روانشناسی فاصله روانی: سوابق ادراکات نامتقارن  The psychology of psychic distance: Antecedents of asymmetric perceptions

1. Introduction Research in international management has long embraced psychic distance (and related concepts, such as institutional, cultural or economic distance) as central to the understanding and explanation of international business phenomena. Their field of application covers a vast number of research areas, including the internationalization process of the firm, the performance of foreign subsidiaries, knowledge management, expatriate management, as well as neighboring disciplines like marketing (Berry, Guille´n, & Zhou, 2010). With few exceptions, the literature treats distance as an obstacle that makes operations across national borders more difficult. Despite their popularity, inconsistent research findings have led authors to question the usefulness of the distance concepts commonly employed in the literature (Berry et al., 2010; Sto¨ttinger & Schlegelmilch, 2000; Tung & Verbeke, 2010). In an influential articulation of this critique, Shenkar (2001) lists a number of methodological and conceptual challenges. To address these, considerable research attention has been devoted toward improving definitions and operational measures of distance (Berry et al., 2010; Brewer, 2007; Dow & Karunaratna, 2006). In contrast, only little effort has been directed toward a better understanding of the casual mechanisms involved (Nebus & Chai, 2014; Tung & Verbeke, 2010; Zaheer, Schomaker, & Nachum, 2012). onceptual challenges is the misleading nature of the metaphorical use of ‘distance’ to indicate differences in perceptions between countries of one another, in their cultures or in their institutional characteristics. In contrast to geographical distances, such differences are, for example, neither stable nor necessarily symmetric (Shenkar, 2001, 2012). Moreover, as Nebus and Chai (2014) point out, prevalent usage in international business studies has tended to overemphasize the distance component of the concept, while de-emphasizing its ‘psychic’ or ‘psychological’ aspect. In this paper, we aim to contribute toward the improvement of the theoretical foundations of the concept ‘psychic distance’ by explicitly focusing on its psychological and perceptual component. Drawing on insights from psychology and sociology, we offer a theoretical framing that helps to understand distance perceptions between country pairs. This lens, we believe, will be particularly useful for research addressing not only traditional questions of export market selection, entry modes and international expansion but also for studies of other issues involving cross-country interaction.