Going beyond national cultures – dynamic interaction between intra-national, regional, and organizational realities

Cultural studies in international business have focused intensively on country-level analyses and have been criticized for their limited efforts to conceptualize and measure much richer, more dynamic and multi-level cultures. Drawing on literature from economic geography, we propose a new perspective that takes intra-national regional culture as the unit of analysis. Combining this perspective with acculturation theory and the concepts of cultural strength and embeddedness, we develop a conceptual model to analyze dynamic interaction between intra-national regional cultures and organizational cultures and propositions on how such interactions affect firm performance. Implications for future research and business practice are presented.