From 'business culture' to 'brand state': conceptions of nation and culture in business literature on cultural difference.

Halsall, Robert

Abstract

This article examines changing conceptions of culture and nation in business literature from the early 1990s to the present. In the early 1990s the growth of literature concerned with depicting the cultural differences between national varieties of capitalism and business systems seemingly betokened an interest in diversity in the business world. This seeming interest in cultural diversity, however, concealed an implicit neo-liberal teleology which implies a convergence hypothesis and change in the cultural role of the nation state to that of a location manager, whose role is merely to guarantee favourable conditions for business with the minimum of state intervention. This reconceptualisation of the nation leads to the ultimate stage in this teleology, the discourse of the brand state, in which culture is seen as just equivalent to those aspects of a countrys brand equity which meet the requirements of instant recognisability to the outside world.

Citation

HALSALL, R. 2008. From 'business culture' to 'brand state': conceptions of nation and culture in business literature on cultural difference. Culture and organization [online], 14(1), pages 15-30. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/14759550701863290

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 31, 2008
• Online Publication Date: Mar 31, 2008
• Publication Date: Mar 31, 2008
• Deposit Date: Oct 2, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 2, 2009
• Journal: Culture and organization
• Print ISSN: 1475-9551
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-2760
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 15-30
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14759550701863290
• Keywords: Business; Culture; Neoliberalism; Teleology; Brand state
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/425