Are National Cultural Traits Applicable to Senior Firm Managers...
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RESEARCH NOTE
Are National Cultural Traits Applicable To
Senior Firm Managers?
Edmund R. Thompson and Florence T. T. Phua*Graduate School of Management, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, 1-1 Jumonjibaru, Beppu,
Oita 874 8577 Japan and *Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, 4007,
The Red Centre, 2052 NSW, Australia
Email: [email protected] [Thompson]; [email protected] [Phua]
Researchers have applied Hofstede’s categorization of national cultural traits not onlyin studies of ‘average’ employee samples, from which the categorization was originally
derived, but also to e ´ lite senior executives, and even to firms, on the assumptions thattop management teams (i) are culturally homogeneous with average employees and (ii)directly reflect cultural characteristics in strategic decision-making. Such assumptionsare questioned by research finding that country sub-populations are culturallyheterogeneous and that individuals’ cultural characteristics are moderated byorganizational and task contexts. Using the construct of collectivism/individualism,this study tests the applicability of Hofstede’s generic national cultural norms to seniorexecutives using Anglo-Saxon and Chinese samples. Results cast doubt on theapplicability of Hofstede’s classifications to senior manager populations and suggestseveral avenues for further research.
Introduction
That ‘companies are well advised to take nationalculture as a given’ has become a form of
conventional wisdom in international business
research (Newman and Nollen, 1996, p. 774).
The applicability of Hofstede’s (2001) categoriza-tion of countries along the broad cultural con-
structs of individualism/collectivism, masculinity/
femininity, power distance, and uncertainty avoid-
ance is, likewise, taken for granted in many
international business studies, although Hofstede’s
work has not been without trenchant critiques
(McSweeney, 2002). The categorization’s original
derivation from broad-spectrum employee samplespossibly justifies its generic application in research
relating to similar ‘average’ employee populations.
But whether or not it also justifies the frequent
application of the same generic cultural classifica-
tions to senior-manager populations and, by
extension, their strategic decisions, is less certain.
Such an application might be justifiable if generic
national cultural traits are ubiquitously homoge-
neous among all individuals within a country and,
furthermore, are then mirrored directly in man-agers’ decision-making. However, researchers have
found significant sub-population deviations from
aggregated national cultural ‘norms’ and alsosuggest that personal cultural traits in senior
managers are substantially modified by task and
organizational contexts. This research tests whether
or not senior managers from, respectively, Chinese
and Anglo-Saxon cultures – commonly categorized
as polar opposites in terms of individualism/
collectivism (Thomas and Au, 2002) – in fact
exhibit significantly different cultural character-
istics in a task-specific context.
Literature and general propositions
Hofstede’s cultural categorization was derived
using data from a famously large overall sample
of 72 215 employees of a single multinational
British Journal of Management, Vol. 16, 59–68 (2005)DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00430.x
r 2005 British Academy of Management
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firm, IBM (Hofstede, 2001, p. 477). The sample
comprised a range of employees, from systems
engineers to office clerks. Some country head-
office and branch managers were also included,
but the vast majority of respondents were below
senior-manager level and appear to have been, in
the main, a spectrum of mid-ranking marketing,sales, technical and clerical personnel (Hofstede,
2001, p. 51, 258).1 As such, the sample represents a
fair approximation of one multinational firm’s
average employees, and the culture constructs
Hofstede derived from it could, therefore, beargued to be applicable to similar cross-sectional,
average firm-employee samples where the objects
of analysis approximate individuals conforming to
what he terms the ‘average tendency’ (Hofstede,
1991, p. 253). Numerous studies make the assump-
tion that Hofstede’s findings are indeed applic-
able outside of his old IBM sample in analysescovering role conflict and stress (Peterson et al .,
1995), feedback-seeking behaviour (Bailey, Chen
and Dou 1997), and other areas in which the
units of analysis are ‘average’ personnel.2
Still other studies assume Hofstede’s categor-
ization can legitimately be extrapolated to apply
beyond ‘average’ employee samples to senior
manager samples, too (Bigoness and Blakely,
1996; Parnell and Hatem, 1999). The ascription
of average employee characteristics to senior
managers rests on the assumption that national
cultural traits are ubiquitous and homogeneouswithin a given country and so, therefore, apply
equally to all sub-populations. This is an
assumption that Hofstede (2001) himself expli-
citly makes (p. 10), and culture’s consequences
broadly as he defined them have entered the
lexicon of business research parlance and as-
sumptions (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002). How-
ever, doubt is cast on the appropriateness of such
assumptions by several studies reporting sub-
populations deviating substantially from average
cultural stereotypes (Oyserman, Coon and Kem-
melmeier 2002; Schwartz, 1992). For example,Fiske (2002) has pointed out that even in Japan
and Korea, each standardly regarded as cultu-
rally homogeneous, analyses finding cultural
heterogeneity render within-country cultural gen-
eralizations implausible (Kim, Park and Suzuki,1990). Because not all ‘average’ employees attain
senior manager positions, and because senior
managers are widely regarded as possessing
specific abilities and predispositions that facilitate
their assent to e ´ lite executive jobs (Koch and
Cebula, 1994), the following general proposition
might be stated:
General Proposition 1: Senior managers
may constitute populations culturally dis-
tinct from average employee populations.
Some business researchers go one stage further
and ascribe national cultural categorizations not
to individuals as such, but to disembodied firm
strategy in studies where countries’ firms are
either (i) grouped into broad, usually opposing,
categories, such as collectivist versus individual-
ist, based on Hofstede’s country scores (Li, Lamand Qian, 2001) or (ii) are ascribed Hofstede’s
national cultural construct scores (Pan, 2002) or
coefficients derived from those scores (Kogut and
Singh, 1988). Such ascription of average employee
cultural traits to firm behaviour assumes that
senior-manager cultural characteristics are not
only identical to average employees’, but are also
directly reflected in the strategic decisions senior
managers make. Hofstede would seem to make
this assumption (Franke, Hofstede and Bond,
1991, p. 165). However, notwithstanding that
senior managers may constitute a cultural sub-population quite distinct from average employ-
ees, researchers suggest that individuals’ culturalcharacteristics manifest themselves in generic
cultural behaviour to varying degrees depending
on the organizational context and task specificity
(Triandis, 1994; Voronov and Singer, 2002).
Because senior firm managers are charged with
making decisions that optimize capital returns
and are constrained in this by both product and
1Hofstede does refer to a ‘manager’ category, but itappears this refers not so much to senior managers withsubstantive overall executive authority, such as mana-ging directors or chief executive officers, but to variousfunctional managers, including customer engineering
managers, clerical managers and so on, at levels wellbelow IBM’s top management team.2Hofstede himself appears obliquely and inadvertentlyto caution against this usage in his recent critique of ‘trivial replications’ of his work (2001, p. 464) where hesuggests that samples used to test his dimensions need tobe ‘similar in all respects’ to the ‘matched IBMsubsidiary populations’ he himself used three or moredecades ago (2003, p. 463). To be similar in all respects,such samples would need to come from a multinationalfirm very similar to IBM as it existed around 30 yearsago.
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capital market disciplines, the following general
proposition might be stated:
General Proposition 2: Even if manager
and average employee populations are cul-
turally homogeneous, the strategic decisions
managers make need not necessarily reflectthat culture but rather what the business
situation and task environment require.
Study and research hypotheses
To investigate these two general propositions,
Chinese and Anglo-Saxon senior managers of
construction-industry firms in Hong Kong were
compared in relation to Hofstede’s widely ac-
cepted national cultural distinction revolving
around the individualism–collectivism construct.This construct is particularly interesting for this
research not only because it underpins a largenumber of business and management organiza-
tion studies (e.g. Cox, Lobel and McLeod, 1991;
Gomez, Kirkman and Shapiro, 2000), but be-
cause its cross-national discriminant validity at a
senior-manager level has not been directly tested.
Indeed, in a comprehensive review of journal
articles published from 1980 to 1999 on the
individualism-collectivism construct, Oyserman,
Coon and Kemmelmeier (2002, p. 6 fn.1) found
that nearly all research used undergraduate studentsamples, and that many were experimentally-based
studies (e.g. Earley, 1994; Jung and Avolio, 1999),
thereby compromising generalizability of results to
senior managers in business contexts.
Hofstede (2001, p. 217) categorizes Hong Kong
as a collectivistic society and it has been used as
an example of such in several studies (Hui, 1988;
Lam, Schaubroeck and Aryee, 2002), with ‘the
Chinese in Hong Kong [falling] into a relatively
homogeneous collectivist group’ (Singelis et al .,
1999, p. 326), at least with student or average
employee samples. Conversely, Hofstede (2001,p. 217) categorizes North American, British and
Australian national cultures as individualistic,and these predominantly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ coun-
tries have been used as exemplars of such in
several studies (Earley, 1994; Kim, Park and
Suzuki, 1990). Hofstede (1991, p. 182) suggests
that national cultural characteristics are assimi-
lated on an individual basis early in life and
remain thereafter relatively immutable, so Anglo-
Saxon managers might be expected to retain their
home-country cultural traits despite years of
being in Hong Kong. Hence, in the context of
Hong Kong it might specifically be hypothesized
that:
H1: If national cultural traits are applic-able to senior managers in the same way
they are thought to be applicable to average
employees, ethnic-Chinese senior managers
will be more collectivistic than Anglo-Saxon
senior managers.
Studying one industry generally, and the con-
struction industry in Hong Kong specifically, is
advantageous for a number of reasons. Drawing
a sample from one industry has the merit of
reducing possible confounding effects associated
with idiosyncratic industry-related culture (Gor-don, 1991). While many construction firms in
Hong Kong naturally undertake projects outsidethe territory, the city itself constitutes a prime
market and, whether local Chinese or foreign
Anglo-Saxon firms, most work within the same
overall market and general business environment
contexts. The construction industry is also
heavily reliant on a complex, multi-organiza-
tional operational method in which various
project firms, including architects, engineers,
surveyors and contractors work together for the
duration of a particular project. The high task-interdependence of construction projects requires
all individuals, especially senior mangers, in
different firms to work closely in groups both
intra- and inter-organizationally. This has a
twofold benefit for this research. First, it means
that Chinese and Anglo-Saxon senior managers
often work not just in the same overall business
environment, but also often on the same projects,
thereby reducing still further possible sector or
market confounding effects. Second, it allows the
modifying effect of organization and task speci-
ficity on individual Chinese and Anglo-Saxonmanager behaviour to be investigated in a
broadly common setting.Wagner has suggested that a defining char-
acteristic of collectivism is cooperativeness, the
‘willful contribution of personal effort to the
completion of interdependent jobs’ (1995, p. 152).
High cooperative behaviour is widely taken in
business research to be a direct function of high
collectivism (Chatman and Barsade, 1995; Cox,
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Lobel and McLeod, 1991). A further character-
istic of collectivists is their tendency to draw
sharp distinctions between the group or firm to
which they belong, their in-group, and other
firms, or out-groups. Conversely, individualists
tend to treat both in- and out-groups more
uniformly (Casimir and Keats, 1996; Chen, Pengand Saparito, 2002). Hence, if national cultural
traits are applicable to senior managers it might
specifically be hypothesized that:
H2: Chinese senior managers will exhibit
higher intra-firm (in-group) cooperation
than Anglo-Saxon senior managers.
H3: Chinese senior managers will exhibit
higher in-group identity than Anglo-Saxon
senior managers.
However, for complex, multi-organizational con-
struction projects to be successful, not just intra-
firm, but high inter-firm cooperation is necessary.
This requirement might reasonably be supposed
to moderate national cultural predispositions
regarding intra- and inter-firm cooperation.
However, if senior managers’ national cultural
characteristics are not modified by organiza-
tional/task-specific circumstances, it can be hy-
pothesized that:
H4: Chinese senior managers will exhibitlower inter-firm (out-group) cooperation
than Anglo-Saxon senior managers.
Method
Sample, procedure and response
Using trade association and chamber of com-
merce directories, a sample of 2005 senior
executives of both foreign and local firms in the
Hong Kong construction industry was drawn.
The sample was believed to represent all con-struction firms operating in Hong Kong forwhich contact details, including the name of the
most senior executive, were available. The survey
instrument was drafted to incorporate necessary
control, dependent and independent variables
based on measures reported in prior literature.
After pilot testing and adjustment, a first admin-
istration produced 228 responses from senior
managers with titles such as chief executive,
managing director, chairman, senior partner or
president. A second mailing to boost response
and to control for unit non-response bias
produced a further 170 responses, making a total
of 398, a 21.5% response, excluding 146 non-
deliverables. Forty-six percent of respondents
were between 41 and 50 years of age, 31% wereover 50; 298 were Hong Kong Chinese and 96
were Anglo-Saxon, mostly from Britain and
North America; 384 were male; 283 had at least
an undergraduate, and 112 postgraduate, de-
grees; average length of current-job tenure was12.78 years (SD58.04). To test for unit non-
response bias, Armstrong and Overton’s (1977)
time trend extrapolation procedure was used.
Comparison of first and second administration
respondents did not reveal any significant differ-
ences in sex (w250.11, 1 df, p50.74), education
(w25
3.49, 2 df, p5
0.17) or age (w25
1.38, 2 df,p50.50), indicating that responses could be
regarded as broadly representative of the sample.
Questionnaire development and measures
A draft instrument was pilot tested among 200
randomly selected senior managers from the
sample. Some of the 21 responses suggested the
number of items overall be reduced, and the levels
of both unit and item non-response indicated this
to be advisable. Consequently, disaffectingly long
scales were substituted where possible with short-er forms in a revised instrument subsequently sent
to the full sample.
Individualism–collectivism measure. Hofstede’s
(2001) scale is not appropriate for this study as
it is tailored to an average-employee sample and
hence contains bespoke items that are inapplic-
able to e ´ lite managers, such as ‘Have a good
working relationship with your manager’
(p. 256). The initially selected alternative, the
29-item scale developed by Triandis et al . (1988),
was revealed by the pilot test to be disaffectinglylong. Following previous studies measuringcollectivism (Eby and Dobbins, 1997; Gomez,
Kirkman and Shapiro, 2000), Wagner and
Moch’s (1986) 11-item scale was therefore
adapted for use. The factor analysis Wagner
and Moch (1986) report for the scale suggests
that, given their sample of 122, 3 of the 11 items
do not load significantly on the construct,
according to Hair et al .’s recommendations
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(1998, p. 112). These three items were therefore
omitted, following the precedent of Triandis and
Gelfand (1998, p. 124). Items were scored on a
5-point interval measure, 1 being ‘strongly
disagree’, and 5 ‘strongly agree’, with higher
scores indicating higher collectivism. The Cron-
bach’s alpha for the 8-item scale was 0.67 for theAnglo-Saxons and 0.55 for the Chinese. Accord-
ingly, for analyses, items detracting from relia-
bility were progressively eliminated until 5 items
remained with acceptable Cronbach’s alphas for
both the Anglo-Saxon (0.76) and Chinese (0.72)samples. This procedure is consistent with
Gomez, Kirkman and Shapiro’s (2000, p. 1100)
study which reduced Wagner’s later (1995) scale
to five items, although they unfortunately do not
specify which five items. The alpha for the overall
sample was 0.74.
In-group identification measure. Tropp and
Wright’s (2001) measure of in-group identifica-
tion was used. This single-item, diagrammatical
measure uses seven pairs of circles, the varying
overlaps of which represent an individual’s level
of identification with a given in-group. While
single-item scales can be susceptible to validity
and reliability problems (Hinkin, 1995), the scale
has demonstrated discriminant and convergent
validity, plus stability using test-retest procedures
(Tropp and Wright, 2001).
Cooperation measures. Existing and commonly
used measures of cooperation were problematic for
this research as they involve manipulation of ex-
perimentally designed, off-puttingly verbose tasks
(Chatman and Barsade, 1995; Chatman and
Flynn, 2001; Cox, Lobel and McLeod, 1991; Seta,
Seta and Culver, 2000; Wagner, 1995). Accord-
ingly, the broad cooperative dimensions suggested
by Tjosvold (1988) of (i) information, ideas and
other resources exchange, (ii) assistance giving, (iii)
constructive problem/conflict discussion, and (iv)mutual support and encouragement were used toguide scale construction for intra- and inter-firm
cooperation. To minimize the response fatigue
especially prevalent among busy senior executives
and attendant response bias (Schmitt and Stults,
1985), two 6-item scales were developed for,
respectively, intra- and inter-firm cooperation.
For intra-firm (in-group) cooperation, respon-
dents were asked to score on a 5-point interval
measure (15 strongly disagree, 55 strongly
agree) the following questions: ‘Thinking gener-
ally about your own personal level of coopera-
tion when working on construction projects, to
what extent do you agree or disagree that you (i)
‘‘are keen to help colleagues from your own firm
achieve project goals’’, (ii) ‘‘collaborate withcolleagues from your own firm’’, (iii) ‘‘willfully
contribute useful ideas/opinions to colleagues
from your own firm’’, (iv) ‘‘actively assist collea-
gues from your own firm in solving difficult
problems’’, (v) ‘‘volunteer personal resources liketime and effort to your own colleagues’’, (vi) ‘‘are
cooperative with colleagues from your own
firm’’ ’. Internal scale reliability for Chinese
managers was 0.85, for Anglo-Saxons 0.88.
The scale for inter-firm (out-group) coopera-
tion was measured using the same set of items,
but in reference to other firms: ‘Thinkinggenerally about your own personal level of
cooperation when working on construction pro-
jects, to what extent do you agree or disagree that
you (i) ‘‘are keen to help colleagues from other
project firms achieve project goals’ ’’, and so on.
Internal scale reliability for Chinese managers
was 0.90, for Anglo-Saxons 0.92.
Control variables. To control for possibly con-
founding demographic effects, variables including
respondent’s sex, age, education, job tenure, aswell as national culture, were included. Exceptfor years of tenure, all were dummy coded: with
age coded 15441; education coded 15post-
graduate degree; national culture coded 15Chi-
nese.
Analysis
Descriptive statistics for respectively the full
sample, and the Chinese and Anglo-Saxon sub-
samples are shown in Table 1. Chinese culture isnegatively correlated with intra-and inter-firm
cooperation and collectivism, suggesting Chinesesenior managers are possibly less collectivistic
and less cooperative than Anglo-Saxon senior
managers.
To test hypothesized relationships while con-
trolling for age, sex, education and job tenure,
analysis of covariance was conducted. Tests of
consequently adjusted mean differences between
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Table 1. Descriptive statistics, ANCOVA and inter-item correlations for full sample and Chinese and Anglo-Saxon senior managers
Full samplea Chinese managersa Anglo-Saxon managersa Inter-ite
Mean SD Mean SD Adjusted
meand
Mean SD Adjusted
meand
ANCOVA F
statisticeNational
culture
correlationsb
2 3 4 5
1 National
culture
0.74 0.44
2 Age 3.10 0.90 3.05 0.91 3.24 0.84 0.09 0.17 0.02 0.29*
3 Education 3.02 0.82 3.03 0.83 3.01 0.81 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.15
4 Sex 1.04 0.19 1.04 0.19 1.03 0.18 0.01 0.14* 0.03 0.15
5 Tenure 12.38 7.78 13.16 8.06 10.14 6.39 0.17** 0.59*** 0.08 0.02
6 In-groupidentification 5.43 1.29 5.36 1.31 5.39 5.61 1.20 5.52 3.54w
0.08 0.20** 0.01 0.15* 0.12*
7 Intra-firm
cooperation 4.28 0.51 4.21 0.51 4.28 4.49 0.44 4.30 0.29 0.24*** 0.19** 0.10 0.03 0.12
8 Inter-firm
cooperation 3.64 0.67 3.58 0.65 3.65 3.82 0.69 3.68 0.50 0.16** 0.08 0.09 0.04 0.01
9 Collectivism 3.50 0.70 3.37 0.67 3.49 3.87 0.68 3.52 0.59 0.31*** 0.04 0.03 0.03 0.01
Notes: (a) Scale :- 15strongly disagree, 25disagree, 35neutral, 45agree, 55strongly agree. Scale for in-group identification is measured
dummy coded with 15Chinese, 05Anglo-Saxon. (c) Pearson product moment correlations. Chinese senior managers coefficients below
above, diagonal. (d) ANCOVA adjusted means controlling for age, tenure, sex and education. (e) Tests adjusted mean differences (homoge
wise full sample n5354, Chinese senior managers n5292, Anglo-Saxon senior managers n592.wpo0.10; *po0.05; **po0.01; ***po0.001, two-tailed.
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Chinese and Anglo-Saxon samples show none to
be significant for collectivism or cooperation
(Table 1). Chinese senior managers are not found
to be any more collectivist or cooperative on
either an intra- or inter-firm basis than Anglo-
Saxon senior managers. Furthermore, Chinese
senior managers show significantly (F5
3.54,po0.10) lower in-group identity (adjusted mean
5.39) than Anglo-Saxons (adjusted mean 5.52).
To investigate the negative correlation found
between Chinese culture and collectivism and
both intra- and inter-firm cooperation, logisticregression was undertaken using national culture
as the dependent variable (Table 2). Model 1
shows results when only the control variables are
entered. The full model (2) shows that both
collectivism (b5 0.99, po0.001) and intra-firm
cooperation (b5 0.76, po0.05), quite contrary
to general beliefs, negatively predict Chineseculture.
Discussion and conclusions
Results find no evidence of the differences that
might be expected if senior managers do in fact
conform to the national cultural ‘norms’ Hof-
stede derived from average employee samples.
Senior Chinese managers exhibit no significant
differences to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts in
terms of collectivism or cooperation, and evenmanifest significantly lower in-group identity
than Anglo-Saxons. Moreover, Chinese man-
agers, contrary to what Hofstede’s categoriza-
tions would lead us to expect, are associated
negatively with collectivism and intra-firm co-
operation.
That the hypothesized differences between
Anglo-Saxon and Chinese senior managers sug-
gested by what has become a conventional
cultural wisdom are not found is consistent with
the first general proposition of this paper: that
senior managers might well represent a culturallydistinct sub-population compared to the average
employee populations from which Hofstedederived his categorizations. Findings are also
consistent with our second general proposition:
that senior managers’ personal cultural charac-
teristics are moderated by their organizational
task environment. Given this, it would seem
particularly advantageous for management scho-
lars to reflect critically on the use of average
employee-derived indices of national culture
when categorizing disembodied firms and their
behaviour.
Limitations and further research
While the above conclusions are reasonable, they
need to be set against the limitations of the small
and restricted study on which they are based.
This research suffers the drawbacks of examining
just one industry in one location, and further
research in different industries and nationallocations might test cross-industry and cross-
national generalizability. The study also exam-
ined just one of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions.
Further research might reveal that other aspects
of national culture do in fact apply to senior
manager populations, or that certain aspects are
more mutable than others. This research also did
not compare average employee and senior
manager samples within the same national
cultures, so future studies might test if significant
differences do indeed exist between these two
populations. It might well be the case that somecountries are culturally homogeneous across sub-
populations, while others are not.Results may possibly be a function of the
research location. Hong Kong has been, and still
is, commonly used as an exemplar of a ‘Chinese’
culture, but scholars have suggested that its
population might have been substantially ‘An-
glo-Saxonized’ by its former British colonial
status and its integration with ‘Western’ econom-
Table 2. Logistic regression
Dependent variable: Chinese51, Anglo-Saxon50
Variables 1 2
Age 0.60 (0.16)*** 0.46 (0.18)*
Sex 0.20 (0.71) 0.12 (0.78)
Education 0.21 (0.29)
0.06 (0.31)Tenure 0.09 (0.02)*** 0.08 (0.02)***
Collectivism 0.99 (0.21)***
Intra-firm cooperation 0.76 (0.32)*
Inter-firm cooperation 0.11 (0.22)
In-group identification 0.12 (0.11)
Constant 20.01 (0.91)* 90.60 (10.79)***
–2 Log Likelihood 3790.31 3370.85
Cox & Snell R2 0.07 0.17
Nagelkerke R2 0.10 0.26
a Standard errors in parentheses.*po0.05; **po0.01; ***po0.001.
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ic systems in a particularly dynamic manner
(Ralston et al ., 1993). Certainly, individual
collectivism has been argued to shift towards
greater individualism with economic develop-
ment and modernity (Triandis et al ., 1988).
Hence, further studies using samples in Mainland
China and other less Anglo-Saxonized, lesseconomically dynamic countries might produce
different results. If they did, Hofstede might be
proven correct, but only partially, because if
Hong Kong Chinese senior managers can change
from conforming to the categorization he placedthem in just three decades ago, then his assertion
of the relative immutability of national culture is
surely wrong (Hofstede, 2001, p. 11). It could
perhaps also be argued that Anglo-Saxon senior
managers have changed to be more collectivist; if
so, they have transformed their ostensibly im-
mutable national cultures remarkably rapidlygiven their average job tenure in Hong Kong of
around ten years. Should further research find
this to be the case, then the usefulness of
Hofstede’s categorizations is transient and likely
to diminish with time. Still further, it might be
that both Anglo-Saxon and Chinese managers
have moved either to a midpoint between their
respective Hofstede-identified generic national
cultures, or to an entirely new cultural norm
ubiquitous amongst all senior mangers and
conforming to no particular previously identified
cultural norm. Such a speculation would beconsistent with notions that globalization is
shrinking the world. A further alternative is that
these results may not conform to Hofstede’s
findings simply because they are drawn from data
supplied by senior managers other than from
IBM, the single multinational firm from which
Hofstede drew his data.
Conclusions
Notwithstanding the limitations of this small-
scale study and the clear need for considerablefurther research, its results, while not falsifying
Hofstede’s culture dimensions in relation tosenior firm managers, certainly do not support
them. Specifically, this would suggest that appro-
priate caution is required in viewing the copious
research that adopts uncritically Hofstede’s na-
tional culture categorizations and that also uses
either senior managers or firms rather than
average employees as units of analysis. More
generally, findings offer empirical support to the
case for critical examination of the veracity of
Hofstede’s national culture dimensions (McSwee-
ney, 2002). The results here suggest that Hof-
stede’s cultural dimensions do not apply to senior
managers. This begs the question for further
research of whether or not his categorizationstruly apply at all outside of the 1967–73 average
IBM employee population he used to develop his
national culture dimensions.
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Edmund R. Thompson got his PhD from the London School of Economics. His research focuses on
the causal interactions between international business competitiveness and international political
economy environments and institutions. He is a professor at the Graduate School of Management,
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan. Previously he was a faculty member of the University of
Hong Kong School of Business, and before that taught at the National University of Singapore.
Florence T. T. Phua received her PhD degree in organizational behaviour and construction
management from the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include aspects of
organizational behaviour and the interdependent individual- and firm-level factors affecting the
dynamics of construction project outcomes. She is currently a lecturer in the Faculty of the Built
Environment at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
68 E. R. Thompson and F. T. T. Phua