Foreignness is generally viewed as a liability for the multinational enterprise, negatively affecting strategic fit and the successful transfer of firm assets abroad. Using semiotics – the study of how language systems convey meaning – and the Walt Disney Company’s experiences in internationalization, this chapter provides an illustrative example of a focal transcultural ethnography which develops the notion of semantic fit as a necessary complement to strategic fit and formalizes a conceptual model of recontextualization – the process by which firm assets take on new meanings in distinct cultural environments.

Whereas operating globally once meant penetrating and exploiting markets around the world, in today’s knowledge-based economy the challenge is to innovate by learning from the world. Sustaining competitive advantage now requires a firm to be able to sense, meld, and thoughtfully leverage the knowledge that is available throughout its global footprint.

The basic principle of transcultural ethnography is to follow a topic of study across globally dispersed spaces that are separate yet profoundly interconnected. The recontextualization framework developed in the previous chapters establishes that no matter what the object of transfer, it will undergo reinterpretation and change as it is implemented and experienced in new contexts. The more the object of transfer is based on people-dependent deeply socialized understanding, the more susceptible it will be to recontextualization. The process of recontextualization is especially important to understand for theorizing in international business (IB) because it responds to a chief concern of transnational organizations, namely, whether and how they can keep the core of their business model intact as they expand their global reach. As such, the key activity of the transcultural ethnographer in IB is to document and make sense of the effects of changing cultural contexts on their topic of interest. Interaction between cultures can be chaotic or “fuzzy” and difficult to decipher. The following tools and practice opportunities are designed to consolidate your learning from the previous chapters, using practical aids for following the flows of culture across national boundaries.

A brief review of the major offerings of the book is discussed in this chapter.

Strategic ethnography requires managerial capabilities for reflexivity and casting a critical eye back on their home organization as well as abilities to sense and assess learning opportunities from throughout their global footprint to facilitate innovation, growth, and renewal. The following exercises are designed to help you hone these skills so that you can carry out, lead, or manage a project of strategic ethnography for a company, organization, or global team you would like to assist.