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Bridge Individuals in Multinational Organisations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2016

Tomoki Sekiguchi
Tomoki Sekiguchi*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, 1–7 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan
*
Address for correspondence: Tomoki Sekiguchi, Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, 1–7 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan. Email: tomoki@econ.osaka-u.ac.jp
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Abstract

In multinational organisations, individuals who mediate or bridge between different national and cultural groups, such as headquarters (HQ) and foreign subsidiaries, play a critical role and are known as ‘bridge individuals’. This perspective article reviews the recent literature on bridge individuals and offers future research directions in which organisational psychology can contribute to the deeper understanding of the individuals in this role. I propose the interdisciplinary approach, in which knowledge of organisational psychology and other academic fields, such as cognitive linguistics, cross-cultural communication, and social network theory, are integrated when studying bridge individuals.

Keywords

Bridge individualsboundary spannersmultinational organisationslanguagemulticulturalism
Type
Articles
Information
The Australasian Journal of Organisational Psychology , Volume 9 , 2016 , e3
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society Ltd 2016 

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