From "Onion" to "Ocean": Paradox and Change in National Cultures

Differing from the dominant bipolar paradigm of analyzing national cultures, this paper champions a dialectical approach that sees each national culture as having a life of its own full of dynamics and paradoxes. The paper calls for shifting our mindset from the Cold War “onion” way of analyzing culture to a new “ocean” way of understanding culture to capture the dynamics of national cultures and international cross-cultural management in the age of globalization.