ABSTRACT

This chapter concentrates on the negotiations of the cultural identity of the company and its individual members by exploring the multinational corporation (MNC) as a transnational space, and, specifically, the intercultural office as a cultural contact zone. It analyzes how references to different localities are made through specific artifacts/accessories of the company's internal spaces and the kind of cultural identity that is thereby constructed. The chapter explores three specific inconsistent and self-contradictory practices in the professional sphere—defining negotiable and nonnegotiable cultural domains, nationalizing and denationalizing difference, demanding cosmopolitanism from others while rejecting one's own cosmopolitanism— using ideal-typical ethnographic cases studies. The empirical case studies indicate that also in the professional sphere the managers' modes of dealing with cultural difference go beyond the stereotypical images of expatriates as either cosmopolitan or anti-cosmopolitan. The chapter ends with a conclusion, where the diversity and inconsistencies of corporate expatriates practiced cosmopolitanisms are systematized.