Abstract
Despite various studies investigating the role of workplace relationship and its impact on individual and organisational outcomes, very few goes beyond a “mono” research setting which often assumes employees having similar social and cultural frame of reference. Little is known about the formation and effect of relationship in a multicultural environment where different values and beliefs, hence different perspectives on relationship exist. This paper aims to address this lack of literature on workplace relationship within multicultural contexts. It focuses on how employees in multinational subsidiaries respond to the duality in cultures (host country’s national culture and the organisational culture originating from home country) and consequently their perception of work relationship. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in a Vietnamese subsidiary of a U.S-based multinational manufacturer. Data analysis has revealed the hybrid manifestation of both cultures in how participants perceived relationship as well as the benefits and pitfalls brought about by such manifestation.