Positioning, Nationality, and Cross-Cultural Research in China

Several authors have noted the difficulties that non-Chinese researchers face when researching in Chinese cultural contexts (Roy, Walters, & Luk, Reference Roy, Walters and Luk2001; Zhou & Nunes, Reference Zhou and Baptista Nunes2013). Stening and Zhang (Reference Stening and Zhang2007) highlight the importance of certain aspects of the researcher's positionality, suggesting this may affect the attitudes and answers of the participants. Participants may be more or less willing to open up and share their views depending on the specific context of the interview, the person who is conducting the interview and topics discussed. Furthermore, depending on the positionality of the researcher, participants might be reluctant to openly express negative opinions (Sanchez-Burks et al., Reference Sanchez-Burks, Lee, Choi, Nisbett, Zhao and Koo2003).

Roy et al. (Reference Roy, Walters and Luk2001) have addressed some of the challenges that non-local researchers might face and suggest that the use of a Chinese interviewer/ facilitator could help to overcome these. Working alongside local facilitators to conduct interviews may improve the trustworthiness of the collected data (Eckhardt, Reference Eckhardt, Piekkari and Welch2004), and add perspective, which can help triangulation at the time of conceptualizing the data (Watkins-Mathys, Reference Watkins-Mathys2006). Tsui (Reference Tsui2009) has argued that the collaboration between insider and outsider researchers leads to ‘in-outsiders’ cooperation, which might provide diverse research perspectives. Finally, the facilitator also reduces the likelihood of errors due to cultural misunderstandings (Stening & Zhang, Reference Stening and Zhang2007).

Inside-Out Interviews

The importance of a reflexive approach to research in Chinese cultural contexts should not be underestimated (Wang, Reference Wang2012). As reflexivity is primarily based on questioning the relationships between ourselves and the research participants (Haynes, Reference Haynes, Symon and Cassell2012), I reflect on the collected data. Reflection helps to illustrate how researchers affect the data collection process, and how different positionalities (insider and outsider) can help to enrich the data and create knowledge. In this specific case, the reflections are based on the 15 semi-structured interviews with Chinese women middle managers conducted as part of the first author's doctoral studies.

During the process of conducting these interviews, I faced what Cassell and Symon (Reference Cassell and Symon2004) have catalogued as ‘difficult interviews’, and as such enlisted a local facilitator (Roy et al., Reference Roy, Walters and Luk2001). The decision to work with a local facilitator was based on previous studies, which have concluded that a diverse research team has the potential to produce better outcomes (Jonsen et al., Reference Jonsen, Butler, Mäkelä, Piekkari, Drogendijk, Lauring, Lervik, Pahlberg, Vodosek and Zander2013).The interviews were therefore repeated on two separate occasions, originally with myself, a Caucasian but not white man, (then) London based, Western educated, Argentinian researcher of Italian heritage. Then later with a Hong Kong ethnically Chinese, university educated woman research assistant.

It's a Chinese Thing

The outsider researcher questions were often answered with the phrase, ‘It is a Chinese thing’ as a way to state; ‘You are an outsider, you cannot possibly really understand this issue, and I do not know how or I do not want to explain it to you’. I think this both highlights how the participant positioned me as Other (Anthias, Reference Anthias2008; Merriam et al., Reference Merriam, Johnson-Bailey, Lee, Kee, Ntseane and Muhamad2001) and how this process of Othering ultimately limited the response. A further instance of the limiting effect of Othering is evidenced when one manager was asked by the outsider researcher: ‘Do you involve yourself in your subordinates' personal lives’? To which she replied: ‘Yes, me and all the managers get involved in the private life of the subordinates, but you know, it is normal; it is a Chinese thing’. But when further asked, why? The answer was repeated, ‘It's a Chinese thing’. This expression both summarises and essentializes Chinese society, limiting the discussion of alternatives and singularities.

Throughout the interviews, it is not clear why participants chose to contextualize and explain some of their answers in more depth and limit their answers in other instances. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the facilitator, never received the response ‘It's a Chinese thing’, or similar comments. For example, the same participant offered the following response to the same question when asked by the facilitator:

However, there were cases where the outsider's positionality may have positively influenced the data collection, facilitating more detailed explanations. This occurred when participants presumed that the outsider knew nothing about their culture. This assumption is evidenced by phrases such as ‘Let me explain to you because you are not Chinese’, or ‘any Chinese person would know that, but I will explain’, and consequently, a more contextualized explanation that enriched the research process emerged. Here rather than difference creating a lens to see past that which is normalized in Chinese culture (Alvesson & Skoldberg, Reference Alvesson and Sköldberg2009), being positioned as Other enabled or encouraged participants to fully explain the things that they believed the researcher did not know. This supports other findings, where arguably insiders Adu-Ampong and Adams (Reference Adu-Ampong and Adams2019) highlighted that being positioned as socially incompetent, facilitated deeper explanations. Outsiders can perform the role of socially incompetent with obvious ease.

One manager was asked: ‘why are there so many relatives of the owner of the company working in the organization’? She answered:

When the same manager was asked the same question a year later by the local facilitator, the participant commented: ‘you know how this is, we all have to care for each other’. A clear example of how participants adapt their answers based on perceived positionalities. As the long explanation shows, participants seemed unaware of the possibility that the foreign researcher may have studied the characteristics of the Chinese culture and underestimated my knowledge. The extended answer exhibits the need of the manager to explain the concept of loyalty, loyalty being central to organizations in Chinese contexts (Farh & Cheng, Reference Farh, Cheng, Li, Tsui and Weldon2000).

A long, contextualized answer, given to an outsider opens the door to follow-up questions, whereas the second answer omits loyalty, assuming that the insider already knows how important it is to have relatives working in the organization. Interestingly, even though insider knowledge is taken for granted in the second response, follow-up questions helped to understand how sometimes line managers are bypassed as some subordinates have a ‘direct line’ to the owner of the organization. This more detailed explanation of work politics given to the insider researcher could be the consequence of better rapport created by two people with a similar culture. It could also be that as the base of knowledge was presumed to be similar, participants felt they had more time to explain something slightly more complicated, such as office politics.

Other differences between the answers given to the insider and the outsider can be identified based on the use of language. Even though all participants were fluent in English, the inclusion of Cantonese words was far more prominent in the interviews that took place with the local insider. Participants rarely used words in Cantonese when interviewed by the outsider researcher, and when they did, they always apologized for it. Whereas when the insider conducted her interviews, words in Cantonese were more prominent and unapologetically used. The addition of a few words in Cantonese did not affect the actual outcomes of the interviews. However, it does highlight how an insider researcher who speaks the same language might create an open environment (Stening & Zhang, Reference Stening and Zhang2007), allowing participants to fall back on their local language when needed, without the need to apologize.

It's a Woman's Thing

Questions that focussed on women's experiences of leadership were answered in more detail when asked by the local woman facilitator, which supports the gender studies literature that women might be better than men at creating rapport with women (Oakley, Reference Oakley and Roberts1981). When asked by the female facilitator ‘How much support do you have from your husband in your professional role’? A manager commented: ‘[I feel] a lack of support from my husband for the upbringing our children and domestic chores in general’. She described her husband as:

This notion was echoed by several of the other participants. In contrast, when asked by the male researcher, the same manager replied, ‘Not much’. These answers evidence a clear distinction in the amount of information concerning their relationships; participants were willing to disclose. In addition to this, I did not ask follow up questions to this response, which could be the consequence of ‘gender blindness’ (Whitehead, Reference Whitehead2002), where perhaps the importance of the question and the answer was not fully understood. On the other hand, the participants may have also Othered me (Chereni, Reference Chereni2014; Merriam et al., Reference Merriam, Johnson-Bailey, Lee, Kee, Ntseane and Muhamad2001) as just another man, who is either not interested or would not understand.

While ‘gender blindness’, and my gendered positionality may have led to ‘difficult interviews’ (Cassell & Symon, Reference Cassell and Symon2004), the insider's positionality was far from unproblematic. The insider was from the upper class, evident from her dispositions resulting from her economic, cultural, and social capital (Bourdieu, Reference Bourdieu1990). Class intersecting with gender (Anthias, Reference Anthias2008), colored the interviews with many of the participants coming from working-class aspirational backgrounds. An example of this intersection occurred when the local facilitator asked a manager why she did not have a foreign domestic helper (a common practice in Hong Kong). The local manager answered quite curtly: ‘not everyone has a big home to host a maid, some people live in very small homes’, making an implicit reference to the difference in the sizes of their homes. This is a clear symbol of status in Hong Kong, a city where affordable housing is a serious problem. When the outsider asked a similar question, that ‘the problem is not to pay for their [domestic workers] salary, the problem is where to put them’ (as foreign domestic workers are required by law to live in the home where they work). The answer to the questions is quite similar – the problems of housing a foreign maid – yet the interaction, and tone of the answers are different.

I could also be considered from a middle class, but perhaps my ambiguous identity (from the participants’ perspective) – Western-educated, Caucasian but not white, led to my being understood as simply a socially incompetent outsider. We would argue that in this instance social class does not travel across culture, for example the marker for social class here – domestic help, would not be a marker for social class in other contexts. Overall, both the insider and outsider positionalities helped to enrich the data by bridging limitations that might be assigned to either positionality, such as gender-blindness, or an inability to see past what is normalised in Chinese culture and in gender.