Individuals with Multi-Institutional Profiles: Construct Development and Operationalization

This conceptual paper has three overarching objectives. The first is to propose a new construct for cross-cultural research, which we refer to as an individual’s multi-institutional profile (MIP). Defining this construct as personal characteristics indicative of exposure to and at least partial internalization of transcultural values and norms that are likely to shape an individual’s cognitions, decisions and behaviors, we suggest that individuals with an MIP represent a hitherto overlooked set of agents who contribute to intra-cultural differences and processes of cultural change. Our second objective is to offer suggestions for operationalizing the MIP construct. We do this by delineating illustrative demographic measures and then providing examples of how these separate indicators can be combined to form an aggregate measure reflecting the strength of an individual’s MIP. Our third objective is to discuss how the separate and/or aggregate measures of the MIP construct can be examined empirically within a wide range of academic fields —including international business, entrepreneurship/family business, and organizational behavior.