What We Get Wrong About Culture: Ethnography & Learning from Cultural Complexity
A Lecture by Dr. Mary Yoko Brannen, Professor Emerita, San Jose University
Presented by the Center for Japanese Studies
In today’s globalized world, a deep understanding of how culture affects our day-to-day lives is critical to promote healthy social and organizational relations. Yet, simplified, statistically-testable measures of national culture leave people stereotype-rich but operationally poor in real-world interactions. “Culture” is often used synonymously with national culture. It is substantially more complex than this and is made up of multi-faceted interacting spheres of culture (national, regional, institutional, organizational, functional) differentially enacted by individuals many of whom are multicultural themselves. Current social and organizational settings are therefore rife with multilevel cultural interactions as individuals with diverging cultural assumptions are brought together in real time (often virtually) across distance and differentiated contexts. Consequently, traditional approaches to understanding culture based on nationality fall short of adequately capturing culture’s complexity.
In this presentation, Dr. Brannen will draw upon illustrative case examples from her recently published book, Ethnography in International Business: Learning from the Field (Cambridge University Press), to discuss new ways of understanding and learning from culture’s complexity.
5:30 PM | Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Smith Memorial Student Union
Room 327/8/9
Free & Open to the Public
Please use main entrance on SW Broadway
Mary Yoko Brannen, MBA, PhD, Dr. Merc. H.C., is Professor Emerita at San José State University and Honorary Professor of International Business at the Copenhagen Business School. Professor Brannen pioneered the use of ethnographic methods in International Business to understand and theorize from complex cultural phenomena. Her early in-depth studies of the internationalization of large multinational firms such as Disney and NSK Ball Bearings are noted for contributing the constructs of negotiated culture, recontextualization, and biculturals as natural boundary-spanners to the field. She currently sits on the Advisory Boards of the Master of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, the Migration, Business and Society Advisory Board at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria, and the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University in the U.S. Her expertise in multinational affairs is evident in her research, consulting, teaching, and personal background. Born and raised in Japan, having studied in the US, France and Spain, and having worked as a cross-cultural consultant for over 40 years to various Fortune 100 companies she brings a multi-faceted, deep knowledge of today’s complex cultural business environment to understanding today’s global organizations.
For more information on the CJS and our upcoming events, please visit: https://www.pdx.edu/japanese-studies