Abstract

Multinational corporations (MNCs) continue to experience lack of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) at the Board level, due to misconceptions about multiculturalism and how it interacts with organizational culture to influence Board members’ business strategy decisions. Our motivation is the urgent need for critical research on how multiculturalism influences business strategy, with the aim to provide a novel holistic framework linking multiculturalism with resource-based and market-based views of strategy. We adopt a qualitative methodology comprising of 18 semi-structured interviews and four case studies of UK-based MNCs. Thematic content analysis of the interview data reveals four findings: a/EDI are attributes of multiculturalism; b/lack of consensus on how multiculturalism strategically benefits organizations; c/effective alignment between EDI and business strategies is a source of sustainable competitive advantage, d/the paradox of salad-bowl and melting pot perspectives should be managed through parallel processing. We contribute to knowledge by specifying the multiculturalism role of Board members in terms of aligning demographics with sources of MNC’s competitive advantage. Because the generalizability of the findings is limited due to our small sample-size, future research would determine the causal relationship between multiculturalism and business strategy in a representative sample of MNCs.