The Cross-Cultural Construction of Corporate Identities: “What” and “Why”

This chapter discusses the cross-cultural construction of corporate identities in relation to “What” corporate identities of Chinese and American airlines are constructed and “Why” the corporate identities of Chinese and American airlines are constructed. To first specify “What” corporate identities of Chinese and American airlines are constructed, it interprets the situational contextualized roles construed by the adopted activity patterns, specifically entailing “what the activity patterns are” rendered by macro-level configuration of the activity patterns and “how the activity patterns are implemented” rendered by micro-level multimodal realizations of the activity patterns. On this premise, it then explains “Why” the corporate identities of Chinese and American airlines are constructed with resort to the contemporary socio-economic and socio-technical contexts and relevant cross-cultural theories.