Rethinking international business scholarship as cross-language knowledge production: a dialogical approach to qualitative research

Abstract

As a disciplinary field, international business (IB) is characterized by language diversity. Too often, however, international business (IB) research regards language diversity as a challenge to be overcome rather than an opportunity to generate new scientific knowledge. Consequently, previous research has primarily focused on the pragmatic, logistical, and methodological hurdles of translating multilingual datasets. In contrast, this conceptual paper takes language diversity as an opportunity to produce new knowledge and proposes a dialogical approach to qualitative cross-language research. The dialogical approach has the potential to enrich IB research with novel perspectives from under-represented voices, improve the understanding of IB phenomena and nurture tolerance for diversity and inclusion through cross-language interaction. It is worth noting that the dialogical approach does not promote shared understanding but mutual understanding that is achieved through collaboration. In doing so, it builds on two types of dialogue: (self-)reflexive dialogue, and dialogue between the researcher and others (interviewees, supervisors, and collaborators participating in the research process). The outcome is knowledge that is pluralistic and multivocal, including the voices that belong to non-English-speaking participants and scholars. We argue that the dialogical approach contributes to the future vision of responsible and linguistically inclusive IB scholarship.