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Essay about Research Critical Analysis

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Journal Article Evaluation: Barinaga, E. (2007) ‘Cultural diversity’ at work: ‘National culture’ as a discourse organizing an international project group, Human Relations, 60(2):
315-340.
Ester Barinaga’s paper on multinational work teams and how they organize themselves using ‘national culture’ and ‘cultural diversity’ as discursive resources is critically discussed, with special attention paid to the limitations of her research approach. This review proceeds as follows. First, the theoretical framework is briefly outlined in which Barinaga embeds the specific angle of her research project. Then follows a critical description of the international team she followed, her chosen method of observation and the findings she presents. …show more content…

While she clearly positions her research approach within the wider framework of the field, she fails to mention the Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness Research Project (GLOBE) initiated by R. House (House et al., 2002). Although its large-scale, quantitative research approach differs from her ethnographic study and takes on the positivist stance she is arguing against, it deserves mentioning as both research projects explore the impact of cultural diversity on organizational processes in multinational work teams.

Research Approach
Using the term discourse as coined by Foucault (1980), Barinaga explores in-depth how team members make sense of their daily group life by way of their discourse on ‘cultural diversity’. To gain insight into the “actors’ construction of themselves and others” (Baszanger & Dodier, 1997, in Barinaga, 2007), she therefore chose ethnographic research methods to collect a comprehensive body of qualitative data on one work team with members from five different countries. She closely followed every workshop and communication between meetings over a course of 17 month and recorded meetings, interviewed team

members individually and collected all documents produced by or passed around in the group.
Additionally she asked each team member via e-mail

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