively, the plant is
known in the MNE as BMW MINI. The HR-related
goals of the integration at the time when which
the study was taking place, as articulated to me
by British and German managers, were, first, to
improve the branch’s performance in terms of
communication, staff morale and the development
of a positive Anglo-German managerial culture;
and, second, to integrate the branch into the wider
international organization while retaining its
connections with the local community. Holistic
ethnography can thus provide some insight into
the achievement of these HR goals at that point in
time.
BMW MINI is thus an acquired organization with
several lines of potential cultural fragmentation. I
will now use holistic ethnography to consider the
different perspectives on the organization among
the firm’s German and British managers, followed
by a similar treatment of managerial and worker
perspectives, and the impact these had on achiev-
ing the HR goals of the managers at this stage of the
integration process. This will allow greater under-
standing of the complex impact of national and
ethnic culture on post-M&A integration.
MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON COWLEY
WORKS: WHERE GERMANS MUST DOMINATE?
The managers of the plant defined themselves
as having two main social categories, the shop-
floor managers and the office managers, the
latter of whom they further subdivided into
British and German (or local and expatriate, since
the two ethnic groups were roughly contiguous
with expatriate status). The designations “British”
and “German” used here do not refer to any
particular objective “national cultures” that can
be defined through the identification of “cultural
traits,” but to social categories defined by the
managers at BMW MINI, which draw on other
external definitions of these social categories,
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
encompassing various performances of “Britishness”
and “Germanness” (see Brannen & Salk, 2000: 479).
National culture was thus relevant to the organiza-
tion not because of any particular inherent national
traits, as implicit in the more functionalist litera-
ture on culture (see McSweeney, 2002), but as a set
of “native categories” (Harris, 2000) through which
the problems and successes of the integration were
filtered and understood, and which colored the
interactions of the two national groups of managers
with each other.
The managers tended to be physically divided in
terms of where they worked (the shopfloor or the
office), which, tacitly, also related to the social class
and career background of the managers (shopfloor
managers were often former workers, and were
symbolically associated with the workers through
their location). Office managers were also divided
in terms of who they associated with, where they
worked, their national origin and their career
pattern. The German managers were further sub-
divided, being either professionals who had been
brought in specifically to help with issues relating
to the acquisition, or part of general management,
as BMW had an “international stream” whereby
managers were encouraged to take up expatriate
positions in other branches. Most German man-
agers at the time remained in their position at
Cowley for 3 years or less; all the ones of whom I
was aware were white, male, and in their thirties or
early forties.
Among the British managers, the gender ratio was
roughly one-third female to two-thirds male; most
were white. Time spent at the branch ranged from 3
months to 30 years. Some had worked at other
branches, through exchange programs or joining
the “international stream.” There were also man-
agers from temporary labor agencies, who, while
they acted in many ways like the British HR
managers (having offices on site, dressing the same
way, using the same vocabulary, and carrying out
similar functions), were officially employees of the
agencies and not of BMW. The managers thus
developed complex discourses of culture based
around folk definitions of national identity, loca-
tion of office, age and corporate affiliation.
Some German Managerial Perspectives on the
Organization
On the surface, the Germans interviewed for
this study took the view that national culture
was irrelevant to the acquired organization. Their
Fiona Moore
659
attitude is exemplified in a quote from an interview
with a German expatriate:
If you have a clear mindset of a production system, you can
have this production in Britain successful, in Zimbabwe
successful, and you have it in Germany successful. Maybe
you need in Britain a different set of flow charts or a
different way of training the people, adapting to their local
behaviory but if you remember that everywhere the people
are the same, and if you measure in the same way, you can
achieve the same targets.
While the decision to name the plant “BMW
MINI” reflects the idea that Cowley Works should
retain an individual identity while still forming
part of the group, the choice of name is telling,
defining the plant not in terms of its cultural
milieu, but in terms of its product. The German
top management encouraged employees to focus
on the company as an international group, for
instance sponsoring exchange programs for both
workers and managers. This could backfire, how-
ever, as when a top (and thus, by implication,
German) management decision was taken to
import workers from a Portuguese plant tempora-
rily to fill a staff shortage. From the point of view of
the managers this was simply a staffing decision,
but some British managers described it in terms
that suggested it encroached on their authority
over local matters.
The Germans also engaged in tacit symbolic
discourses of national culture, with their explicit
discourses about running the plant and being part
of the company containing subtexts in which they
continually presented themselves as efficient and
productive, and the British as clever but overly
romantic. These characterizations relate to long-
standing definitions of national identity (Hoecklin,
1998), which have also, crucially, linked in to a
similarly long-standing tradition by both national
groups of defining themselves against each other
(Ramsden, 2006). When I was taken on a tour of a
German plant by a German former expatriate, the
text of it was to indicate similarities with Cowley
Works, but the unintentional subtext was that the
German plant was more efficient (pointing out,
for instance, that the line speed was faster, and a
greater number of makes were produced). Whether
or not the plant was more efficient is largely
incidental; the key issue was that the Germans
presented it as such. The marketing and in-plant
imagery surrounding the MINI incorporates the
“Swinging Sixties” iconography of 1960s Britain,
and model names from this period have been
revived (e.g., Clubman for the hatchback model).
Journal of International Business Studies
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
660
However, the new MINIs are visually distinct and
aimed at a more affluent target group than the
original, in a clear implication that the Germans
have taken the “romantic” British product and, by
adding what they perceive as greater efficiency,
made it more “successful” in their terms, exploi-
ting long-standing external discourses of national
culture to justify their actions, couching it in a
way that the British themselves can also identify
with. The Germans thus used discourses of national
culture to justify their actions, to reduce local
resistance to integration (see Vaara & Monin,
2010: 4), and as a means of transferring knowledge
from other areas of the group to Cowley Works (see
Hebert et al., 2005), working toward improved
communication, integration and similarity of man-
agerial culture. However, to assess the success of
this we must also consider the perspectives of the
British managers.
Some British Managerial Perspectives on the
Organization
The British managers seemed to share the same
goals for the acquired organization as the Germans,
in that they said they wanted both to belong to an
international group and to retain a distinct local
identity. Whenever I asked a British manager,
whatever their division or the circumstances of
the question, what they liked about their work-
place, the answer invariably involved the prestige
of the BMW brand. British narratives about the
takeover, colored by the plant’s history of acquisi-
tions of varying degrees of friendliness, were not so
much hostile as resigned to the German presence,
with the event portrayed as necessary to preserve
the company. At the same time, the managers
expressed fears about assimilation: as one HR
manager put it, “this site has a history, good and
bad, and all the qualities seem to have been
stripped away.” The British thus had tacitly reversed
the emphases on the goals of the Germans: they
wanted to remain locally distinct while keeping the
prestige of belonging to BMW.
British views on national culture in the merged
organization also bore surface similarities to the
German view, as well as to outside stereotypes of
both cultures (see Ramsden, 2006). The Germans
were constructed as efficient and formal, and the
British as casual and people-friendly, as these two
examples indicate:
(1) Rover seemed to be a lot more laid back, where BMW, it
sounds silly, but it seems to me to be a lot more rushing
around. But that’s not a bad thing y it’s more professional.
Journal of International Business Studies
Fiona Moore
(Male white British Paint Shop manager, one-to-one inter-
view)
(2) German organizations have a different style. y .There’s
more of a need for people skills [here] than in Germany. In
Germany it’s very much against culture so you need
different people skills. Over here you need to be more
woolly and pink and fluffy with people. (Male white British
Body in White manager, group discussion)
The Germans were thus again described as
“efficient” and the British as “romantic”; however,
here the emphasis was less on the image of the
plant and its product and more on the HR
difficulties incurred by the contrasting approaches,
indicating that what seems to be exactly the same
discourse of national culture can differ strongly in
terms of its subtext. National culture thus formed
an invisible line of fragmentation in the acquired
organization, as indicated by the British manager
blaming communication problems with workers
on the Germans’ “different style” rather than, for
instance, on the personalities of the managers
involved.
At the same time as acknowledging the problems
that they saw as arising specifically from the Anglo-
German nature of the firm, the British also denied
that national identity was the cause, as in this
excerpt from an interview with a white British HR
manager in his early thirties:
We are used to the German style of management, so it isn’t
an issue of nationality, but we know our German directors
are only here for a few years; they are put into positions that
are higher than in Germany, and they don’t have to live
with the consequences, because they move every few years.
From the side of management – it is not to do with German
management style but it is a German problem.
The manager identifies that some of the perceived
problem has to do with the international manage-
ment development strategy of the company. At the
same time, though, he is not able to separate the
Germanness of top management from their strat-
egy, suggesting that to do so is to create an artificial
distinction, and equally that the British do see the
“Germanness” of the management as a source of
division. It is worth noting, also, that not all the
managers who “move every few years” are German,
but their association with Head Office renders them
conceptually “German.” The complex connections
between perceived traits of “national culture,”
organizational culture and the plant’s integration
are thus shown, as is the complexity of the way in
which managers express, rationalize and deal with
conflicts arising between local managers and their
German counterparts.
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
National culture is thus significant within the
integration process as an organizing trope, a means
by which potentially unpopular changes (such as
the Germans taking a more hands-on approach to
managing the plant) can be understood, and non-
quantifiable problems within it (such as friction
between British staff and the German managers)
can be rationalized and understood. It also colored
each group’s attitude to, and actions toward, the
other, with the British anticipating that the
Germans would have trouble communicating with
the workforce, and the Germans doubting the
British ability to run a business efficiently. Accord-
ing to interviews and discussions with HR man-
agers, this led to incidents of friction and conflict
between members of the two groups, further
dividing, rather than integrating, them. The inci-
dents outlined here thus indicate that discourses of
culture were affecting the development of a branch.
While one might argue that all acquisitions,
international or not, include a degree of friction
and conflict, nationality was of clear significance
for this study’s participants as a means of under-
standing and working through these. Again,
whether “national culture” exists as a quality or
not in and of itself, the fact that the managers
believed in it gave it reality as an influence on their
actions, for instance by blaming the “German
style” of the expatriates for communication fail-
ures, or by making presuppositions about how the
other group would react to a particular policy based
on their “national traits.” The subtle differences in
interpretation (for instance on what is meant by
a locally distinct plant within an international
group) also provide a way for researchers to under-
stand otherwise-invisible lines of conflict bet-
ween the groups, which can hinder the process of
integration, as implied by the HR manager’s
critique of the expatriate managers. Taking the
British managers’ views in combination with those
of the Germans thus indicates areas where culture
could (and, in the cases mentioned above, did)
cause problems for integration, knowledge transfer
and employee morale.
A Meeting of Cultures
While a single-group ethnography could have
uncovered the layers of contradiction, negotiation
and subtext in both groups’ views of the role of
national culture in the acquisition, it is when
considering the two groups relative to each other
that areas of tacit conflict and collaboration
become apparent. The fact that both appear to
Fiona Moore
661
have the same goals, but, as the methodological
approach indicates, interpret those in different
ways (see Gephart, 1978: 558), could go some way
toward explaining the divisions that occur for
no apparent reason in post-M&A organizations,
including BMW MINI.
The case of the Portuguese workers mentioned
above provides a good example of a conflict that
appears seemingly “out of nowhere” and yet can be
explained through understanding the company’s
tacit lines of fragmentation. The Germans, seeing
BMW’s identity as an international firm as most
important, did not expect hostility from the British,
whom they assumed held the same view. However,
the fact that the British clearly expressed tacit
concerns about German cultural dominance (as in
the excerpts in which the HR manager denies
that he has a problem with the German presence
while at the same time linking the plant’s opera-
ting problems to the career strategies of German
managers) indicates that the Germans making such
a decision would be seen as encroaching on local
culture, leading to hostility toward the German
managers, which they had not expected, and
consequently found difficult to deal with.
Similarly, the German managers expressed baffle-
ment as to why, although the British managers
supported the “Back to the Track” program, in
which managers would spend a week working on
the line, uptake was limited (the usual stated reason
being lack of time). This concerned them, as they
viewed it as crucial both to the British integrating
into the organization and to the development of a
managerial culture that was more responsive to
worker issues, and some hinted that they saw this
as resistance to integration on the part of British
managers. However, as most British managers
expressed positive feelings toward the program
and the philosophy behind it, their reticence is
better explained by the British class system, under
which an office manager taking part could be seen
as inappropriately familiar with the workers (see
Fox, 2005). At the same time, the fact that some
German managers, having no such taboo, were
approaching the workers to canvas their opinions
on programs and practices also made the British
inclined to draw their own cultural lines more
rigidly. It also had the effect of making the German
managers seem friendlier to the workers (albeit not
producing the sort of alliance the Germans had
hoped for – see below), and making the British feel,
as in the Portuguese example above, that their
authority was being undermined, leading to further
Journal of International Business Studies
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
662
communication problems between British and
German managers (see Vaara & Monin, 2010: 4).
A holistic perspective thus allows researchers to
explore tacit cultural negotiations surrounding
the integration of the acquired organization, of
which its members may not be aware or willing to
articulate, elucidating the way in which national
culture, as a native category used as a means of
explanation and social positioning within the
organization, influenced the managers’ integration
of the branch and transfer of knowledge in ways
both advantageous and detrimental to the success-
ful integration of the branch, and to the flow of
communication within the group.
The holistic ethnographic account thus suggests
that one common cause of unexpected conflict in
cross-cultural encounters – and possibly in any sort
of acquisition, international or domestic – may be
the fact that different groups have, at the tacit
level, divergent interpretations of their supposedly
collectively held values. These conflicts have an
influence on the process of integration, as the
expatriates’ ability to get the local managers to trust
them, work with them and implement their
proposed improvements without ambivalence was
hampered by incidents such as those described in
this section.
WORKER PERSPECTIVES ON COWLEY WORKS:
HIDDEN STAKEHOLDERS
The workers at BMW were a diverse group, engaged
in discourses with managers and outside organiza-
tions, and possessing complex relationships to
national and ethnic cultures that are distinct from
the managers’. The workers fell into two categories:
those with a permanent contract, and those hired
through a temporary labor agency. It was impos-
sible to tell the difference between them in terms of
appearance or duties. As Table 1 indicates, the core
of the workforce was white, British and male, with
some visible minorities and white non-British
(mostly Eastern European), and a smaller number
of women. Time spent at the factory ranged from 3
months to over 30 years. Numerically they were the
largest category of personnel at the factory, and the
ones actually involved in producing the product,
and their morale and attitude to the factory had an
impact on the achievement of the managers’ goals.
German Dominance and British Categorization
While the workers are excluded from having much
official input into the integration process, they
Journal of International Business Studies
Fiona Moore
were affected by the changes, as in this excerpt
from my field notes:
Although the average worker is surrounded by German
(most of the signs on boxes are in German, some of the
signs around the plant are bilingual, some of the processes
appear to have German acronyms, the [cars’] onboard
[satellite] navigational systems are all in German, although
presumably other languages can be programmed y) very
few German people ever appear on the line. Germans thus
achieve a kind of mythological status, as exotic beings
confined to the upper-management region who are respon-
sible for all the strange decisions and have little to do with
the plant itself.
There thus appears to be a German dominance
effect (Smith & Meiksins, 1995), with German
terms and ideas replacing the British norms,
suggesting the successful integration of the branch
into a German-dominated group.
However, the workers’ characterization of the
Germans as exotic creatures allowed them to create,
or reimpose, their own norms. A German senior
manager who paid a visit to the line was referred to
as “the guv’nor, the big cheese” by my team-mates
(British working-class slang for “the boss”). During
an incident in which I nearly collided with a
German visitor who had wandered onto the line,
my team-mates, in reassuring me that I was not at
fault, emphasized that he was a manager and a
German, the tacit corollary to these identities being
that he would therefore naturally be ignorant
of shopfloor safety procedures (even though, for
reasons mentioned above, German managers were
generally more familiar with shopfloor practices
than were British managers). The German man-
agers who took part in the Back to the Track pro-
gram were described by the workers as an amusing
novelty rather than as breakers of class boundaries;
as outsiders, they were permitted liberties that local
managers were not allowed, but were also unable to
affect local barriers. The workers’ challenging of
German dominance thus indicates that, within the
plant, there were discourses of national difference
that reinforced a local identity at the expense of an
international one, but which were unlikely to be
easily identified as a barrier to integration by the
managers.
While one might assume this to be the product of
the same sort of cultural tension that characterized
the British managers, ethnographic research indi-
cates that the situation on the shopfloor is subtly
different. There did not seem to be particular
anxiety about the German presence, and no more
hostility toward the German managers than toward
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
the British ones. A reason for this is suggested by
the workers’ accounts of the plant’s ownership
history, in which previous owners were judged, not
by nationality, but by whether they supported
the plant and the community; the one who came
in for universal criticism, as an “asset-stripper” who
“didn’t care” about the plant, was British. In light
of the frequent changes in ownership, the workers
had developed a way of coping with changes in the
nationality of top management that involved ig-
noring these, assimilating them to their general
characterization of “managers” regardless of nation-
ality, or altering them to what were constructed as
British norms. The workers thus had ways of con-
structing the change in ownership that, on the one
hand, allowed them to maintain relatively good
morale and a good level of output at work, but
which, on the other hand, also allowed them to
resist integration into the group at a cultural and
knowledge-sharing level.
Discourses of Localness and Multiculturalism
The ethnic diversity of the line, as opposed to the
binational division of the managers, also mitigated
the sense of “us versus them” that underlay the
managers’ interactions with each other. The key
cultural issue for the workers was less the degree
of “Britishness” vs “Germanness” (terms that, as
the above discussion indicates, differed subtly
regarding their meanings and referents to the same
terms used by managers), than the plant’s ethnic
diversity:
[The induction leader] says that the fact that we only have
nine ethnic groups represented here today is disappointing;
last week, there were thirteen. He says they are trying to
build up their own axis of evil for George W. Bush; “we have
Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians and Libyans working here, so if any
of you know of any North Koreans or Cubans, send them to
us.”
Consequently, a code of behavior had developed
to forestall cross-cultural conflict. Fights on the line
incurred automatic dismissal; at the same time,
there was a strong unspoken awareness that ethnic
and/or national divisions could be a source of
friction. Ethnicity and nationality were largely
taboo subjects on the line, and conversations were
confined mainly to subjects of common interest
across cultures (principally, football, sex and hip-
hop music). However, the groups that sat together
during breaks were frequently ethnically based,
with Indians sitting with Indians, Romanians with
Romanians, and other groups doing likewise. Co-
ethnics meeting each other would acknowledge
Fiona Moore
663
this with jokes and use of native language. The
divisions in question, while having an ethnic and/
or national dimension, were not along rigid
national lines of the type that might be identified
in a survey: for instance, Anglophones who spoke
French could be invited to sit with Francophone
colleagues (supporting the observation made regar-
ding the managers, that national culture exists in
organizations less as a real, measurable object and
more as an organizing trope or native category).
The workers thus at one level express multi-
cultural solidarity, while acknowledging tensions
at another, allowing them to continue working in
an environment with potential for friction between
cultural groups.
The local nature of the firm’s identity was crucial
to the workers’ process of solidarity-building.
Several were second- or third-generation factory
workers, and Cowley Works’ place in local culture is
indicated in a conversation with a female white
worker in her sixties:
She talks about the role that the factory played in the
community. “My father built that tower,” she says. y .
“Then they just knocked it down and put up them houses.
They want to get rid of that bridge, too, but that’s another
part of local history that people don’t want to be rid of.” She
reminiscences about “going to fêtes, when we were kids,
behind the Romanway [Rover Workers’] Social Club, in the
field back there. Nothing special, but when you were a kid it
was very exciting.”
As the multicultural nature of the local commu-
nity has been explicitly noted in other studies (e.g.,
Shaw, 1988; Ward, Stuart, & Swingedouw, 1993),
characterizing people as “local” provided a way of
negotiating perceived cultural difference. It also
was a yardstick by which to judge the plant’s
owners: briefly included in the woman’s account
is a tacit swipe at the “asset-stripping” former
owner for selling the land upon which the tower
stood (she also assumed that I, despite being a
three-month contract worker, would know who the
“they” in question were). This is also a way of, as
above, maintaining continuity in an acquired
organization, by focusing not on the changes
brought by the acquisition, but on the plant’s
image as a local community member, again with
positive implications for the continued perfor-
mance of the plant. The workers thus used
discourses of local and international culture as
ways of coping with a difficult workplace situation,
but as a result reinforced the image of the plant as a
distinct local entity, removed from any group that
might make a claim to ownership.
Journal of International Business Studies
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
664
The Workers in Context
Although most studies of mergers and acquisitions,
like most case-study-based papers in IB, leave
out the role of the workers in developing post-
M&A culture (e.g., Haspeslagh & Jemison, 1991;
Hebert et al., 2005), a holistic perspective builds on
Aguilera et al.’s (2008) argument that different
groups in an organization play different roles in
the integration process, to show that the workers
do influence the integration of the branch. Had
the workers not developed the coping mecha-
nisms discussed above, and staff turnover worker
morale, at the very least, would have been affected.
Managers told me that their usual indicator
of worker discontent, a rise in turnover rates
(which happened, for instance, when, around
2003, on-the-job training was substituted for an
earlier, more extensive, formal training period),
cost the plant in terms of time and money for
recruitment and training, as well as for reduced
performance while the new workers learned their
jobs. Regardless of whether or not it really did have
this financial impact, the managers certainly
perceived it as an indicator of poor company
performance, which, as with national culture
above, had a genuine impact on their behavior,
policies and social standing. Holistic ethnography
thus indicates a largely overlooked way in which
organizational culture and internal micropolitics
can have real impacts on an integrating organiza-
tion, as the workers’ culture had a tacit effect on the
managers’ actions and perceptions of their com-
pany’s success.
The influence of the workers on the organization
was, however, something that the managers at the
plant found difficult to understand, owing to its
being couched in tacit discourses. All managers
believed that keeping up workforce morale was
crucial, emphasizing to me the cost of rises in
turnover rates. However, they often seemed unclear
on what demoralized the workers, as in one British
HR manager’s critique:
[At] the new [Managing Director]’s first conference, they
said there would be a change in management style but
couldn’t say what the change would be. Result is demor-
alized staff.
However, while the office staff may have been
demoralized by the lack of information, ethno-
graphic research indicated that the workers were
unconcerned about how the managers defined
their “style,” and demoralization tended to occur,
as indicated above, in response to things that
Journal of International Business Studies
Fiona Moore
directly affected shopfloor practices. Furthermore,
German managers incurred friction with workers
when they attempted to change locally estab-
lished reward practices; a shopfloor manager
described in a group interview an incident where
the managers handed out cakes to the workers
at Christmas, which led to “cake thrown all
over” the car park. While the workers may have
had no official say in the acquisition process, it was
evident from such incidents that they caused
problems for management when their culture was
poorly understood, either by leaving the firm or
by informal resistance activities, and a lack of
understanding of the workers’ view of the process
could thus cause problems for the goals of the
integration.
The results of my research on why the firm was
having difficulty recruiting and retaining women
illustrate the way in which such misunderstandings
occurred, leading to what managers perceived as
significant costs to the organization. First, in the
wider British culture, people’s associations regard-
ing automobile factory work are that it is physi-
cally demanding, dangerous and masculine, even
though the reality is quite different. Academic and
professional colleagues, learning what I was doing,
were surprised that “a little girl” like myself
was working in a car factory, and asked whether I
found the work difficult, or was harassed by male
colleagues (neither of which was the case). Even a
woman I encountered during induction testing,
who was applying for a job at BMW after being
made redundant at a factory in another indus-
trial sector (and who was therefore familiar with
factory conditions), observed that her application
“didn’t stand a chance, with all these big strong
men here.”
Second, while the management had put in place
work–life balance measures to allow women with
families to work at the plant, they were aimed
mainly at people working a managerial schedule:
the staff crèche, for instance, opened some time
after the early shift at the factory began, and there
were no similar facilities for staff working the night
or weekend shifts. The consequence for the firm
was that they were having difficulty recruiting and
retaining a section of the workforce who they
needed, as, leaving aside their desire to be seen
as an equal-opportunities employer, certain jobs
(including the one I myself did) were seen as more
physically or mentally suited to women, meaning
that BMW felt the need to employ women in these
positions.
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
Furthermore, the cost of replacing and training
new workers due to staff turnover was named as a
cause for concern by HR managers; it was perceived
to be a significant enough issue to warrant getting
in outside assistance to resolve. While the general
problem of recruiting women pre-dated the acqui-
sition (see, for instance, Sweeney, 1993), it gained a
new significance in the post-acquisition context, as
BMW placed great value on its policies aimed at
increasing the number of women in the workplace,
and thus the German managers took a particular
interest in improving performance in this area (for
instance initiating outreach programs to encourage
schoolgirls to consider jobs in the auto industry).
This means that the concerns about the recruit-
ment and retention of women form part of the
negotiations for power between the Germans and
the British. MINI’s gender issues were thus due
partly to tacit, unconscious assumptions about
gender and work in British culture, and partly to
managers mistakenly assuming that the workforce’s
perspectives were the same as their own, but these
assumptions had what managers described as
significant impacts on turnover, which were used
as a lever by the German managers in their
negotiations for power.
However, the German managers achieved some
success with the workers in that they, in keeping
with BMW’s overall philosophy of corporate social
responsibility, encouraged workers’ philanthropic
activities and sponsored local charities, indicating
that they were willing to situate the plant as a good
local citizen. Similarly, changing a practice of
rewarding the team who came up with the best
money-saving idea with corporate logo T-shirts
(reflecting the managers’, but not the workers’,
identification with the brand) to one instead
involving excursions to local attractions popular
with the workforce, such as the dog track (dog
racing being a traditional British working-class
pastime) proved successful. Again, this builds on
Aguilera et al.’s (2008) description of how different
groups in the acquired organization internalize
efforts to integrate them into the firm in different
ways. An understanding of areas of fit between
worker and managerial cultures, provided by a
holistic perspective, can encourage the retention
of a trained and happy – and consequently pro-
ductive – workforce willing to remain in their jobs
and engage in constructive dialogue with man-
agers, achieving the HR goals of the organization at
this stage of the integration, and reducing percep-
tions of failure among the management.
Fiona Moore
665
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Findings of the Study
I will here consider how this article has met the
study’s aims, answered the research questions, and
contributed to IB. In terms of the first aim, I have
built upon earlier research to show that a holistic
ethnographic perspective provides new insights
into the operation of tacit discourses of national
culture in organizations. While ethnography on
single groups provides rich data about national
culture, it is only when we compare the groups’
perspectives that we are able to see how certain
problems developed, why there is a particular fit
between different worldviews, and what the con-
sequences were, which is a crucial way in which
holistic ethnography can contribute to IB research.
In terms of the second, arguably more important,
aim, of how tacit discourses of national culture (as
defined and perceived by the study participants)
affect the integration of an acquired subsidiary into
an MNE, the use of holistic ethnography has shown
that these discourses act as complex factors within
the integration process, incorporating simulta-
neous elements of domination, acquiescence, resis-
tance and negotiation, which could, together or
separately, positively or negatively, influence their
possessors’ actions toward their local or head office
counterparts. Although both German and British
managers explicitly agreed that the ideal situation
for Cowley Works in terms of its post-integration
culture would be as a firm with a distinctive local
identity but a connection to the wider organiza-
tion, for instance, this apparent synergy of values
hid a sharp divergence at the tacit level, which led
to unforeseen conflicts brewing up apparently
spontaneously (see Hebert et al., 2005). The work-
ers, meanwhile, rejected internationalist discourses,
focusing on the plant’s local connections. None-
theless, ethnographic research indicates that they
were receptive to managerial overtures that met
them on their own cultural territory; what might
seem a straightforward anti-management stance
can be seen, through holistic ethnography, to
have more complex meanings, which affected the
achievement of the HR goals of the organization.
Furthermore, holistic ethnography allows for the
acknowledgment of ambiguities within the integra-
tion process, rather than simple questions of
“merger success” or “merger failure.” Furthermore,
by focusing on “success” and “failure” not through
using etic numerical metrics, but in terms of the
managers’ perceptions of the same, we achieve a
Journal of International Business Studies
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
666
picture arguably closer to the lived experience of
“success” and “failure” for managers, following
Harzing and Christensen’s (2004) approach to
expatriate failure. Holistic ethnography thus con-
tributes to IB by addressing a key issue: elucidating
the complex and contradictory role of culture, and
of manager–worker dynamics, in the post-M&A
integration process, and their consequences.
While it is a valid argument that similar sorts of
problems might occur in a domestic acquisition in
which the acquirer imposes its norms and practices
on the acquired, the fact remains that the events of
the integration were understood through a set of
symbols and tropes specifically related to national
identity, which were absorbed through the external
high and popular cultures of both nations (see
Ramsden, 2006), which affected the decisions
managers took, and how they understood and
rationalized their actions. It is thus not so much
the case that national culture has an effect on
mergers and acquisitions that is qualitatively
different from that of any other sort of culture
(despite the assumptions of, for instance, Morosini
et al., 1998), but that it is understood and perceived
by participants to have a distinctive impact,
and this perception affects the way in which they
conduct themselves within the integration and
operational processes. A domestic acquirer, for
instance, might be able to call upon discourses of
shared national culture to build solidarity, whereas
here the British managers’ interactions with the
Germans were colored by indigenous stereotypes of
Germans as a traditional “enemy” figure (Ramsden,
2006: Chapter 10). The holistic ethnographic
approach thus improves on earlier approaches
to cross-cultural management by exploring more
thoroughly the complexity of the impact of national
culture on post-acquisition integration: as a focus for
explanation, categorization and sense-making that
affects how managers understand, and consequently
act upon, decisions and points of conflict.
Furthermore, the holistic ethnographic approach
contributes to IB by allowing M&A to be explored
in terms of their unique situations. While one
might, for instance, argue that there are similarities
between this case and that of Daimler-Chrysler (see
Badrtalei & Bates, 2007), both involving the take-
over of an iconic, but failing, Anglo/American
automobile company by a more successful German
one, when seen from a holistic ethnographic
perspective the differences become more apparent,
as the relationships between the groups of man-
agers, the histories and market positions of the
Journal of International Business Studies
Fiona Moore
companies, the conceptions of national cultures,
and the nature of the workforce are all quite
different. Rather than showing German and British
national culture as solid, unified “billiard balls,” or
as integrating unproblematically to form a seamless
whole, the holistic view shows how, as in Brannen
and Salk’s (2000) case, discourses of national
culture can at once mesh and fail to mesh, and
how these same discourses are affected by others,
such as class, multiculturalism and local identity.
Managers must have an understanding of such
tacit discourses in order to facilitate integration,
and be aware of the different dynamics that
underpin acquisitions, mergers and joint ventures,
which can affect knowledge transfer and worker
satisfaction.
In terms of the research questions, then, the tacit
categorizations of national culture within the
organization that underlie discourse about the
merger are demonstrated to generate areas of
conflict and of collaboration, and a holistic per-
spective is needed to show how these affect
the integration process, and the perception of its
“success” or “failure.”
Implications for Post-M&A Integration
In terms of its implications for post-M&A firms,
this article contributes ways of addressing a long-
standing issue in the mergers and acquisitions
literature. Such organizations, as discussed above,
involve unpredictable areas of friction: as Vaara and
Monin (2010: 3) put it:
Despite extensive research on mergers and acquisitions, we
do not seem to fully understand the dynamics of post-
merger integration. In particular, there is a paucity of
knowledge on the pathological dynamics that often lie
behind merger failure.
What a holistic ethnographic perspective can
contribute is insight into the tacit (meaning
“unspoken” or “unconscious”) aspects of Brannen
and Salk’s (2000) process of cultural negotiation
that underlies the above-mentioned “pathological
dynamics,” thus providing a way of understanding,
and, in some cases, of arresting them before they
have done much damage (as with my own research
on gender on the line, which led to changes in
policy and practice at Cowley Works). Furthermore,
unlike Dore (1973), it does not only compare
and contrast, but also shows how the different
groups interact, shape each other and react to each
other’s decisions, which Schweiger and Goulet
(2005: 1478) see as crucial to the achievement of
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
integration. The situation between the British and
German managers, for instance, includes elements
of acquirer/acquired dynamics as well as German/
British and large firm/small firm ones, and these
dynamics are also clearly shaped by the firm’s
history. The consequences, also, were not uni-
formly “pathological” or “beneficial,” but a mixture
of the two. Finally, by focusing not on quanti-
tative metrics of “success” or “failure,” but on the
perception of these by managers, we can answer the
question of how, for instance, a merger or joint
venture that appears to be functioning on paper
might subsequently fall apart.
A holistic ethnographic perspective also allows us
to take the embeddedness of the organization into
account. Some of the lack of understanding of
the dynamics of post-merger integration stems
from the fact that, in IB, organizations are often
portrayed as if in a vacuum, without understanding
of the context (as argued by Chapman, 1997: 13).
The literature on network theory (e.g., Andersson,
2003) argues that we should view companies as
part of integrated social networks; however, as
McSweeney (2002: 93–95) notes, more quantitative
and/or interview-focused methods artificially
exclude other connections aside from those being
directly analyzed (which, as the Daimler-Chrysler
comparison above indicates, is crucial to under-
standing the origins of conflict in M&A), and one
might argue that even a more ethnographic
perspective, if it focuses on a small group, could
be similarly isolationist. The value of holistic
ethnography is to be able to better understand the
social dynamics that underlie an organization’s
perceived successes and failures.
Methodological Implications
This study suggests that there are situations in
which a holistic ethnographic perspective has
advantages over quantitative methods, surveys,
interviews and single-group ethnography. Whereas
a survey can provide some sense of how people
self-identify in an organization, and data on the
frequency of intergroup interaction, it cannot
measure categories the survey designer does not
know about: BMW’s in-house survey missed the
fact that most white non-British workers were
Eastern European. Surveys also are less good at
identifying negotiation and exchange between
groups, and at explaining motivations, as BMW
quantitative data identified that many women
resigned in their first three months, but not why
this was so. Holistic ethnography can keep the
Fiona Moore
667
broad perspective through including diverse
groups, but also showing the connections and
divisions between them, for instance exploring
the way the workers were affected, unwittingly, by
managerial discourses at MINI. It can consider tacit
motivations behind explicit actions (such as why
women were leaving the organization) and contra-
dictions, as in the ways the English managers
simultaneously blamed German culture for their
problems and denied they were doing so. While a
survey could provide the information that both
British and German managers shared the same ideal
for the plant as a distinct entity in a global group, it
could not tell you that they meant this in different
ways.
Interviews can flesh out the details exposed by
surveys. An interview could explore the nuances of
the different meanings the German and British
managers held for the common ideal of the plant
as a distinct entity in a global group. An astute
interviewer can read between the lines and pick up
on tacit discourses underlying explicit statements.
Interviews could also provide cross-group data,
although they are limited by the fact that the
interviewer may not be aware of some of the groups
in the organization (although “British managers”
and “German managers” formed an obvious divi-
sion, it was participant observation that indicated
the office/shopfloor manager divide). However,
interviews can only identify discourses that people
are aware of or willing to talk about. Had I not
learned through other methods about the tension
over the “asset-stripping” former owner, I would
not have known to ask about it in interviews. It is
also worth noting that the interviews in this article
have been interpreted in light of participant obser-
vation data; had I not seen how British managers
avoided the shopfloor, I might have taken at face
value their statements that they did not participate
in the “Back to the Track” program because of a lack
of time.
Single-group ethnography, finally, provides more
detail on tacit knowledge and discourse, thus
allowing the researcher to gain insight into the
mindsets behind people’s actions and statements.
It provides an in-depth, interpretive view of the
activities of a particular group, and can, as in
Gephart (1978), explore the layers of meaning
within that group to a high degree of complexity.
The problem is that, even following Burawoy’s
(2003) suggested program of repeated revisits,
single-group ethnography does not provide much
of a cross-group perspective: had the MINI case
Journal of International Business Studies
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
668
been limited to a study of the shopfloor, the
Christmas cake incident would just be seen as
the rejection of a patronizing attempt at dom-
inance, leaving out the managerial view that it was
a well-intentioned idea that went wrong owing to
a lack of cultural knowledge. The boundaries bet-
ween single-group and holistic ethnography are
fairly flexible: for instance, a small-group ethno-
graphy might, through spending brief amounts of
time exploring different groups in a firm, approach
the holistic, and multiple single-group ethnogra-
phies could come together to provide a holistic
perspective.
Holistic ethnography therefore provides both a
broad perspective on the organization and access to
tacit discourses. It allows researchers to see culture
as having simultaneous elements of rigidness
and fluidity, and positive and negative impacts on
the organization. It also allows the exploration of
internal discourses and how they affect different
groups in the organization, and how these groups
relate differently to external discourses. Holistic
ethnography can build upon more conventional
ethnographic studies (e.g., van Maanen & Barley,
1984) to provide ways of assessing how the tacit
discourses of different groups affect each other.
While a mixed-method study, for instance a survey
combined with an ethnography, might be able to
provide a broad-based perspective coupled with a
detailed perspective on a small group within the
organization, it would not be able to provide the
same comparative perspective involving experien-
tial data on many groups. As well as for mergers and
acquisitions, similar techniques could prove useful
in analyzing the dynamics of multicultural teams,
or cross-cultural management issues, or in consid-
ering means of identifying and transferring tacit
knowledge in MNEs, or indeed any circumstances
involving multiple groups engaged in complex
social relations. The findings of this study also
suggest that more creativity in the use of ethno-
graphic methods in IB could prove useful in
addressing some current problems. It might be
worth considering what the life history or the
experimental ethnography could yield in terms of
understanding organizational culture.
Limitations and Areas for Further Research
The main difficulty of the holistic ethnographic
approach is that the level of detail required for a
successful project is extensive, as is the time needed
to gather sufficient data. Furthermore, there is the
issue that the ethnographer him/herself constructs
Journal of International Business Studies
Fiona Moore
the narrative of the organization, making it open to
contestation, and that both the ethnographer’s
perspective and those of participants are in flux
and subject to interpretation (see Gephart, 1978:
557–558). However, the fact that many anthropol-
ogists have successfully studied multiple groups
suggests that it would not be impossible to do this.
It is also not uncommon for anthropologists to
work in teams to develop a more complex picture
of a group (e.g., Mayer & Mayer, 1961). Equally,
it is possible, as noted above, to do single-group
ethnography with holistic elements. There is also
the fact that any ethnographic approach can appear
“anecdotal,” as the data consist of descriptions of
incidents that, furthermore, take place at a parti-
cular moment in the history of the organization.
However, more longitudinal data can be obtained
through prolonging the study or through repeated
revisits; furthermore, focusing in depth on a parti-
cular moment makes for deeper, richer data,
which can be build upon through various other
techniques.
There are other issues, regarding what makes an
ethnography “holistic,” and the methodological
problem of defining groups and the level of
analysis. While a holistic ethnography, in this
case, includes the perspective of multiple groups,
the groups defined are context-dependent. Indeed,
the present study is not just a comparison between
two or three groups, but includes subgroups, areas
of overlap, and continually shifting definitions
of personal and professional identity. As much as
on different national groups or different types of
employee within an organization, one could do
holistic ethnography on different professional
groups of the same status within the organization
(e.g., Barley, 1990), or between multiple organiza-
tions (e.g., Vaara, 2003). However, as suggested by
Brannen and Salk (2000), this makes it a better tool
for studying such nebulous areas as “culture,” as it
allows the researcher to adjust the definition of the
group according to the nature of the study and
the self-identification of the group, and allows for
the flexibility to explore the complex nature of
identity, “native categories,” and the formation and
re-formation of social units. Identifying divisions
should ideally be guided by the self-identification
of people in the studied group(s), but may nece-
ssarily include external interpretation by the
researcher (for instance, in this case, acknowled-
ging that the managers in charge of temporary
labor, although for the most part treated, and
acting, the same as contracted BMW managers,
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
were employed by other organizations) and others.
The nature of the research question and degree of
access therefore determine the level at which the
ethnography is carried out, and both these and the
self- and other-definition of the study’s subjects
determine the group divisions, while recognizing
that this is not necessarily the only way in which
the organization could be defined or divided.
Furthermore, although the present study has
focused on comparison, holistic ethnography is
not inherently comparative, but can also focus on
the context of the study, the qualities of the
ethnographer, and the interactions between ethno-
grapher and studied group. The definition and
nature of the groups, and the type of ethnography
involved, are thus variables that must be addressed
on a case-by-case basis, but this can be seen
as a strength of the method, giving it greater
flexibility and freeing it from externally imposed
categorization.
Team research, albeit difficult to organize, can
also compensate for the biases and perspectives
of the researcher (although in the case of single
ethnographers, this can be surmounted through
reflexivity and the acknowledgement of other
voices; Burawoy, 2003). Working with other, non-
ethnographic qualitative researchers, or using mul-
tiple qualitative techniques (as in Leonard-Barton,
1990) could provide balance. A lone ethnographer
studying many groups in one organization over an
extended period raises other questions, such as how
to ensure that the context is the “same” over such a
period of study, so that the plurality of time-
separated groups are comparably part of the “same
organization,” or that the ethnographer is the
“same person” (see Burawoy, 2003; Pervin, 1989).
This can be addressed through including in the
study the element of change over time (see Barley,
1990). Access is also crucial: most ethnographers
are fortunate to have detailed access to even a
REFERENCES
Aguilera, R. V., Dencker, J. C., & Yalabik, Z. 2008. Institutions
and organizational socialization: Integrating employees in
cross-border mergers and acquisitions. In A.Y. Lewin, S.T.
Cavusgil, G.T.M. Hult, & D. Griffith (Eds), Thought leadership
in advancing international business research (Vol. 2): 153–189
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Andersson, U. 2003. Managing the transfer of capabilities within
multinational corporations: The dual role of the subsidiary.
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 19(4): 425–442.
Baba, M. L. 1998. Anthropology of work in the Fortune 1000:
A critical retrospective. Anthropology of Work Review, 18(4):
17–28.
Fiona Moore
669
single group in an organization. It is, however,
not impossible for such a degree of access to be
attained, for instance by Soulsby and Clark in
their longitudinal research on Czech companies
(e.g., Soulsby & Clark, 2007).
The conclusions of this study are threefold. First,
that many problems in the integration of post-
M&A organizations are caused by the tacit opera-
tion of discourses of culture, creating areas of lack
of fit of which actors in the organization are
unaware. Second, this study explores a little-used
but effective means for identifying and acting
upon these, through using a holistic ethnographic
perspective on the organization, looking at the
experiences of multiple groups together and in the
organizational context. Finally, the study demon-
strates that IB studies could benefit from exploring
less conventional areas of ethnographic methodol-
ogy. This study thus contributes by highlighting
the uses of ethnographic techniques in exploring
the role played by national identities in cross-
border mergers and acquisitions, and the mutual
impact of worker and manager perspectives on
acquired organizations, as well as clarifying the
actual impact of cross-cultural discourses on the
success of post-acquisition integration.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Funding for this research was made possible by the
Nuffield Foundation and BMW Ltd. This article has
previously been presented at the Academy of Interna-
tional Business. An earlier and substantially different
version of this article is published in R. Piekkari and
C. Welch (eds.) (2011), Rethinking the Case Study
Approach in International Business Research, London:
Edward Elgar. Thanks are extended to all editors and
discussants who have reviewed this article, and to
Professor Ed Clark for providing invaluable comments
upon earlier drafts.
Badrtalei, J., & Bates, D. L. 2007. Effect of organizational cultures
on mergers and acquisitions: The case of Daimler Chrysler.
International Journal of Management, 24(2): 303–317.
Bardsley, G., & Laing, S. 1999. Making cars at Cowley: From
Morris to Rover. Stroud: British Motor Industry Heritage Trust.
Barley, S. R. 1983. Semiotics and the study of occupational and
organizational cultures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28(3):
393–413.
Barley, S. R. 1986. Technology as an occasion for structuring:
Evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social
order of radiology departments. Administrative Science
Quarterly, 31(1): 78–108.
Journal of International Business Studies
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
670
Barley, S. R. 1990. Images of imaging: Notes on doing
longitudinal field work. Organization Science, 1(3): 220–247.
Barley, S. R. 1996. Technicians in the workplace: Ethnographic
evidence for bringing work into organization studies. Admin-
istrative Science Quarterly, 41(3): 404–441.
Black Elk, W., & Lyon, W. S. 1990. Black Elk: The sacred ways of a
Lakota. New York: Harper & Row.
Brannen, M. Y., & Salk, J. 2000. Partnering across borders:
Negotiating organizational culture in a German-Japanese joint
venture. Human Relations, 53(4): 451–487.
Briggs, C. L. 1986. Learning how to ask: A sociolinguistic appraisal
of the role of the interview in social science research. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Burawoy, M. 2003. Revisits: An outline of a theory of reflexive
ethnography. American Sociological Review, 68(5): 645–679.
Chapman, M. 1997. Social anthropology, business studies
and cultural issues. International Studies of Management and
Organization, 26(4): 3–29.
Dore, R. P. 1973. British factory, Japanese factory: The origins of
national diversity in industrial relations. London: University of
California Press.
Douglas, M. 1993. In the wilderness: The doctrine of defilement in
the Book of Numbers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ferner, A., & Quintanilla, J. 2001. Multinationals, national
business systems and HRM: The enduring influence of national
identity or a process of “Anglo-Saxonization”. International
Journal of Human Resource Management, 9(4): 710–731.
Financial Times. 1998. Rover’s poor return. 22 October: 20.
Fox, K. 2005. Watching the English: The hidden rules of English
behaviour. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Gephart, R. P. 1978. Status degradation and organizational
succession: An ethnomethodological approach. Administrative
Science Quarterly, 23(4): 553–581.
Gluckman, M. 1958. Analysis of a social situation in modern
Zululand. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Greenhalgh, C., & Kilmister, A. 1993. The British economy, the
state and the motor industry. In T. Hayter & D. Harvey (Eds),
The factory and the city: The story of the Cowley automobile
workers in Oxford: 26–46. London: Mansell.
Harris, S. 2000. Reconciling positive and interpretative interna-
tional management research: A native category approach.
International Business Review, 9(6): 755–770.
Harzing, A.-W., & Christensen, C. 2004. Expatriate failure: Time
to abandon the concept? Career Development International,
9(7): 616–626.
Haspeslagh, P. C., & Jemison, D. B. 1991. Creating value through
corporate renewal. New York: Free Press.
Hebert, L., Very, P., & Beamish, P. 2005. Expatriation as a bridge
over troubled water: A knowledge-based perspective applied
to cross-border acquisitions. Organization Studies, 26(10):
1455–1476.
Hodson, R. 1998. Organizational ethnographies: An underutilized
resource in the sociology of work. Social Forces, 76(4): 173–208.
Hoecklin, L. M. 1998. Motherhood in the fatherland: Towards
understanding a mother centre in southern Germany. DPhil
Thesis, ISCA, University of Oxford, Oxford.
Jick, T. D. 1979. Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods:
Triangulation in action. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(4):
602–611.
Kristensen, P. H., & Zeitlin, J. 2004. Local players in global games:
The strategic constitution of a multinational corporation. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Leonard-Barton, D. 1990. A dual methodology for case studies:
Synergistic use of a longitudinal single site with replicated
multiple sites. Organization Science, 1(3): 248–266.
Lo, J. 1990. Office ladies, factory women: Life and work at a
Japanese company. London: East Gate.
Mayer, P., & Mayer, I. 1961. Townsmen or tribesmen: Con-
servatism and the process of urbanization in a South African city.
Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
Journal of International Business Studies
Fiona Moore
McFeat, T. 1974. Small-group cultures. Elmsford: Pergamon
Press.
McSweeney, B. 2002. Hofstede’s model of national cultural
differences and their consequences: A triumph of faith – A
failure of analysis. Human Relations, 55(1): 89–119.
Miles, M. B. 1979. Qualitative data as an attractive nuisance:
The problem of analysis. Administrative Science Quarterly,
24(4): 590–601.
Moore, F. 2005. Transnational business cultures: Life and work in a
multinational corporation. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Morosini, P., Shane, S., & Singh, H. 1998. National cultural
distance and cross-border acquisition performance. Journal of
International Business Studies, 29(1): 137–158.
Morris, M. W., Leung, K., Ames, D., & Lickel, B. 1999. Views
from the inside and outside: Integrating emic and etic insights
about culture and justice judgment. Academy of Management
Review, 24(4): 781–796.
Newbigging, C., Shatford, S., & Williams, T. 1998. The changing
faces of Cowley Works. Witney: Robert Boyd Publications.
Pentland, B. 1999. Building process theory with narrative: From
description to explanation. Academy of Management Review,
24(4): 711–724.
Pervin, L. A. 1989. Persons, situations, interactions: The history
of a controversy and a discussion of theoretical models.
Academy of Management Review, 14(3): 350–360.
Ramsden, J. 2006. Don’t mention the war: The British and the
Germans since 1890. London: Abacus.
Sackmann, S. A., & Phillips, M. E. 2004. Contextual influences
on culture research: Shifting assumptions for new workplace
realities. International Journal of Cross-cultural Management,
4(3): 370–390.
Sakai, J. 2000. Japanese bankers in the City of London: Language,
culture and identity in the Japanese diaspora. London:
Routledge.
Sanday, P. R. 1979. The ethnographic paradigm(s). Adminis-
trative Science Quarterly, 24(4): 527–538.
Schweiger, D. M., & Goulet, P. K. 2005. Facilitating acquisition
integration through deep-level cultural learning interventions:
A longitudinal field experiment. Organization Studies, 26(10):
1477–1499.
Sharpe, D. 2006. Shopfloor practices under changing forms
of managerial control: A comparative ethnographic study
of micro-politics, control and resistance within a Japanese
multinational. Journal of International Management, 12(3):
318–339.
Shaw, A. 1988. A Pakistani community in Britain. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
Smith, C., & Meiksins, P. 1995. System, society and dominance
effects in cross-national organizational analysis. Work, Employ-
ment and Society, 9(2): 241–267.
Soulsby, A., & Clark, E. 2007. Organization theory and the post-
socialist transformation: Contributions to organizational
knowledge. Human Relations, 60(10): 1419–1442.
Spiegel, A. D., & McAllister, P. A. 1991. Introduction. In
A.D. Spiegel & P.A. McAllister (Eds), Tradition and transition
in Southern Africa: 1–10. Johannesberg: Witwatersrand
University Press.
Sweeney, A.-M. 1993. Women making cars, making trouble,
making history. In T. Hayter & D. Harvey (Eds), The factory and
the city: The story of the Cowley automobile workers in Oxford:
116–139. London: Mansell.
Vaara, E. 2003. Post-acquisition integration as sensemaking:
Glimpses of ambiguity, confusion, hypocrisy, and politiciza-
tion. Journal of Management Studies, 40(4): 859–894.
Vaara, E., & Monin, P. 2010. A recursive perspective on
discursive legitimation and organizational action in mergers
and acquisitions. Organization Science, 21(1): 3–22.
van Maanen, J. 1979a. Reclaiming qualitative methods for
organizational research: A preface. Administrative Science
Quarterly, 24(4): 520–526.
 Holistic ethnography and culture in MNEs
van Maanen, J. 1979b. The fact of fiction in organizational
ethnography. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(4): 539–550.
van Maanen, J., & Barley, S. 1984. Occupational communities:
Culture and control in organizations. Research in Organiza-
tional Behavior, 6(2): 287–365.
Ward, S., Stuart, O., & Swingedouw, E. 1993. Cowley in the
Oxford economy. In T. Hayter & D. Harvey (Eds), The factory
and the city: The story of the Cowley automobile workers in
Oxford: 67–92. London: Mansell.
Whisler, T. R. 1999. The British motor industry, 1945–94: A study
in industrial decline. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zollo, M., Reuer, J. J., & Singh, H. 2002. Interorganizational
routines and performance in strategic alliances. Organization
Science, 13(6): 701–713.
Accepted by Rosalie Tung, Area Editor, 27 December 2010. This paper has been with the author for four revisions.
Fiona Moore
671
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fiona Moore (fiona.moore@rhul.ac.uk) was born in
Canada and is currently resident in the UK. She
received her doctorate from Oxford University, and
is now Lecturer in Human Resource Management at
Royal Holloway, University of London. Her main
research interest is in the uses of ethnicity and
identity in transnational corporations and expatri-
ate communities, currently focusing on Taiwanese
overseas businesspeople.
Journal of International Business Studies
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.