Divorcing localization from the divergence paradigm: Localization of chinese life insurance practice and its implications

Abstract

This article challenges conventional assumptions associating localization with cultural divergence. Based on ethnographic research of the life insurance business in China, it explores how localization may intertwine with homogenization, and why it may not subvert cultural hegemony. The data illustrate how transnational life insurers disseminated new practices and new ideas to the Chinese population; how they localized their practices according to local conditions; and how the newly emerged domestic insurers imitated and deviated from the organizational practices of the transnational firms. Borrowing insights from institutional theories, the article analyses why an initial divergence of product lines and marketing strategies between transnational and domestic life insurers soon disappeared, and why homogenizing dynamics took place. The article argues that localization is by no means a guarantee, nor an indicator, of divergence, and the so-called 'two-way street' of cultural flows between the global and the local are far from balanced. © The Author(s) 2011.