Abstract
Work in multinational corporations is increasingly located in differing cultural environments. Business networks have changed from being dominated by expatriate managers to ones in which local staff and new intermediary hybrid managers interface in flexible relationships. The key question is the extent to which hybrid managers function as translators of knowledge while contributing to the reduction of transaction cost. To answer that question, a social network analysis was applied to measure homophily, the similarity among related network actors with divergent cultural norms. The structural change of a business network was tested during three periods between 1983 and 2005. The analysis uses the illustrated novel of the reality based Kosaku Shima business manga to review a 267 node network. Findings include that hybrid managers break down barriers of cultural distance. They have become brokers of knowledge between local and global levels of business thereby reducing transaction costs.
