"Why Can't They Do as We Do?": A Study of the Discursive Constructions of "Doing Culture" in a Cross-border Company

Taking its point of departure in ten semi-structured interviews with ten members of staff in a Danish-owned, cross-border software company, Softia,1 this article analyzes how members of staff talk about and make sense of ways of “doing culture” in a corporate context. The article adopts a discourse analytical perspective and applies systemic functional grammar in order to identify the characteristics of three major discursive constructions which members of staff draw on interchangeably, and to a greater and lesser extent, to give expres- sion to their intercultural practices in Softia. This text-focused, practitioner- oriented, discursive approach provides valuable insights into the practitioners’ understandings of intercultural practices, and, therefore, offers a welcome contribution to the ever-growing, but less text-focused, literature on intercul- tural business communication and cross-cultural management.