Editorial International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 2021, Vol. 21(2) 175–179 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/14705958211034394 journals.sagepub.com/home/ccm Should counter-narratives be our output in cross-cultural management scholarship? Terence Jackson Editor-in-Chief Cross-cultural management scholarship is multi-paradigmatic in nature. Rather than trying to shift paradigms we should be focusing on shifting narratives as an end product of our research. All scholarship should be critical in some sense, and cross-cultural management studies started off life as critical of an existing narrative, within the positivist tradition. This counter-narrative ended up in the mainstream of international management and business studies. It challenged the idea that American management precepts apply anywhere. In extant studies counter-narratives are few and far between, yet such counter-narratives should be our stock-in-trade. When Geert Hofstede produced his seminal work in the 1980s, he was creating a counter- narrative (although he did not articulate it as such). He was presenting a counter to the dominant post-war narrative that American management principles and practices can be applied anywhere in the world. He disabused what we thought we knew about international management, but not necessarily how we knew it. In other words, he stuck with the prevailing logical empiricism and positivism in management research rather than challenging how we should research international management. Here, I want to focus on counter-narratives (an alternative story or stories) as an output of cross-cultural management scholarship, rather than to delve into a detailed methodological discussion about how to do this. I believe this may be a way of further mainstreaming cross-cultural research and to make a wider contribution to the social and behavioural sciences. In this way our sub-discipline could make the next big step forward, following its original heritage, in positioning itself as a critical voice while maintaining its multi-paradigmatic tradition. Narratives as part of a hierarchy Narratives are part of a hierarchy. According to Harr´ e et al. (1985) all psycho-social actions are part of a hierarchy. Actions are meaningful behaviours. They have meaning for their actors and others. Without the meanings we attach to what we do, behaviours are simply instinctive. We do things because we have a purpose and we perceive that we have the necessary skills and knowledge: baking a cake, fixing a car, riding a bicycle, going to work, leading a meeting, managing a company (although those actions at the end of the list require multiple sets of actions). The point is that the things we do that constitute behavioural routines are right at the bottom of the hierarchy. Our conscious awareness, or explanations for what we do, sits somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy. What takes a superordinate position within the hierarchy comprises what Harr´ e et al. describe as ‘deep structure of mind’ and also corresponds with the ‘social order ’.