Metaphors and Meaning: An Intercultural Analysis of the Concept of Teamwork
研究通过分析六家跨国公司员工访谈中的语言，提炼出五种团队合作隐喻（军事、体育、社区、家庭、伙伴），并发现不同国家和组织文化下隐喻使用存在差异，揭示了文化对团队角色、范围、成员和目标期望的影响。
This paper develops a conceptual framework to explain different understandings of the concept of teamwork across national and organizational cultures. Five different metaphors for teamwork (military, sports, community, family, and associates) were derived from the language team members used during interviews in four different geographic locations of six multinational corporations. Results indicated that use of the teamwork metaphors varies across countries and organizations, after controlling for gender, team function, and total words in an interview. Analyses of specific relationships between national cultural values and categories of metaphor use and between dimensions of organizational culture and categories of metaphor use revealed patterns of expectations about team roles, scope, membership, and objectives that arise in different cultural contexts. We discuss the implications of this variance for future research on teams and the management of teams in multinational organizations.