‘Koreans are the Israelis of the East’: A postcolonial reading of cultural similarities in cross-cultural management

This paper aims to problematize cross-cultural management (CCM) discourse that naturalizes and depoliticizes similarities as a power-neutral or even power-neutralizing mechanism for creating a positive sense of familiarity, closeness, trust, and intimacy between partners. Employing a postcolonial perspective, the paper deals with the ambiguity and partiality embedded in similarity through Homi Bhabha’s theoretical concept of mimicry–when similarities conceal and therefore tacitly reproduce and reinforce cultural differences, thus enhancing power asymmetries. Through the systematic content analysis of 151 accounts of similarity in Israel-Korean business alliances–asking who is similar to whom (direction), to what extent (degree), and under what circumstances (context)–this paper reveals similarities construction as a sophisticated othering. Rather than being an effective tool for distance management, similarities-as-mimicry, imposed or desired, determine the hierarchical relations between the compared parties through symbolic projection of being or becoming similar from a superior model to its imitation.