Kwantes and Glazer 2017

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN PSYCHOLOGY
CULTURE, ORGANIZATIONS, AND WORK
Catherine T. Kwantes
Sharon Glazer
Culture,
Organizations,
and Work
Clarifying Concepts
SpringerBriefs in Psychology
Culture, Organizations, and Work
Series editors
Sharon Glazer, University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA
Catherine T. Kwantes, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada
[email protected]
The SpringerBriefs Series in Culture, Organizations, and Work publishes fully
developed conceptual pieces that focus on current state-of-the-art topics and
research on the interface between culture, organizations, and work. The series aims
to expand upon key concepts, theories, or ideas that require more development than
a typical journal article permits, but still do not require a full-length book. We
encourage authors to disentangle issues that have created confusion or have had
little attention in research and application. Submissions should address issues in
work and organizations from an international, multinational, cross-cultural,
intercultural, and/or cultural perspectives. Authors of published papers should also
provide guidance for applying research findings in practice. Topics can focus on
any and all kinds of cultures, organizations, and work situations. The level of
analysis is open and we also encourage cross-level conceptual pieces. Papers may
include some empirical evidence, but it is not a forum for preparing a longer journal
type manuscript. Importantly, this series aims to publish papers from around the
globe and support views of culture, organizations, and work from different cultural
lenses. We strive to make the series accessible and relevant to practitioners and
academic scholars, including graduate students, who wish to dive deeper into topics
that are currently not represented sufficiently in other publications.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13335
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Catherine T. Kwantes Sharon Glazer
•
Culture, Organizations,
and Work
Clarifying Concepts
123
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Catherine T. Kwantes Sharon Glazer
University of Windsor University of Baltimore
Windsor, ON Baltimore, MD
Canada USA
ISSN 2192-8363 ISSN 2192-8371 (electronic)

SpringerBriefs in Psychology
ISSN 2510-1471 ISSN 2510-148X (electronic)
Culture, Organizations, and Work
ISBN 978-3-319-47661-2 ISBN 978-3-319-47662-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47662-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955321
© The Author(s) 2017

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Acknowledgments
We thank Michael Harris Bond, Thomas Mitchell, Malgorzata W. Kozusznik, and

Alyssa Gradus, for their thoughtful reviews and suggestions. Special gratitude is
extended to Fresia Jackson for her substantial intellectual contribution to the dis-
cussion of cross-cultural competence and cultural intelligence.
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Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 Culture Across Disciplines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1 Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Anthropology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 Sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4 Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Toward an Operationalization of Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.1 A Macro View of Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2 Approaching Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3 Creating Frameworks to Study Culture: The Nomological
Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.4 Etic Versus Emic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.5 Methodological and Measurement Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.6 Identifying Cultural Signatures: Surface Probes
to Deep Dives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.7 Geographical Context as Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.8 Societal Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.9 Diverse/Heterogeneous Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.10 Characterizing Culture: Cultural Values and Beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.10.1 Culture as Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.10.2 Culture as Beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.10.3 Culture as Values and Beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.10.4 Other Cultural Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
vii
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viii Contents
3.11 A Micro View of Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

3.12 Culture as Presented Through Social Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.13 Summary: Operationalizing Culture for This Brief Series . . . . . . . 36
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4 Organizations and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.1 Voluntary Versus Involuntary Membership
with an Organization and Its Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1.1 Voluntary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.1.2 Non-voluntary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.2 Organizational Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.2.1 Organizational Cultures in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2.2 Perspectives on Organizational Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2.3 Leadership and Organizational Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.2.4 Organizational Culture Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.3 Multinational Corporations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.4 Industry Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.5 Organizational Cultures Around Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.5.1 Safety Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.5.2 Health Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.6 Intraorganizational Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.7 Team Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5 Work and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.1 Work: Person/Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.2 Work: Throughput/Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.2.1 Situated Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.2.2 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.2.3 Work Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.2.4 Decision-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.2.5 Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.2.6 Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.2.7 Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.2.8 Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.3 Work: Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.3.1 Contextual Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.3.2 Task Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.3.3 Work Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
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Contents ix
6 Cross-Cultural Competence and Cultural Intelligence

in the Workplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.1 Cross-Cultural Competence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.2 Cultural Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
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Chapter 1
Introduction
As businesses become more global and the world becomes “flatter” (Friedman
2005), people in the workplace are increasingly adjusting to and navigating through
its cultural complexity. Although international trading has taken place for millennia,
for much of that time trade interactions tended to be between individuals and small
groups from one culture meeting people from another culture to conduct business.
Examples of those interactions were found on the Silk Road trade route, which
connected East Asia with West Asia from around 206 BCE to 220 CE. Later in
history, the purportedly first multinational corporation, the Dutch East India
Company, recorded sending over one million sailors, half of whom were not Dutch,
to work in Asia between 1600 and 1800, with almost 40% not returning alive
(Emmer and Klooster 1999).
Unlike centuries ago when only a few business contributors would travel and
interact with people from different national cultures, in today’s business environment
it is not at all unusual for entire populations of company employees to work phys-
ically and/or virtually across cultures when interacting between organizations, or
even within the same organization. While it used to be a special endeavor to travel
internationally, today international assignments are becoming a much more common
part of many career trajectories. Travel for meetings, global teams, and global virtual
meetings are also occurring with increasing frequency. For these reasons, under-
standing cultures’ effects at work and developing cross-cultural competence in the
business world is becoming of increasing importance. While this importance is
recognized, the statement itself begs the question of what exactly is “cross-cultural
competence?” Implicit in that question, of course, are the questions: What exactly is
culture? And, how are organizations and the experience of work affected by culture?
The approach to addressing these questions in research and practice depends
upon the point of view adopted. Each point of view, cultural, cross-cultural, or
international, brings a different perspective to understanding and addressing societal
influences on business practices, management, and employee attitudes and behav-
iors. Each brings a different ontological perspective regarding culture and to
© The Author(s) 2017 1

C.T. Kwantes and S. Glazer, Culture, Organizations, and Work,
Culture, Organizations, and Work, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47662-9_1
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2 1 Introduction
determining what may or may not be a concern, how best to understand a given
issue, and finally, how to develop an approach to that particular issue.
The particular point of view researchers choose to adopt and the methodological
approach researchers then employ to address culture-related research questions are
important factors to consider from both an epistemological and a practical per-
spective. How people view the origins of culture and the theoretical orientations
they draw on shapes what they believe to know, as that knowledge stems from the
questions asked, how those questions were asked, and the methods used to look for
answers to those questions. Similarly, from a practical perspective, how problems
are addressed will reflect how a given problem is defined and where remedies for
those problems are sought. These assertions are themselves embodiments of an
epistemological assumption that culture is within us, outside of us, and influencing
our interactions with others and entire lifecourse.
Throughout issues of this series scholars will be delving deeper into topics that
address culture, organization, and work at various levels of and units of analysis.
This inaugural issue explicitly utilizes the lens of Industrial and Organizational
(I/O) Psychology, with an implicit assumption that an organization’s resulting
product or service is only as good as the people it employs. For this reason, the
focus is on people’s attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions in the workplace and not
on an organization’s overall performance.
The goals of this first monograph are to identify the myriad ways of studying
culture from the perspective of I/O Psychology, as well as related disciplines,
including ways of operationalizing culture, different levels of culture, culture’s
interplay with the organization and with work. The intent is not to limit the conceptual
approaches for studying culture, organization, and work; rather, it is to present
numerous different ways of viewing the concepts, with the full awareness that these
are not the only ways. Each issue throughout this series is intended to help ideate ways
to enhance and improve empirical work, as well as to create, develop, and employ new
approaches in the realm of applied activities dealing with culture, organization, and
work. The aggregate of the authors’ works in this series will support the ultimate goal
of enhancing individuals’ cross-cultural competence in research and/or in practice.
The penultimate goal for this series of brief books, then, is to bring to light some
of the critical questions related to culture and its effect in the workplace. Bringing a
different focus in each volume on culture, organization, and/or work, the hope is to
distinguish pathways for the myriad reflections of culture in research on work,
personnel, and organizational psychology and behavior, and elucidate contributions
each path makes vís a vís the others.
Culture, organization, and work are envisioned as interacting concepts (see
Fig. 1.1). Culture influences, is influenced by, and interacts with the organization
and/or work performed. It is a macro concept, even though its impact is measured at
the level of individual performance. It is more complex than any one definition or
measurement can encompass, and for that reason flexible enough to assess in a way
that lends itself to individual research interests related to culture.
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1 Introduction 3
Fig. 1.1 A model of the

independent and interactive
linkages between culture,
organization, and work
Culture
Organization
Work
The organization represents a meso-level construct and the immediate context in

which a person engages at work. An organization, as a structured entity, does so in
a specific context within the larger social-contextual milieu (societal culture). The
term organization is not meant to put parameters around an organized unit, but
rather we invite authors and readers to conceptualize organizations as institutions
that reinforce particular values, beliefs, practices, norms, assumptions, and rituals in
an effort to promote and give meaning to its (organizational) existence. Thinking of
an organization in this way necessitates the study of its culture as it evidences itself
in the use of physical spaces, division of labor and managerial roles, types of social
groups, and power and hierarchy structures (Porras and Robertson 1992).
Finally, the concept “work” refers to the immediate experience of an individual
who engages in work, as well as the activities that make up the behavior of work.
“Work” may be thought of as a micro-level concept, as it is studied at the level of
the individual. For the purposes of this series, work is viewed as a set of activities
that must be performed within a context that is influenced by societal culture,
organizational culture, and professional/occupational culture, and how well one
performs those activities is further influenced by individual differences, including
temperament, knowledge, skills, abilities, motivations, and other personal charac-
teristics. Work, as conceptualized here, encompasses the meaning people impose on
jobs and job titles, and the kinds of identities people form as a result of job titles,
professional/occupational cultures, organizational cultures, and societal cultures.
Societal and organizational cultures influence work, and work can in some
circumstances influence those cultures in turn (Kwantes and Dickson 2011). The
sizes of the three rings in Fig. 1.1 differ to illustrate unit-level differences, not the
difference in importance or magnitude of influence. In fact, in order of saliency,
predictors of employee behavior are most probably the work itself, then the orga-
nization, and finally the societal culture. However, it is important to emphasize that
all three also interact to influence behavior. Note, too, that there are aspects of
organization and aspects of work that influence each other without the influence
of culture, as well as aspects of each that independently fall outside the reach of
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4 1 Introduction
culture. This reflects the position that while culture is important, its influence may
not always be discernable or detected through survey measurement or even
ethnographic evaluations.
References
Emmer, P. C., & Klooster, W. (1999). The Dutch Atlantic, 1600-1800 expansion without empire.
Itinerario, 23 , 48–69. doi:10.1017/S0165115300024761.
Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kwantes, C. T., & Dickson, M. W. (2011). Organizational culture in a societal context: Lessons
from GLOBE and beyond. In N. N. Ashkanasy, C. Wilderom, & M. F. Peterson (Eds.), The
handbook of organizational culture and climate (2nd ed., pp. 494–514). Newbury Park, CA:
Sage.
Porras, J. I., & Robertson, P. J. (1992). Organizational development: Theory, practice, and
research. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational
psychology (2nd ed., Vol. 3, pp. 719–822). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
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Chapter 2
Culture Across Disciplines
Culture is complex to define and yet implicitly known. The difficulty in defining
culture is evident by the myriad of ways people within and across disciplines (e.g.,
psychology, anthropology, and sociology) have attempted to define and opera-
tionalize it. The term “culture” has shifted in meaning from its early use, centuries
ago, to refer to agriculture to its current use in psychology as a collective set of
meanings, beliefs, and behavioral norms (Jahoda 2012). Despite this general
understanding of what culture is, a specific and agreed-upon definition by scholars
in the field remains elusive, and there are many criticisms of how culture as a
construct has been used (cf. Poortinga 2015). As Landis (1972) noted, “there have
been many definitions of culture. None are adequate, for how can one define that
which makes up almost the totality of human experience?” (p. 54). Given the
enormity of the construct, any attempt to operationalize culture will necessarily be
incomplete, but without such attempts it is not possible to understand the influences
of culture. Thus, culture is a concept that is a derivation of the agent’s point of
view: a condition, a process, a product, or any combination thereof.
2.1 Psychology
In psychology, researchers attempt to discover both universal (etic) and

culture-specific (emic) psychological principles (Segall et al. 1998). Typically,
cross-cultural psychologists search for etics whereas cultural psychologists search
for emics. For cross-cultural psychologists, culture is learned and bounded by a
group’s behavioral norms, values, beliefs, and symbols (Hofstede 1991). It is
believed that these culture-bound constructs can be used to understand and explain
similarities and differences in psychological processes across cultures (Triandis
1996) and that, in order to study similarities and differences, various psychological
methods for assessment can be employed, including qualitative (e.g., interviews),
quantitative research (e.g., surveys), and computational modeling.
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6 2 Culture Across Disciplines
Cultural psychologists will use many of these same methods, and in addition
may engage in ethnographic and experimental approaches to examine the inter-
section between culture and cognition, focusing on how sociocultural practices
influence mental processes (Shweder 1991). The cultural focus deals with psy-
chological processes that implicitly or explicitly constitute cultural systems within
which members (or individuals) function (see Kroeber and Kluckholn 1952). The
foundational theory for this approach is situationalism, which asserts that “social
context creates potent forces producing or constraining behavior” (Ross and Nisbett
1991, p. 9). As such, culture results from contextual pressures, as well as inter-
nalized cultural values or beliefs that in turn affect how individuals interpret or
understand their experiences. Culture takes on “a life apart from the situations that
gave rise to them and can endure well beyond the demise of those situations” (Ross
and Nisbett 1991, p. 176).
The values and beliefs held by a group of individuals can neither be directly
assessed nor measured. Rather, a group’s values and beliefs are inferred on the basis
of group members’ actions that people label from their point of view (as observers)
or that researchers measure, usually using multiple items to operationalize a con-
struct. From the results of these measures, the existence and the relative strength of
values and beliefs are established.
Further, while specific behaviors may be observed, the reasons for those
behaviors are not necessarily accessible through traditional survey measurement of
values or beliefs. Researchers in India (Sinha et al. 2002) and Canada (Kwantes
et al. 2007a, b) used scenario-based methodology to examine values-based
behaviors and intentions. Specifically, respondents were given multiple scenarios
and asked to choose what action they would take in that circumstance, for example,
if a person has two job offers, one in her own town where her parents live, and a
better offer in a distant town, what should she do? The options reflected behaviors
consistent with values, behaviors incongruent with values, or a mix of the two.
Given the fact that individuals often endorsed behaviors that appeared to reflect one
value while at the same time agreeing with a contrary underlying motive for that
behavior suggests that merely measuring cultural values with a survey does not
necessarily provide information about behavioral choices.
Culture, then, may only be inferred, and its multifaceted and multilayered nature
reflects a great deal of complexity. In order to simplify or draw on cognitive
shortcuts to understand culture, much of the organizational theory and research in
Industrial and Organizational Psychology has focused on specific aspects of culture.
This reductionist approach has both positive and negative implications. Organizing
culture along categorical labels to describe groups of people who share some
similar backgrounds may help to understand antecedents or consequences of some
facets of culture, or to measure aspects of culture.
However, such labels also create barriers to a more inclusive understanding of
what culture is, and its effects on human behavior. As noted earlier, the connection
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2.1 Psychology 7
between values and behavior is not always a strong one, meaning that values are not
always good predictors of behaviors. Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) indicated that
global, general values (such as those suggested by Hofstede 1980; Trompenaars and
Hampden-Turner 1998; Schwartz and Bilsky 1987) are typically poor predictors of
specific behavioral outcomes. The Social Axioms Survey was developed as a way
to capture culturally taught beliefs about how the world works, and reflects indi-
vidual expectancies about outcomes for specific behaviors (Leung et al. 2002), thus
allowing for a stronger ability to explain culture’s effect on behavior when com-
bined with values. Although social axioms are measured at the individual level,
they are generated through experiences and therefore reflect general cultural ten-
dencies or norms. For example, one social axiom is that of reward for application,
or the expectancy that increased layout of resources will result in increased rewards
or positive outcomes. A cultural context where hard work does result in desired
outcomes provides a setting to teach this belief in “how the world works” to its
individual members. Similarly, a cultural context in which hard work does not
result in outcomes that differ in any meaningful way from not working hard at all
does not “teach” this belief to its members. “…values and social beliefs are different
domains of discourse, as the correlations between these two constructs are generally
low or absent. …values …tap… self-aware motivational systems, and social
axioms … tap… conceptions of the social context within which an actor must
navigate her or his behavior in negotiating outcomes from the world” (Bond et al.
2004, p. 189). Thus beliefs in how the world works, or social axioms, can add
meaningful explanation for how culture affects behaviors (Leung and Bond 2008).
In contrast to psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists have generally
resisted the dimensional, or categorical, approach to studying culture and insisted
that the construct must be treated holistically (Jahoda and Krewer 1997). As a
result, these academic disciplines employ different methodological approaches to
understanding culture.
2.2 Anthropology
Anthropology, employing a phenomenological approach to studying culture,

investigates cultural experiences as expressed through the lived daily life of a group
of people (not individuals), investigating both current and past cultures (Boas 1928/
1962, p. 13). Cultural anthropology, which focuses on cultural variations in groups
of people, and cognitive anthropology, which studies shared knowledge and
transmission systems, are specializations within anthropology that are particularly
relevant to understanding culture.
Some anthropologists may apply a functionalist perspective, which emphasizes
the role of the sociocultural context as shaping cultural beliefs (including cosmo-
logical myths), values, or norms (see Malinowski 1922/1961). Other anthropolo-
gists may apply a structuralist perspective and study a culture’s systems of
embedded meaning or thought patterns (e.g., how various kinship systems produce
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different taboos; Geertz 1990). Data for anthropological inquiry are gathered
through fieldwork, whereby information is derived from observations and/or
gathered from informants’ descriptions of phenomena of culture or civilization
(Mead 1965; Radcliffe-Brown 1958), as well as through historical analysis, eth-
nology, interviews, content, and discourse analysis.
Cognitive anthropologists are particularly interested in understanding how cul-
ture shapes people’s experiences and their interpretations of events (Rubinstein
2003), and how culture bounds people’s expectations (D’Andrade 1982). In other
words, a major focus is the meaning created by the interplay between one’s social
constructions and one’s psychological states. Part of the meaning is derived from
cumulative life experiences and mental schemas provided by the culture (Strauss
and Quinn 1997). People’s experiences are accumulated through interactions within
social structures such as family, marketplace, political settings, and education
systems. Over time common meaning is imposed on the value and relevance of the
social structure, which can then serve to reinforce normative practices in how
people interact, what people know, or how reality is created (D’Andrade 1982).
Particularly important to understanding culture from these research perspectives
is the aspect of the traditional cultural anthropological approach to studying group
phenomena. Anthropologists will seek to view cultures as those on the inside of the
culture see them, taking into consideration the “…complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor 1871/1924, p. 1).
2.3 Sociology
Sociology is the broad study of society and social activity, with society concep-
tualized as a complex whole with distinctive but interconnected parts. Social
relationships form a central theme of this discipline, with a focus on interpersonal
relationships, inter-group, inter-institutional level relationships, such as govern-
ments, as well as interactions between these relationships, such as the power that
institutions can exert over its citizens (Weber 1962). Scholars of sociology study
multiple layers of groups, including groups organized around religion, race or
ethnicity, job roles, gender, sex, etc., and assume that individuals shape and are
shaped by value systems and acceptable behavioral norms within subcultures
(Weber 1962). For sociologists, culture is not objective and cannot be quantified.
Sociological studies attempt to qualitatively and quantitatively describe society’s
influence on populations within a group setting.
Sociology, then, adds to our understanding of culture with its focus on groups,
their norms, shared expectations, beliefs, and ways of doing things. Cultures are
generally thought to develop as societies deal with the geography that the group
inhabits and the resources available there. Julian Steward (1972), for example,
suggests that the development of culture is inextricably linked with a group of
people’s adaptation to the environment. These adaptations, according to Steward,
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2.3 Sociology 9
are functional in that they foster the survival of the group. Culture is maintained,
therefore, by members of a culture teaching newcomers (either by birth or by
immigration) the values, processes, and behaviors that have been perceived as
contributing to the group’s survival. “Different cultures are produced when indi-
viduals get together to live their lives differently” (Anderson 2010, p. 27).
2.4 Business
Not surprisingly, business disciplines focus on culture mainly at the organizational

level, that is, organizational culture, and at the level of the economy. Organizational
culture is viewed as developing from the ideas of institutionalism, or institutional
theory. Meyer and Rowan (1977) refer to “formal and informal organizations” and
point out that organizational behavior is determined in part by the dictates of the
organization, such as the specific work that must take place (e.g., accounting,
production, marketing, etc.; viz., the formal organization), as well as by relational
networks (the informal organization). In fact, they suggest that these relational
networks are key to understanding how day-to-day activities are coordinated and, in
turn, become part of the standard operating procedure of the organization. The
meanings that employees give to activities are important to understanding organi-
zational practices and are related to the cultures that organizations develop (Harris
1994).
Business disciplines also study culture from micro- and macro-economic points
of view. For example, a company wishing to expand its business to another country
may be motivated by economic gains. Analysts will identify business opportunities,
features of available human capital (e.g., potential employees’ education levels,
access to transportation), costs and laws associated with business development, and
competition in the area. For example, off-shoring call centers from the USA to India
was deemed an economically feasible way of maximizing profits given potential
employee education, payroll savings (for both day time and night time work), and
available technology infrastructure, such as making the costs of long-distance calls
virtually zero through computer-mediated communication services (Ellram et al.
2008).
The focus on culture from the business perspective adds to our understanding of
culture with its emphasis on the specific constraints that being a member of an
organization provides, and how those shared constraints result in specific shared
meanings. While organizations develop in response to an identified need, actors in
the environment place constraints and boundaries on organizations’ performance.
These constraints may include factors such as the legal milieu, industry, geo-
graphical location, or any combination of these. These environmental factors also
create parameters around who will be a part of an organization. From a cultural
perspective, despite movement of employees through its permeable boundaries, as
employees come and go, an organization’s culture tends to remain fairly stable over
time, because the values of its founders set a tone and the reason for an
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organization’s creation changes when there are major changes to environmental

factors, but less so on individual contributors who come and go. While individuals
can affect an organization’s culture, particularly when there are changes in top
leadership and typically a result of business pressure, the organizational culture may
not substantially change. The balance between the macro and the micro approaches
in business perspectives on culture provides insights into the many forces that can
potentially shape a culture.
2.5 Summary
Culture is such an integral part of human existence that it defies any single, simple
definition. Different disciplines have approached culture from different angles, and
at different levels, to explain the phenomena of interest to that particular discipline.
While this may necessitate isolating elements or layers of culture at times, it is
imperative to remember that this approach results in only a partial understanding of
culture. Culture as an individual phenomenon, that is, internalized cultural values,
beliefs, or practices, still exists in a social context, and therefore by definition
“culture at the individual level” operates within a context of “culture at the group
level.” Each discipline’s perspective on culture adds to the understanding of what
culture as a totality and as a holistic phenomenon is, and how it operates.
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Chapter 3
Toward an Operationalization of Culture
In his seminal book on culture, Hall (1974) noted that there are three fundamental
characteristics of culture: “it is not innate, but learned; the various facets of culture
are interrelated—you touch a culture in one place and everything else is affected; it
is shared and in effect defines the boundaries of different groups” (p. 16). Yet,
culture itself cannot be “touched” directly. What can be grasped are components of
culture, including infrastructure, practices, physical environments, and relationships
between humans or humans with nature. Hall goes on to say that culture affects
each and every aspect of human life, including
… personality, how people express themselves (including shows of emotion), the way they
think, how they move, how problems are solved, how their cities are planned and laid out,
how transportation systems functioned and are organized, as well as how economic and
government systems are put together and function (pp. 16–17).
There are at least two ways to treat culture in a theoretical or empirical context.
The first approach, similar to anthropologists and business anthropologists in par-
ticular, is one where culture is considered holistically, as a multiplicity of contextual
factors that cannot be easily parsed. This view takes the stance that culture cannot
be directly measured, as it is viewed as a complex system of interrelated factors
within a milieu (i.e., people, processes, activities, values, beliefs, structures, etc.).
Therefore, to understand culture, it is necessary to immerse oneself in the culture
and be able to recognize values, beliefs, and behavioral rules, how and when they
are prioritized.
The second approach is to focus on one particular aspect or a set of aspects of
culture and then measure those aspects with a standardized questionnaire, using
those scores to predict or some other variable(s) of interest. While providing a
means to look at specific relationships culture has with outcomes, such as behav-
iors, this particularistic approach reduces the explanatory power of culture by
restricting cultural explanations to one or a few cultural aspects that the researcher
believes to be relevant to the outcome of interest. It rarely takes into account that
each aspect of culture operates in conjunction with other aspects of culture (the

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14 3 Toward an Operationalization of Culture
whole package is referred to as cultural syndromes; Triandis 1996). In other words,

this approach focuses on particular aspects of culture, but at the expense of a bigger
picture. These different methods result in different measurement concerns including
conceptualization, placement of culture in a nomological framework, levels of
analysis, and ultimately, an operationalization of culture.
3.1 A Macro View of Culture
Culture comprises meaningful symbols that characterize it, and a social system’s
culture should become apparent when assessing its members’ “intersubjective
reality” (Wan and Chiu 2009, p. 80) of those symbols. Individuals know the cul-
tural milieu in which they are embedded either implicitly, explicitly, or both. They
consciously or unconsciously choose whether or not to follow the cultural pro-
scriptions and prescriptions of that milieu as “the beliefs and values that people
generally believe to be shared in a culture are important guides to its members’
judgments and behaviors” (Chiu and Chao 2009, p. 460). Thus, “culture resides
neither completely external of individuals nor completely in the self-characteristics
of the culture. Part of culture resides in people’s assumptions about the cultural
milieu that they experience” (Wan and Chiu 2009, p. 89). High consistency of
individuals’ agreement on cultural manifestations within a social system would
therefore suggest widely shared meanings, i.e., intersubjective reality. However,
even inconsistency in how people characterize a culture teaches us about a culture.
For example, social systems can be characterized by how tight or loose they are
with respect to cultural norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors (Triandis and Gelfand
1998).
According to Gelfand et al. (2006), the tightness or looseness of a culture refers
to the extent to which norms are clear and consistently agreed upon, as well as the
degree of tolerance a given culture has for non-compliance with those norms. Tight
cultures tend to be rigid and have less tolerance for deviation from norms, whereas
loose cultures tend to be tolerant to non-compliance with norms. Uz (2015) explains
that threat to a culture’s survival will mobilize strict coordination and organization
in an effort to reduce ambiguities and conserve resources needed for survival. Tight
cultures tend to be traditional, repressive, agricultural, economically poor, and
endorse high sanctions for deviations, whereas loose cultures tend to be industri-
alized, globalized, liberal, urban, financially wealthy, democratic, and endorse
freedom of the press (Uz 2015).
While the study of culture is highly complicated, the study of culture’s conse-
quences on human affect, behavior, and cognition is even more complicated. It is
therefore critical to have a foundation for understanding culture and its influence on
human affect, behavior, and cognition. Situated meaning created by individuals’
construal of self and culture provides such a foundation. Taras et al. (2009)
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3.1 A Macro View of Culture 15
provide a comprehensive review of different ways in which culture is quantified as

external, that is, pertaining to the context, and psychological, that is, pertaining to
the mind. The general idea behind situated meaning is that interpretations of
thoughts and actions that occur about a given event are governed by one’s point of
view of how social interactions are expected to occur in the situation where the
interaction occurs (Hong 2009). Thus, even if a person’s tendency is to make sense
of events from one cultural lens (e.g., using an independent self-construal), context
can shift that construal (e.g., to using an interdependent self-construal) if the context
and situation deem it necessary (Gardner et al. 1999).
At the cultural level of analysis, or the macro-level, overlapping and competing
cultural characteristics or elements influence how individuals feel, think, and
behave (Fischer et al. 2009; Hofstede 1980; House et al. 2004; Inglehart 1997;
Leung and Bond 2004; Schwartz 1999; Triandis 1995; Trompnaars and
Hampden-Turner 1998). Although individuals themselves might not uphold these
defining characteristics, these characteristics help shape individuals’ affects,
behaviors, and cognitions by virtue of the fact that they create the shared context
within which individuals must operate and function with others.
For example, the USA is often depicted as an individualistic culture, that is, a
society that establishes clear distinctions between self and others (Hofstede 1980,
2001). The individualistic characterization is not, however, an indication that all
people in the USA or of American cultural background perceive themselves as
unique from others. The characterization of a nation as individualistic is not the
same as the characterization of an individual construing himself or herself as
independent. This is similar to the ecological fallacy in assuming that because the
USA is a wealthy nation each individual in that nation is wealthy. It is therefore
important to make explicit the level of analysis that one is referring to when
referencing “culture.”
3.2 Approaching Culture
Some would say that culture is external to the individual (Hofstede 1980, 2001;
Schwartz 1994, 1999, 2009; Smith 2009; Smith et al. 2006), others say it is within
the person (Markus and Kitayama 1991; Shweder and Sullivan 1993), and yet
others say it is both external to the person and within the person (Wan and Chiu
2009). People function within culture and experience it through the values rein-
forced in their context, the beliefs people are expected to hold or personally hold,
the norms people are expected to follow, and the practices they perform.
Schwartz’s (2009) position is that culture is a latent construct and can only be
understood through variables that jointly approximate and create meaning for a
given social system. This perspective, then, suggests that the average of individuals’
values, beliefs, and behaviors does not explain culture, but rather these values,
beliefs, and behaviors are observed as a result of individuals’ responses to the
culture. Thus, individual values can vary greatly across individuals and those values
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may be explained against a comprehensive understanding of a social system’s

cultural characteristics, including cultural values. For example, an individual’s
values for conformity or saving face can be seen as a result of a culture’s value for
modesty. However, not all people in a social system that encourages modesty will
conform and behave in ways that are consistent with that value. In such a case,
factors other than a cultural value of modesty would be used to interpret the
non-conforming individuals’ behaviors. In some circumstances, a person’s social
status or social role may influence her or his behavior more than a cultural value
(Bond 2013). Even in a culture that values modesty, a CEO may brag about his or
her accomplishments in an organization, thereby conforming to expectations related
to a social role rather than the cultural value.
The myriad of approaches to consider in the study of culture suggests that there
is no one best way for all research involving culture to be conducted. Ultimately,
what matters most is that researchers and practitioners clearly delineate and
explicate their particular approach to culture in any communication, so that other
researchers and practitioners are able to interpret and understand the perspective
chosen. Thus, researchers and practitioners are urged to conceptualize and opera-
tionalize their working definition and to provide a rationale for their approach.
3.3 Creating Frameworks to Study Culture: The

Nomological Network
Researchers who study culture in relation to organizations and work are challenged
to determine how to conceptualize culture, as well as where to place culture in a
theoretical framework. Borrowing from systems theory, in which there are inputs,
throughputs (i.e., processes), and outputs, it is plausible to consider culture as a
condition, a process, or even a product. Is culture a condition or antecedent variable
of other variables that would require culture to be measured in terms of some
approximation of culture, such as values and beliefs? In other words, does culture
yield consequences? Or, is culture that which is measured as a proxy for behavior or
performance, where culture is the result or the manifestation of some antecedents?
In other words, is culture the antecedent or the consequence? In short, where does
culture belong in a nomological network and framework?
There are several examples of culture as a direct antecedent to various outcomes
of interest. Culture has been studied as a direct antecedent to outcomes as diverse as
how individuals experience satisfaction at work (Kwantes 2010), how trust
develops in the workplace (Whitener et al. 2000), and the norms for how and when
emotions are expressed (Matsumoto et al. 2008).
Culture as a construct is also used as a moderator variable or an explanatory
variable. For example, Gelfand et al. (2013) examined the value of harmony to
explain differences in how Taiwanese or American negotiation teams performed as
a result of team size. Taiwanese team members performed more poorly when team
size increased, whereas U.S. team members performed better as team size
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3.3 Creating Frameworks to Study Culture: The Nomological Network 17
increased. More specifically, Taiwanese team members refrained from being

competitive with their opponents as team size increased. Using country as a proxy
for culture, Gelfand et al. attributed the differences to the Taiwanese members’
needs to maintain harmony. Therefore, they concluded that to reduce chances of
creating discord, Taiwanese teams may fail in team negotiations.
There may be no definitive answer to the question, “Where does culture fit?”
With the variety of placements in the nomological net, the definition of culture, the
level of analysis, as well as the potential explanatory power of the construct must be
carefully thought through both to conduct research in culture, and to understand the
findings of that research.
3.4 Etic Versus Emic
Conceptualization and operationalization of culture is essential to understanding the

results of cross-cultural research. As noted above, cross-cultural research may
operate from an “etic” or an “emic” perspective, with an “etic” approach being a
search for universals in human behavior and an “emic” approach reflecting a search
for concepts and behaviors specific to a particular culture (Triandis 1994). The
predominant method for conducting research has been from an etic perspective
(Berry 1989). Researchers take a well-established theory from one cultural context
and test it in another cultural context, often presuming that these theories are
universal. For example, for many years researchers took Meyer and Allen’s (1991)
three-dimensional theory of organizational commitment and applied it to other
countries without considering whether the concept of organizational commitment or
its respective dimensions are even relevant in the societies in question (see
meta-analysis by Fischer and Mansell 2009). In contrast, following recommenda-
tions specified by Berry (1989) and Segall et al. (1998), Wasti (2003) conducted
both an imposed etic and an emic study by developing organizational commitment
items relevant to the Turkish culture, while also modifying established items from
Meyer et al. (1993). Her goal was to ensure that the Turkish sample could respond
to items that they would recognize as aspects of “organizational commitment.” Still,
there are drawbacks to the generalizability of that research method, as the emic
aspects of a measure might only be valid in that particular culture. Thus, inter-
preting findings in relation to other similar studies, but in different countries, may
become problematic.
3.5 Methodological and Measurement Challenges
The social system in which one operates provides a starting point from which to
craft a cultural framework (Kashima 2009) to explain why and how individuals
think, feel, and act. In other words, a given situation is not the reason for a given
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effect, but it is quite likely that the meaning projected on to the situation yields a
culturally influenced effect (Oyserman and Sorensen 2009). That explanation does
not, however, mean that all individuals within a social system share meanings,
values, and behaviors that are characteristic of the culture as a whole, as individual
differences exist within the same cultural group. Therefore, researchers must be
very careful to ensure that methods and measurement tools they select are appro-
priate for the level and unit of analysis.
van de Vijver et al. (2010), as well as Schaffer and Riordan (2003), addresses
several major methodological and measurement challenges that arise in
cross-cultural research. These include sample equivalence, procedural equivalence,
material equivalence, measurement equivalence, functional equivalence, and
appropriate levels of analysis. When conducting cross-cultural research on
organization-related topics, researchers must first be aware of the challenges asso-
ciated with sample equivalence (i.e., similarities between different cultural samples).
For example, when educational and/or professional requirements for a particular job
in one country differ from those in another, or when in one cultural context a given
profession may be predominantly male versus female in another cultural context, the
supposedly same sample begins to yield uncontrollable biases. Second, procedural
equivalence, that is, how data will be collected must be carefully planned. Surveys
administered via a web application may engage a different kind of respondent (i.e.,
someone who is comfortable and able to use computer-based technology) from the
paper–pencil respondent or the interviewee respondent. If interviews are conducted,
one must be aware of the sex, status, and ethnicity of the interviewer and how those
may potentially interact with those characteristics of the interviewee. These factors
could have a strong effect on the quality and reliability of interview data.
Material equivalence is a third important feature to consider. It coincides with
procedural equivalence in that the researcher must consider if it is more appropriate
to employ instructions and materials in a single language (i.e., the same language
regardless of cultural context) or translated into the dominant language of the
respondents (Harzing et al. 2013). Will all respondents know the language of the
original materials equally well, or will individual respondents translate the materials
differently for themselves and thus invalidate the data? Likewise, the readability of
the materials is important to consider. This requires careful attention to linguistic
rules in different countries. Survey measurements must also consider cultural
implications of rating scale equivalence. Is spacing between ordinal ratings inter-
preted similarly or is the meaning of scale anchors perceived similarly? In other
words, does “somewhat” or “very” carry the same salience in all contexts repre-
sented in a given cross-cultural study?
When researchers begin to consider matters of measurement equivalence,
emphasis is often placed on translation issues. In particular, when assessing
translation issues, researchers are concerned with conceptual equivalence, func-
tional equivalence, and linguistic equivalence (Schaffer and Riordan 2003).
Conceptual (in)equivalence refers to the extent to which variables in one culture
might have different connotations in another culture. For example, the concept
“career woman” has a negative connotation in Israel and implies a woman who is
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3.5 Methodological and Measurement Challenges 19
focused on self-promotion and selfishness. A career woman would unlikely choose

to have and raise children (Glazer 2002). In contrast, “career” carries a positive
connotation in the USA—thus a “career woman” tends to be thought of as someone
who is achievement-oriented, but not necessarily at the expense of having a family
(Etzion and Bailyn 1994).
An increasingly common method to assess whether or not measurement
equivalence exists in cross-cultural and cross-language research is differential item
functioning (DIF, see e.g., Holland and Wainer 1993). This method examines
differences in item functioning across groups and is based on the Rasch model to
check whether or not respondents are answering survey questions in the same
manner. If the probability of members of one group responding in a particular way
to a question is different than the probability of members of a different cultural
group, then measurement equivalence is called into question. More specifically, an
item may exhibit a difference in item performance if respondents from different
backgrounds, but similar underlying traits or abilities (e.g., librarians in different
countries), have different probabilities of answering the item correctly. Differences
that are detected may be indicative of bias. DIF is a particularly apt method to
assess whether or not existing measures that were developed in one cultural context
or language can be applied to a different cultural context or language. The greater
the DIF score, the greater the chances are that the items are understood differently.
Functional equivalence refers to the invariant purpose of a psychological or
behavioral variable across cultures. An example of functional equivalence might be
seen in practices people carry out that serve similar purposes in different cultural
contexts, such as job selection processes. In some countries, such as France,
graphology may be used as a personality assessment tool, whereas in other coun-
tries, such as the USA, a personality inventory may be administered. In this
example, the two approaches differ, but their purpose, to select the right applicant,
is the same. Finally, the manner in which questions are linguistically presented may
yield different responses. For example, “what do you think about…” is cognitively
phrased while “how do you feel about…” is affectively oriented (Schaffer and
Riordan 2003, p. 189). Care in how questions are translated to maintain the focus of
the question, in this case a cognitive or affective focus, is required in cross-cultural
research (Harkness 2003). Additionally, idiographic terms (i.e., terms that are
unique to a culture) and homographic terms (i.e., words or phrases that appear in
different cultures, but carry different meanings, e.g., “stress” in Hungarian would
easily translate to “stresz,” but it means “tension,” whereas in English, it could
mean demand, pressure, and/or tension; Glazer 2008) must be avoided in order to
truly understand the results of research.
Other methodological challenges that researchers face are distinguishing between
levels of analysis and between unit of analysis. As much of the data in cross-cultural
research necessarily come from individual respondents, the referent that is used in
asking questions as well as how individual responses are aggregated must always be
clarified. Asking individuals what their values are is a different question than asking
individuals what their culture values. Aggregating individual responses and
assuming that such an aggregate is representative of the culture at large is an
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assumption that may or may not be warranted, as there is a clear distinction between
the cultural level of analysis and the individual level of analysis. Hofstede (1980)
cautions that interpreting findings assumed to be at the culture level of analysis, but
actually based on aggregations of responses at the individual level of analysis should
be undertaken cautiously, if at all, as this endeavor can constitute an ecological
fallacy. Based on this same reasoning, cultural level descriptors should not be
assumed to apply at the individual level. For example, an assertion that any specific
American is individualistic just because s/he belongs to the American culture would
be an ecological fallacy (Hofstede 1980) as a description of a culture is not the same
as a description of a person within a culture. Many theorists have noted that
dimensions that are valid at the individual level of analysis are not necessarily valid
at the group or societal level, nor are group-level dimensions necessarily valid at the
individual level (see, e.g., the classic article by Robinson 1950; as well as more
recent ones by Hofstede et al. 1993; Leung 1989). Examples of why the levels of
analysis issue is critical come from work with the Social Axioms Survey (Leung and
Bond 2008) and Schwartz’s (1994, 1999) values research.
Social axioms, at the individual level of analysis, refer to “generalized beliefs
about persons, the social and physical environment, or the spiritual world, and are
in the form of an assertion about the relationship between two entities or concepts”
(Leung et al. 2002, p. 289). Five social axioms emerged from the initial, individual
level of analysis. These social axioms were cynicism, social complexity, reward for
application, spirituality (later termed religiosity), and fate control. Bond et al.
(2004b) further validated the five dimensions in 41 countries, however when they
conducted a culture-level evaluation of the data they identified only two societal
level social axioms: social cynicism and dynamic externality. Similarly, Schwartz
(1994, 1999) showed that culture-level values do not necessarily match
individual-level values. In particular, at the individual level of analysis 10 value
types, and recently 19 value types, emerged (Schwartz 1992; Schwartz et al. 2012,
respectively), whereas at the culture level seven cultural value types have emerged
(Schwartz 1999). These findings highlight the importance of carefully delineating
which level of analysis is the appropriate level and consistently crafting methods
and methodologies appropriate to the chosen level of interest.
3.6 Identifying Cultural Signatures: Surface Probes

to Deep Dives
Schein (2004) portrays the concept of culture using the metaphor of an onion. At
the outermost layer, there are the visible, observable, physical, audible, touchable,
palatable artifacts, such as building structures, interpersonal communication pat-
terns, procedures to follow, noises in the environment, clothing textures, spices, and
even fumes. The next layer consists of values. The values help to explain the
principles that guide individual actions in a given culture. They explain why people
behave or create “things” as they do. For example, why are some vehicles more
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3.6 Identifying Cultural Signatures: Surface Probes to Deep Dives 21
popular than others in some societies? Are the sounds some vehicles emit loud and
rough, whereas others are quiet and soft? What values does a society hold that
would reinforce loud-sounding vehicles? The last and innermost layer in this
metaphor reflects assumptions people hold to be true. It can often be thought of as
the beliefs that people have, which are taken to be absolute truths. For example, a
common adage in the United States, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” implies
that the person who is the most noticeable will get the most attention and will be the
most effective. In contrast, a common saying in Japan, “the nail that sticks up will
be hammered down,” means that an individual who stands out from the group will
be criticized until s/he conforms. Together, these three layers (artifacts, behaviors,
and assumptions) form a culture’s unique signatures.
Differences in cultural beliefs manifest themselves in many ways in the business
setting. In Japan employees tend to speak with a common voice or to follow the lead
of a superior, whereas in the USA, unique perspectives tend to be valued and
applauded. Another contrast between the USA and Japan is the Japanese emphasis
on harmony and consensual decision-making against the American emphasis on
overtly exploring alternative approaches. In negotiation meetings, it is common in
Japan for the most senior person to sit away from the center of the negotiating team,
and for the team to develop a consensus that is then reported by a more junior team
member who sits in the center of the table. In contrast, in the United States it is more
common for the head of a negotiating delegation to be the point person and carry out
the negotiations, listening to additional feedback when and if deemed necessary.
In another example, the notion of speed over quality is evident in many aspects
of American culture. This value might explain, in part, why there are fast-food
restaurants on the corners of most busy American street intersections. “Speed over
quality” may be further evident in the expediency by which U.S. managers like to
make decisions (Glazer and Karpati 2014). Managers will often take in as much
information as possible, but within a certain time frame and then escalate the
importance of making a decision at the conclusion of that time frame. In contrast,
“quality over speed” is a belief or an assumption that drives the restaurant industry
in France. Granted, fast-food restaurants are visible throughout major French cities,
but they are not on every corner of major street intersections. And, in contrast to a
utilitarian atmosphere often found in the United States, fast food restaurants in
France tend to be decorated beautifully, with comfortable seating areas in order to
provide a relaxing atmosphere in which people may enjoy their time at the
restaurant. This “quality over speed” belief is also observed in the way French
engage in decision-making (Schramm-Nielsen 2001). Specifically, before rendering
a decision, French decision-makers will take time to fully vet all possible alternative
solutions and evaluate whether a particular decision would be the correct one. They
will not make a snap decision, but rather they approach decision-making with
careful analysis.
In order to understand a culture, therefore, one first identifies artifacts. The
challenge is then to understand how and why (i.e., values and beliefs) the artifacts
came to be. While cultural characteristics are the combination of beliefs influencing
values, which in turn influence artifacts, so do artifacts modify values, which in turn
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can modify beliefs and assumptions. Thus, the onion should not be viewed as one
layer driving the other in one direction, but that the influence of each of the layers is
bidirectional. Each layer of the “onion” represents a different layer of sociocultural
signatures. Ultimately, to be considered cross-culturally competent, one should
have meta-knowledge (Leung et al. 2013), which includes a deep layer of under-
standing a people’s values and beliefs, specifically an understanding of what people
in another culture cherish and know. Equipped with meta-knowledge, individuals
are better able to navigate smoothly through a cultural space, including engaging in
meaningful interactions with others.
Van Vianen et al. (2004) present another cultural framework that treats culture as
multi-layered and is relevant to understanding human adaptation to different social
situations. They highlight the necessity of paying attention to both surface-level and
deep-level cultural adaptations for international assignees. In particular, they indi-
cate that international assignees can readily be trained to identify surface-level
cultural differences, such as eating with chopsticks, spoons, hands, or forks. Such
training is easier because the cultural artifacts are observable and thus, the questions
an international assignee might ask himself or herself are “What do I observe?” and
“What must I do to fit in?”
Preparing people for deep level cultural understanding is more challenging and
potentially arduous (Van Vianen et al. 2004). It is at the deep level of cultural
analysis that people ask “Why do people do that?” or “Why do they create that?”
Borrowing from systems theory (Schein 1990), a layer referred to as “process
culture” may be added between the deep and surface cultures, as a layer that
explains how. This process culture layer refers to how activities or behaviors are to
be carried out in a given context and addresses the question: “How do people in a
culture create artifacts that would be manifestations of people’s values and beliefs?”
At the most superficial, or surface, level of existence resides behavioral norms.
This layer of culture reflects general agreement about how to behave, what to eat,
what to wear, how to talk, and the like. While some behaviors have close ties to
values (e.g., wearing a sari in India or a kimono in Japan may reflect a value of
traditionalism for some, while wearing Western clothing may reflect a value of
independence), others may not (e.g., choice of food is often much more reflective of
what is available than of values). Some behavioral choices may have a stronger
connection with beliefs (e.g., in some religions women and men wear clothing
and/or head coverings symbolic of their affiliation with the religion), than others
(e.g., nodding the head in greeting versus shaking hands).
In a related process view of culture, Henrich and Boyd (2002) state that “culture is
shaped by both psychological processes that determine how people think and feel,
and social processes that determine how people interact” (p. 88). Their opera-
tionalization of culture taps into both the individual’s contribution to culture and the
dyadic, interpersonal relationship contribution to culture. Thus, while culture as a
construct may be seen to be a group-level phenomenon as it refers to a set of shared
meanings, understandings, beliefs, and behaviors that are passed down from one
generation to another (Ross 2004; Triandis 1995), there is a mutual interplay and
influence pattern of individual-level factors (e.g., personality, demographics,
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3.6 Identifying Cultural Signatures: Surface Probes to Deep Dives 23
genetics) and social interactions. The individual-level factors influence social rela-
tionship structures, which in turn influence (group-level) culture. Thus, culture
simultaneously shapes personality and influences how people interact.
3.7 Geographical Context as Culture
Researchers have often used country or society as a proxy for culture. In so doing,
socio-typical characteristics of the country or society as a whole are assumed to
represent culture and assumptions about the “culture” are forwarded as explanations
for relationships among variables of interest. While an understanding of culture, its
values, processes, and behavioral norms, can shed light on practices within a
society or within a culture, a comparison of two or more cultures is often called for
as businesses become more international, more demographically diverse, and
incorporate more geographical locations than ever before. The key question in any
comparative culture work, however, is: what is the culture domain?
There are a number of implicit and explicit assumptions in the literature about the
domain of culture. First, geopolitical borders are assumed to bound culture. Working
under this assumption would imply that cross-cultural comparisons would be
comparisons of cultures as though they are bounded by political states. An example
of this would be a comparison of Namibian and Mongolian cultures. The second
assumption is that culture is to be found among groups of people who interact and
share a common language, and who have a shared identity with each other as a social
group. This assumption results in cross-cultural research that examines similarities
and differences among different social groups regardless of geopolitical boundaries.
For example, researchers may study people of the Jewish faith around the globe,
because they share a common language of prayer and history. The third approach to
cross-cultural comparison emphasizes heterogeneity of a culture as a whole and
focuses on comparing and contrasting subcultural differences that can exist within a
single culture. For example, research comparing Anglophones and Francophones in
the Canadian context would fall into this category of cross-cultural research.
Hofstede’s (1980) seminal work solidified the use of geopolitical boundaries to
encapsulate macro-level culture constructs for many years, beginning when he
brought cross-cultural studies into the domain of psychology. Hofstede noticed that
there were commonalities in responses to a large international organizational survey
and these commonalities were regional and national in nature. He went on to create
descriptions of various national cultures along the dimensions he identified. This
geopolitical view of culture has received substantial attention in the current literature
in organizational psychology. Researchers have used these boundaries to study
differences in various organizational constructs, such as empowerment and contin-
uous improvement (Robert et al. 2000), cooperation (Leonard et al. 2012) conflict
style (Brew and Cairns 2004), person job fit (Kwantes and Watanabe 2012), occu-
pational stress and burnout (Glazer 2008; Glazer and Beehr 2005), work–family
conflict (Bhagat et al. 2012), temporal orientation and time management (Arman and
Adair 2012; Glazer and Palekar 2013), organizational citizenship behavior (Karam
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and Kwantes 2011), work group dynamics (Earley 1993), negotations (Gelfand et al.
2013), attributions in organizations (Pekerti and Kwantes 2011), organizational
culture (Kwantes et al. 2010), and job satisfaction (Kwantes 2010; Westover 2013).
Thus, research in cultural differences using nations as proxies for culture continues.
Drawing on the work of Krasner (1988), Smith and Peterson (2005) argue that
individual social identities are constructed around meaningful groups, and that the
nation to which an individual belongs is often an important component of that
individual’s social identity.They note that a global practice is to accept the cultural
independence of nation states, and that “the view that nations are culturally sig-
nificant institutions is supported by comparative national studies of values. These
studies show sufficient convergence in their results to give confidence that, with
some important qualifications, nations provide a culturally meaningful way of
identifying groups of people who experience, similar socialization” (p. 6).
Individuals within a single national context share an official national language or
languages, similar educational systems, governmental regulations and processes,
holidays, behavioral norms and customs, and, through shared citizenship experi-
ence, a sense of in-group identity with other members of the nation state.
Today’s businesses that are crossing national boundaries are inevitably subject to
differences in cultural values, as well as national policies and laws. For example, a
multinational high-tech firm headquartered in California with offices in France must
adhere to the national vacation policies in France, which means that employees
hired to work in France are given the same number of vacation days as all other
people in France. However, if the employee moves to the USA and works for the
same company within the USA, s/he is not bound to the French policies, but to the
U.S. policies (unless serving for a French government entity). Organizational
practices are, therefore, impacted by national policies. For example, Allen and
colleagues (2014) studied the impact of national leave policies in 12 developed,
industrialized countries on work–family conflict among managers who were mar-
ried parents of children four years of age or younger and working at least 20 hours
per week. They found that when supervisors supported family life, paid sick leave
policies reduced the perception of work interfering with family time, but when
supervisors did not support family life, longer annual leave created more family
interference with work strain. Moreover, parental leave policies did not affect
work–family conflict. In short, cross-cultural research seeks to compare and con-
trast aspects of organization and work across national cultures in order to identify
culture’s implications and to understand the boundaries geopolitical borders impose
on organizational processes and individual behaviors in the workplace.
3.8 Societal Cultures
Drawing from the anthropological and sociological approach, some research

focuses on societies rather than geopolitical entities. There is ample anecdotal and
empirical evidence that cultures are not necessarily uniform within any given
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3.8 Societal Cultures 25
geopolitical boundary. Catalonia, for example, exists within the geopolitical borders
of the nations of Spain and France, yet on either geographical side they share a
common language and culture. Similarly, the Basque people have a unique lan-
guage and culture, yet the geographical region that this single people inhabit, falls
within both Spain’s and France’s geopolitical borders, differs from those countries’
dominant language and culture, and also differs from Catalonia. In many other
multilingual countries there are regional cultures, such as the Flemish and the
French in Belgium. There are also regional variations in culture around specific
languages; for example, in India there are a great variety of cultures, with lan-
guages, holidays, traditional clothing, and traditional customs that vary greatly from
place to place within the Republic of India. People also share subcultures that are
spread widely across many countries, and some, such as the Rroma1 people, have a
unique language and culture, yet have no geopolitical borders (McGarry 2012).
3.9 Diverse/Heterogeneous Cultures
Not all members of a cultural group, whether societal, organizational, or team, will
endorse behavioral norms in the same way. As noted earlier, Gelfand and col-
leagues (2006) proposed the idea of cultural tightness–looseness, which they
defined as “the strength of social norms and the degree of sanctioning within
societies” (p. 1226). Tight cultures have clear norms and expectations of its
members. In order to maximize the likelihood that all group members will abide by
the prevailing values and norms, members monitor one another and potentially
punish those who do not conform. Loose cultures, in contrast, accept greater
variability in the degree to which their members endorse and practice cultural
norms. Indicators of a tight culture include similarities among people, such as along
ethnic background, norms, values, in that culture, close proximity in which people
live near others, and geographic isolation (Chan et al. 1996).
Many countries have variations of culture within their borders—variations that
are not different enough to indicate completely different cultures within the
boundaries of a nation as above, but rather variations of a dominant culture that can
be termed subcultures. These variations may have a variety of bases such as geog-
raphy, ethnicity, or even age and may be affected by a number of factors, including
immigration rates. Some nations have explicit policies regarding these differences.
For example, Canada recognizes and encourages multiculturalism, with an official
policy of treating different cultures as part of a Canadian “cultural mosaic,” putting
such a priority on this policy that a Ministry of Multiculturalism has been established
(Kwantes and Chung-Yan 2012). In contrast, the approach to multiculturalism in the
United States has long been referred to as a “melting pot” with the idea that people
from different cultures all assimilate into a single, unitary culture derived from the
1
The Rroma people prefer the spelling as Rroma (www.rroma.org).
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constituent cultures. Despite this approach, and likely due at least in part to both the
large geographical area within borders of the country as well as historic immigration
patterns, regional differences still exist. Indeed, Vandello and Cohen (1999)
demonstrated that collectivistic values are higher in the South than elsewhere, and
individualistic values are highest in the western part of the country. Further,
Oyserman et al. (2002) have demonstrated that differences in culture within the
United States exist depending on ethnic background as well as region.
3.10 Characterizing Culture: Cultural Values and Beliefs
3.10.1 Culture as Values
Cultural values refer to the principles by which cultural systems (at any level) are
guided and which give meaning to the group. Cultural values influence individuals’
values and serve as abstract social cognitions that help individuals give meaning to
situations (Schwartz 1992). Ascribing values as motivation represents an attempt to
interpret why people feel, behave, or think as they do in a given social system.
Hofstede’s (1980) seminal work on culture paved the way for cross-cultural
scholars world-wide to conduct comparative research on cultural values across
nations or world regions in order to better establish context. Hofstede recognized
that culture drives much of how people think, act, and behave. His book, Culture’s
Consequences (1980), further exemplifies the profundity, yet simplicity, of the idea
that culture influences individuals’ work behaviors. His study, based on data from
approximately 116,000 IBM employees from over 40 nations, clearly demonstrated
that national scores on survey items (based on aggregates of respondents within
nation) relate with each other, at the culture level of analysis, in a way that created
patterns of characteristics, and that these patterns fit with qualitative observations of
those cultures. In other words, he found national–geographical relationships with
value patterns and then labeled these patterns “cultural values.”
Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) characteristics of culture, or cultural values, include
individualism vs. collectivism, power distance, masculinity–femininity, and
uncertainty avoidance. In 1987, The Chinese Culture Connection uncovered
another dimension that the research team labelled Confucian Dynamism. Hofstede
(2001) later termed this dimension long-term vs. short-term orientation. Recently,
Bulgarian scholar, Minkov (2007, as cited in Hofstede 2011), added indulgence vs.
restraint, referring to “gratification vs. control of basic desires related to enjoying
life” (p. 8). For decades after Hofstede’s first publication, scholars focused pri-
marily on individualism and collectivism, making it the seemingly only meaningful
cultural characteristic or “a catchall dimension” (Schwartz 2009, p. 133). However,
it is well established that more cultural characteristics exist, and it is important to
characterize cultures by more than just individualism versus collectivism in order to
have a more refined understanding of a given social system (Oyserman 2006). Just
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3.10 Characterizing Culture: Cultural Values and Beliefs 27
as a person is not depicted along the lines of one personality variable, cultures
cannot be depicted along one cultural characteristic.
“Using more refined dimensions makes it possible to identify important cultural
differences missed with this broad dimension” (Schwartz 2009, p. 133). In fact, and
as noted earlier, Schwartz (1999) developed a values measure at the individual level
and data from teachers and students were subjected to a national culture level,
Smallest Space Analysis to identify value clusters, and then country clusters around
the culture values. The results revealed seven cultural values that have some con-
vergence with Hofstede’s (2001) culture values, but are still quite disparate. Trying
to understand a culture through study of different cultural values helps in under-
standing the contexts of interest. Triandis (1994) refers to networks of cultural
elements that characterize cultures as cultural syndromes. Table 3.1 presents mul-
tiple cultural elements that can be used to characterize cultures.
Table 3.1 Cultural elements that characterize cultures

HOFSTEDE’S CULTURAL VALUES (1980, 2001)
Individualism versus Emphasis on an individual’s unique qualities compared to the
collectivism social group, reward for taking “me time,” and having freedom
of choices versus emphasis is on the group’s needs that
supersedes the needs of any individual and the integral
contribution individuals provide their in-group, interdependence
and group actions are rewarded
Power distance Emphasis is placed on a strict hierarchy-based relationship
between subordinates and supervisors, such that supervisors are
ultimately and solely responsible for making decisions
Masculinity versus Emphasis in masculine cultures is on achievement and wealth,
femininity resolution of conflict through aggression, distinct roles between
men and women and leader as decision-maker, whereas in
feminine cultures emphasis is placed on environmental welfare,
egalitarianism, nurturing, developing, and maintaining social
networks, as well as group decision-making through open
dialog and consensus building
Uncertainty avoidance Emphasis is on application of rules, structures, policies, and
normative practices to govern work processes instead of
tolerance for ambiguity and openness to creativity
Long-term versus Emphasis in long-term oriented cultures is placed on planning
short-term orientation and saving for the future, whereas in short-term oriented
cultures emphasis is given to immediate gratification and
spontaneity
CULTURAL VALUES (Schwartz 1999)
Intellectual autonomy Emphasis is placed on independent efforts to fulfill desired
goals and creativity in thoughts and actions, independent
decision-making, and contractual (vs. obligatory) relationships
Affective autonomy Emphasis is placed on a person’s control over changing status
quo and pursuing exciting experiences
(continued)
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Table 3.1 (continued)

Conservatism Priority is given to maintaining status quo, modesty, fulfilling role
expectations, including traditional order among people. Individuals
are mutually obligated and decision-makers strive to make decisions
that are for the good of the group
Mastery Emphasis is placed on individuals’ control and dominance over
situations, environment, and others. Consultation with others may be
a sign of weakness
Harmony Importance is placed on fitting in with the environment and
cooperative relationships
Hierarchy Emphasis is placed on status differentials, power, resources, and
respect for people in authority roles
Egalitarian Priority is given to equality and opportunities for all people
GLOBE CULTURAL VALUES (House et al. 2004)
Performance Emphasizes high performance, growth orientation, and continuous
orientation improvement efforts
Assertiveness Emphasizes dominant, assertive, confrontational, and aggressive
behaviors in relationships
Future orientation Emphasizes behaviors that include planning for and investing in the
future, and postponing gratification for the sake of future goal
attainment
Humane orientation Emphasizes and rewards tolerance, fairness, caring, and kindness
toward others, as well as altruism, friendliness, and generosity
Institutional Emphasizes institutional practices that reward putting oneself behind
collectivism the collective’s needs for resources and sacrificing one’s own goals
for the good of the group
In-group Emphasizes a relationship orientation in which people take pride in,
collectivism express loyalty toward, and feel a sense of cohesion with their
organizations or families
Gender Emphasizes gender role invariance, such that all constituents have the
egalitarianism same accesses to resources
Power distance Emphasizes power differentials, such that power (and obedience to
power) increases as one reaches the pinnacle of a hierarchy
Uncertainty Emphasizes reliance on social normative practices and rituals, and
avoidance reinforces rule-based structure in order to reliably forecast events
SOCIAL AXIOMS (Bond 2004; Leung et al. 2005)
Dynamic externality Beliefs related to a combination of religiosity and fate, as well as
effort and control. Cultures reinforce the importance of striving
toward a better life, despite external constraints (e.g., from a deity,
fate, or political structures)
Societal cynicism A people’s negative beliefs about society, groups within society, and
human nature
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3.10.2 Culture as Beliefs
The dominant ways of measuring culture since Hofstede’s (1980) seminal work
have been to focus on different dimensions of values and, more recently, beliefs.
While both values and beliefs represent culturally learned orientations, beliefs and
values are distinct from each other (Leung et al. 1995). Beliefs refer to perceptions
about what is true about the world; values refer to perceptions of what is good or
worth striving for. In contrast to using values to understand culture, and in
recognition of the fact that human behavior is based on more than values, Leung
et al. (2002) focused on belief systems as a way of understanding culture’s effect on
behavior. They termed these beliefs social axioms and defined them as “generalized
beliefs about people, social groups, social institutions, the physical environment, or
the spiritual world as well as about categories of events and phenomena in the social
world. These generalized beliefs are encoded in the form of an assertion about the
relationship between two entities or concepts” (Leung and Bond 2008, p. 200). In
other words, social axioms are heuristics that individuals use to understand
cause-and-effect relationships e.g., (hard work will be rewarded) and therefore
guide them in making choices. Given that the exemplars of these axioms come from
the cultural milieu an individual is exposed to, it can be seen presumed that there is
a strong cultural influence on these internalized beliefs, and multinational com-
parisons confirm this assumption (Leung and Bond 2004).
An ecological level of analysis study of social axioms revealed two factors:
Dynamic Externality and Societal Cynicism (Bond et al. 2004). The former refers to
a combination of religiosity and fate, as well as effort and control, whereas the latter
refers to a social system’s generalized negativity about social processes and their
outcomes (Leung et al. 2005). At the culture level of analysis, social axioms appear
to address generalized expectancies of social relationships; that is, it helps indi-
viduals make sense of how people relate with one another.
3.10.3 Culture as Values and Beliefs
Values and beliefs cannot necessarily be isolated when predicting behavior. Ajzen
(1991), in The Theory of Planned Behavior, suggests that behavior is conditional
upon both attitudes and beliefs. Attitudes are formed on the basis of an evaluation
of something. This evaluation is grounded in what is considered to be “good” or
“bad” or “important” or “unimportant,” or, in other words, an individual’s value.
A positive attitude toward a particular behavior, then, is likely to increase the
likelihood of that behavior occurring. However, other concerns, such as expected
outcomes of behavior, affect the likelihood of a particular action occurring.
A person’s cultural milieu provides examples of what is rewarded and what is
punished within a given social group. These examples teach group members what
social norms are, what expected behaviors are, and what outcomes are likely to
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follow from given actions. Thus, the behavioral outcomes related to beliefs may
mediate the relationship between values and behavior, or at a minimum, provide
more explanatory power for the effect of culture on behavior. Research using
Schwartz’ Value Survey and the Social Axioms Survey (Bond et al. 2004) found,
for example, that a person’s social beliefs added more predictive value to behaviors,
such as coping strategies and conflict resolution choices, than did values alone.
This distinction between culture conceptualized as values versus culture con-
ceptualized as behaviors is an important one. Project GLOBE (Global Leadership
and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness; House et al. 2004) explicitly distin-
guished between measuring aspects of cultural dimensions as what is practiced, or
as is versus what is valued, or as desired. The intent of this was to extract infor-
mation about societal culture relative to what is observed (behaviors, practices) as
well as what is unobserved (values, norms). Interestingly, the authors of the GLOBE
study found a significant and negative correlation between seven of the nine “as is”
and “as desired” cultural values assessed. Assertiveness, institutional collectivism,
future orientation, humane orientation, performance orientation, power distance, and
uncertainty avoidance (see Table 3.1 for definitions) all had negative correlations
between what was practiced and what was valued by respondents in the study. This
finding is unexpected, counterintuitive, and, to date, has not been well understood or
explained despite various approaches and attempts to do so (see e.g., Brewer and
Veniak 2010; Maseland and van Hoorn 2009). It does, however, highlight the
importance of carefully delineating in both theory and research the basis—tangible
(behaviors) or intangible (values, beliefs)—upon which culture is defined in any
given attempt to understand what culture is or what it does.
3.10.4 Other Cultural Characteristics
Among the many cultural elements that form cultural syndromes are complexity of
the culture (e.g., the number of distinct demographic categories in a society or
group), tightness vs. looseness (i.e., adherence to norms vs. deviations from norms),
individualism–collectivism (i.e., the link between individuals to the group), vertical
vs. horizontal emphasis in relation to others (also referred to as power distance or
hierarchy), a culture’s endorsement of certain social axioms (i.e., beliefs about the
social world; Leung and Bond 2004), political systems (Rokeach 1973), ecology
(Georgas and Berry 1995), and more. Some cultural elements correlate more highly
than others, for example, wealth often relates to cultural complexity and homo-
geneity typically relates to interdependence. Moreover, it is possible that some
cultures are quite similar on almost all cultural elements, yet with a single excep-
tion, and it is that one element that makes the greatest difference. For example, a
country that emphasizes individualism, mastery, and hierarchy (e.g., USA, see
Table 3.1 for definitions) is quite different from a country that values individualism,
mastery, and egalitarianism (e.g., France). Hence, it is important to understand as
many cultural elements as possible in order to determine upon which element
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cultures truly differ and then home in on cultural elements to understand those
differences, while also exploring how cultural elements that are similar influence
affect, behavior, and cognition.
3.11 A Micro View of Culture
The overarching impact of culture at the micro, or individual, level is that people
function in an environment in which they perceive the values, beliefs, norms, and
practices people in those environments endorse. In turn, the various aspects of
culture influence people’s affects, behaviors, and cognitions. The constructs of
individualism and collectivism both focus on the relationship of an individual to
others in society; however, in collectivism, the focus is on the closeness of the
individual to the group, whereas in individualism the focus is on the distance of the
person from the group. Markus and Kitayama (1991), as well as Kitayama et al.
(2003) explain that each the social system in which reinforces different prescriptive,
normative, and implicit ideas, practices, manners, beliefs, and values that guide or
explain how people (should) feel, think, and behave. These system reinforcements
are important to helping people know how to react in certain situations (Fiske 1992;
Haslam 2004). Through repeated reinforcements (and/or punishments), members of
a social system begin to internalize these different coordinating tools and modes of
cognition and eventually respond to situations in ways that are consistent with the
prototypes, precedents, principles, and ideals of the social system in which they live.
To exemplify, Markus and Kitayama (1991) highlight the role of individualism
and collectivism as a cultural, or contextual, level variable on shaping how people
think about themselves (i.e., self-construal). Most individualistic societies encour-
age their members to see themselves as distinct and unique from others. In such
societies, individuals find ways to set themselves apart from others, for example, by
assigning specific unique roles. Generally, collectivistic societies encourage their
members to see themselves as integral to one another and vital for the existence of
the group. In such societies, individuals want to maintain group harmony and
contribute for the good of the group. Individuals’ roles are typically prescribed and
fixed; the roles are clearly recognized as necessary for harmonious group processes.
Markus and Kitayama (1991) went on to conclude that culture is best measured at
the level of the individual. At the group level culture exists in the implicit shared
mindset of a group, and typically “operate[s] below the level of awareness” (Bond
and Leung 2009, p. 110). Thus, Markus and Kitayama focused on the extent to which
an individual viewed (or construed) himself or herself as fundamentally separate
from or embedded within various social networks and family systems. They labeled
these self-construals as independent (separated) and interdependent (embedded).
According to Kim and Markus (1999) a society’s value shapes individuals’
modes of cognition through public messages, such as magazines, that reinforce the
values and influence the meaning given to situations. This view was reinforced in
Gardner and colleagues’ (1999) study in which participants were primed to think
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from an interdependent, “we,” or an independent, “I,” perspective. Both studies

showed that regardless of national culture (e.g., Korea, Hong Kong, or USA),
individuals who were primed to think from the “I” perspective were more likely to
think of themselves in independent terms (i.e., independent construal of self) as
evident by their responses to the experimental task. Likewise, individuals who were
primed to think from a “we” perspective were more likely to think of themselves in
interdependent terms (i.e., interdependent construal of self) when completing an
experimental task. These findings were replicated in numerous studies, across many
countries and populations, and using a variety of primes (see comprehensive review
by Oyserman 2011). In essence, as Oyserman and Lee (2007) assert, while
group-level culture cannot be manipulated so easily, individual-level self-construals
can be primed, thus reinforcing the view that culture may indeed be reflected in the
mind of an individual.
Over the past 25 years, researchers have continued to demonstrate that culture
influences cognition. Examples of such studies include research on conformity
(Bond and Smith 1996), emotional display rules (Matsumoto et al. 2008; Safdar
et al. 2009), fundamental attribution error (i.e., judging actions on the basis of
personal attributes vs. situational constraints; Kitayama et al. 2003), illusions
(Segall et al. 1966), social loafing (Earley 1993), context-dependency (Kü hnen and
Oyserman 2002; Lin and Han 2009), trust (Jing and Bond 2016), and obedience
(Blass 2012). In the last few years, there has been an increasing number of studies
employing neuroimaging technology that are validating conclusions that culture has
an influence on cognition (e.g., Chiao et al. 2010; Han and Northoff 2008; Harada
and Chiao 2010; Iacoboni et al. 2004), with a focus on neural signatures of indi-
vidualism and collectivism.
Fundamentally, however, whether culture is viewed as influencing a person or is
in the mind of a person may not matter. When individuals are exposed to a culture
(either through a prime or physical placement), they attempt to make sense of their
social milieu. This act of sensemaking indirectly relates to Heider’s (1958) idea of
“naïve psychology.” He asserted that all individuals use a common sense approach
to understanding and interpreting the social events around them. People use the
information they have access to in order to make inferences about their environment
that, in turn, allow them to feel as though they have some control. Heider offers the
following example of how a small and potentially unimportant observation creates a
push for causal understanding, with the intention of greater understanding and
control over the environment.
… if I find sand on my desk, I shall want to find out the underlying reason for this
circumstance. I make this inquiry not because of idle curiosity, but because only if I refer
this relatively insignificant offshoot event to an underlying core event will I attain a stable
environment and have the possibility of controlling it. Should I find that the sand comes
from a crack in the ceiling and that this crack appeared because of the weakness in one of
the walls, then I have reached the layer of underlying conditions, which is of vital
importance for me. The sand on my desk is merely a symptom, a manifestation that remains
ambiguous until it becomes anchored to dispositional properties—cracks and stresses in
this case. (p. 80)
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3.11 A Micro View of Culture 33
Today, researchers are addressing naïve psychology from a more mature

framework, typically referred to as cultural sensemaking. Cultural sensemaking is
defined as the cognitive process by which people will make sense of a culturally
different situation (Sieck et al. 2013). This same approach to making sense of social
events and interactions is reflected in individual attempts to understand culture
through the development of categories and schemas.
Categorization is a fundamental human process that enables us to make sense of
the world around us and to develop heuristics for how to react to the people and
events with which we come into contact. While categorization as a process may be
seen as a universal phenomenon, the boundaries of the specific categories used in
categorization may vary between different social groups, or cultures (Zerubavel
1997). Categories develop from the perception that individuals find commonalities
in experiences and events and therefore create a prototype of that experience and
event (Fiske and Taylor 1991). Other, new, people and events are then compared to
different category prototypes and slotted into the category that has the closest match
between the actual and the prototypical person or event. Schemas, or an expectation
of the antecedents, consequences, and meanings of something belonging in a given
category then develop, suggesting that “people have organized expectations about
what goes with what” (Fiske and Taylor 1991, p. 100). The social axioms approach
to understanding cultures, mentioned earlier is an example of cross-cultural research
using schemas, or belief systems.
Categorizations, schemas, and sensemaking occur in many contexts. Zerubavel
and Smith (2010) point out that context matters, as “what goes on inside our heads
is also affected by the particular thought communities (nations, churches, profes-
sions, political movements, and generations) to which we belong” (p. 321). In other
words, culture(s) provide the “thought communities” that shape cognitions and
thinking. Human knowledge, and even how individuals think, is affected by the
social activities in which they engage and the social environment in which they
“act” (DiMaggio 1997; Stolte and Fender 2007). Oyserman and Sorensen (2009)
assert that cultures are not “chronically accessible whole[s]”; but that at any given
point in time and situation, varying processes are cued in individuals who then
make an assessment of the situation. In other words, cognitive activities and cog-
nition are not context-free, but are situated in social activities and events.
Situated cognition is a new direction for culture and psychology researchers
(Oyserman 2011). Although the label is new, the idea is not. Already in 1860,
Lazarus and Steinhal (cited in Semin 2009) noted that language, psychology, and
culture work together to shape thought. The premise of situated cognition is that
individuals can enact stereotypic cultural practices if the situation calls for that
behavior, and what triggers people’s interpretations of that situation are experiences
in the cultural milieu where the behaviors are typically practiced (Wan and Chiu
2009). However, if someone does not have experience in another cultural milieu,
one can still enact the stereotypical behaviors if (1) the person has been exposed to
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cognitive processes prominent in a target culture and (2) when primed (or triggered)
to evaluate the situation from the target’s viewpoint. As described earlier, cultural
priming studies (e.g., Gardner et al. 1999; Han 2010; Oyserman and Lee 2007) have
provided psychological and neuro-scientific evidence that people can be cued to
think from different cultural perspectives (Glazer et al. 2015).
Still, priming research on independent versus interdependent self-construals is
only one set of culture variables used to study individualism–collectivism culture at
the individual level of analysis (aka idiocentric vs. allocentric) and this research
stream must extend into hierarchy structures and other culture-level values
(Oyserman 2011). As Oyserman (2011) points out, even the conceptualization of
independent and interdependent self-construal as a proxy for individualism and
collectivism is fraught with problems. If the concept of “I” is seen as an individual
compared with others and if this comparison is construed in terms of hierarchy, and
the concept of “we” represents equality, perhaps the concept is not about
self-construal at all, but is really a proxy for hierarchy versus egalitarianism. For
example, subjects who were exposed to a power prime were less able to adopt
others’ perspectives and empathize with others (Galinsky et al. 2006), but when a
research participant was primed or encouraged to take others’ perspectives, the
sense of responsibility toward others became more apparent through increased
interaction and involvement with others whom the participant’s decisions would
impact (Galinsky et al. 2014). In another study, Chiao et al. (2009) found that when
people view themselves as having greater social status, they were less able to
empathize with more subordinate people’s experience of pain. In other words,
perhaps a view of one’s self needs also to consider the view of others in context, for
example, a hierarchical situation.
Owes et al. (2013) argued that self-construals actually reflect representations of
the self, and should not be assumed to also be representations of how people think
about other people, or of a culture as a whole. They argue that ideas about the self
and ideas about others are distinct constructs, and suggest that contextualism, or
“the perceived importance of the context in understanding people” (p. 27), is also
important in understanding self-construals at both the individual and group levels.
Some have therefore suggested that the time has come to redefine self-construal.
Voyer and Franks (2014) address this idea by studying the locus and origin of the
self-construal. They ask what it is about the stimuli that create or reinforce an
individual’s self-construal. For example, a person might construe himself or herself
as independent and thus have few close relationships, but with those few close
relationships, s/he may be highly interdependent. They propose a more refined
understanding of both agency and motivation, as well as for a recognition that the
culture-level variables might have instigated a study of self-construal, but that even
within culture, individuals’ self-construals shift by situation.
Indeed, although people are often consciously or unconsciously “pressed” to
behave, think, or feel in ways that are consistent with the social system’s culture
(Schwartz 2009), people are adaptable to contexts. Culture merely “sets up
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3.11 A Micro View of Culture 35
procedural knowledge that is cued in context” (Oyserman and Sorensen 2009,

p. 38). The subjective construal of a situation in a given context serves as a trigger
or guide for engaging with people of the society, how to interpret underlying
meanings of messages, and how to feel with respect to different situations. At the
individual level of analysis, we can assess individuals’ values (Schwartz 1992,
1994), self-construals (Markus and Kitayama 1991), personal preferences for ver-
tical or horizontal idiocentrism versus allocentrism (Triandis 1994, 1995; Triandis
and Gelfand 1998), belief patterns (Leung and Bond 2004), and approaches to
social relationships (Fiske 1992). Individual variation in these inputs will then
account for the variation often observed across individuals in the same apparent
situation (Bond 2013).
3.12 Culture as Presented Through Social Relationships
Culture’s influence on social interactions may be best characterized in Fiske’s (1992)

work on relational models, which describes four universal relationship structures that
manifest at different times under different situations, depending on the people
involved and the culture within which the interaction takes place. These relational
models include authority ranking, communal sharing, equality matching, and market
pricing. Authority ranking refers to a (vertical) hierarchical relationship with others
(e.g., supervisor–subordinate, teacher–student, leader–follower). Communal sharing
refers to relationships based on commonalities among a group of people (e.g., two or
more people who can give and take from a pot of either real or metaphorical
resources). Equality matching refers to egalitarian-based relationships (e.g., each
committee member’s vote counts as much as another committee member’s vote).
Market pricing refers to a utility-based relationship, that is, a focal person will relate
to another on the basis of the focal person’s perception of the worth of the rela-
tionship (e.g., a supervisor who has no time to meet with some subordinates will be
able to find time in that same schedule to meet with a potential client).
Given that culture is by definition a group-level phenomenon, groups form the
context within which we experience culture. At the most macrolevel, societies are a
context within which culture is experienced. Societies generally form around
propinquity, sharing geographical space, and sharing resources. The field of cultural
geography specifically focuses on the ways that geographical space and culture as a
system of meanings shared by individuals within that space interact. For example,
Anderson (2010) suggested that identity is defined by “our place” in the world, and
that “who we are is fundamentally connected to where we are” (p. 41). Sauer
(1931) suggested that geography makes the culture, as it provides both location and
resource boundaries for groups that inhabit that space. As a group, societies develop
values and patterns of behavior that protect individual members, and create ways to
effortlessly, and without conflict, interact with each other.
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When engaging in strategic understanding of a new culture, therefore, factors

embedded in the context are vital to understand. Particularly when an organization
wishes to enter a new context to establish strategic ties, ecological factors are an
important first step to consider. An example of this is that, prior to engaging in
operations, the U.S. military will gather data regarding the context’s social rela-
tionships as presented in political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, and
information systems, let alone data on the physical environment and temporal
orientation, referred to in the military as PMESII-PT (Behymer et al. 2014; Glazer
et al. 2014).
3.13 Summary: Operationalizing Culture for This Brief

Series
For this monograph, culture is viewed as multifaceted and multidimensional

(Triandis 1994, 2009). It consists of collective, learned, and implicitly shared
assumptions, values, attitudes, beliefs, behavioral norms, schemas, customs, sym-
bols, traditions, and rituals that are developed over time and passed down from one
generation to the next. In short, culture may be approached from different angles,
including culture as (1) internal or external to the person, or somewhere in between,
(2) antecedent and as consequence, (3) a multi-level construct, and (4) comprising
deep, process, and surface levels. Regardless of the approach, however, culture
gives distinction and meaning for the existence of the group and, as such, is a means
to help interpret events in a given context (Bond and Leung 2009; Kashima 2009).
It serves as a vehicle for members of a culture to make sense of situations that arise
within a social system.
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Chapter 4
Organizations and Culture
An organization, for the purpose of this series, is defined as any social system or
entity that produces or creates goods or services. Organizations represent the result
of coordinated plans for activities that are undertaken by contributors to the entity
who take on specific labor roles and functions (in a structured pattern, e.g., orga-
nizational status or responsibility) in order to fulfill a common goal (Schein 1980).
As one of the defining features of organizations is the social system, it is clear that
organizations also have cultures.
Organizational cultures, similar to societal cultures, have been defined in a wide
variety of ways, but fundamentally organizational culture still refers to the shared
values, beliefs, and behaviors by members of a given organization. Morgan (1986)
points out that organizational culture comes about from an iterative process of
employees following rules, and then making sense of ensuing behaviors. “In one
sense, then, we can say that the nature of a culture is found in its social norms and
customs, and that if one adheres to these rules of behavior one will be successful in
constructing an appropriate social reality” (Morgan 1986, p. 129). He further notes
that “organizational structure, rules, policies, goals, missions, job descriptions, and
standardized operating procedures …act as primary points of reference for the way
people think about and make sense of the contexts in which they work” (p. 132).
Harris (1994) suggests that the context of an organization gives rise to
organization-specific schema, that “individuals’ organization-specific schemas are
the repository of cultural knowledge and meanings” (p. 310) and that “the activa-
tion and interaction of these schemas in the social context of the organization
creates the cultural experience for individuals” (p. 310).
Both organizational and societal cultures are constructed by the shared realities
of their constituents (Weick 1995). Once constructed, however, these cultures can
have a certain deterministic function as the range of behavioral choices becomes
limited by the shared reality.

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46 4 Organizations and Culture
Social institutionalism provides a particularly interesting approach to under-

standing behavioral choices within cultures, and illustrates how organizational
cultures constrain employee choices. Ingram and Clay (2000) identify three
important characteristics of this approach to understanding culture’s effect on
behaviors. First, bounded rationality affects how decisions are made—employees
may make decisions based on what their own aims and goals are, but they do so
with limited information. Not all available information is “raw” information, but
much of it is often rather heavily imbued with meanings that have been constructed.
For example, an individual who wishes to be in the good graces of her or his boss
may decide to put in extra effort at work by working extra hours without being
asked to. Choosing to do so is the result of the employee making a determination
that this action will be seen in a positive light, that the boss will see this as an
indication of a good worker, rather than the boss interpreting this behavior as the
result of being a poor worker who was unable to complete assigned tasks during
regular work hours due to incompetence or laziness. This determination is the result
of making sense of a situation with limited information. Second, both social and
organizational cultures restrict the potential choices an individual can make. These
cultures each have prohibitions, rules, and norms that limit options available to their
members. Leadership in some cultures may require that a leader behave autocrat-
ically in order to be accepted, while in another culture, a more egalitarian leader is
more accepted. Thus, an employee who wishes to be a leader is constrained with
respect to the options available to being accepted as a leader in different contexts.
Third, the constraints on choices imposed by cultures are, at least ideally, intended
to influence individual choices with the intent of maximizing the likelihood that
individual choices are made such that they are congruent with the good of the
collective, be that society or organization. This particular understanding has been
termed the “choice-within-constraints” theory of new institutionalism.
Organizational culture also has strong links to institutional theory, which says
that “organizations are the product of common understandings and shared inter-
pretations of acceptable norms of collective activity” (Suddaby et al. 2010, p. 1235)
and, as such represent much more than merely the tasks or output that the orga-
nizations were formed around. The attributions related to the meaning of work, the
value placed on particular aspects of work, or roles within the workplace are
therefore the result of consensus in meaning making. Suddaby et al. (2010) further
point out that as people in institutions share perspectives and understandings, the
roles people play in institutions are embedded in these shared frames of references.
Leadership, for example, involves playing a particular role in an institution, and it is
the shared understanding of “what a leader does” that enables individuals to take on
that role and fulfill the expectations of the individuals in the institution. Suddaby
et al. go on to state that “Modern organizations themselves thus reflect the intensive
cultural rationalization of the contemporary world in their constitutive structures”
(p. 1234). In other words, organizational cultures reflect the shared sensemaking of
the individuals in that culture.
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4 Organizations and Culture 47
Neoinstitutional researchers have suggested that this perspective may help

explain similarities in organizational cultures within a single societal culture.
DiMaggio and Powell (1983) refer to these similarities as the result of the process
of “isomorphism.” A certain similarity between organizational cultures within
specific societal cultures may result from an attempt (conscious or unconscious) by
decision makers in organizations to reflect the prevailing values and expectations of
the society within which the organization exists, or may be the result of organi-
zations that do not meet societal expectations with respect to expected values,
behaviors, or norms failing and lacking viability in that societal environment
(Kwantes and Dickson 2011). Values, attitudes, and behavior within an organiza-
tion are inextricably linked to behavior in the larger societal context (Johns 2006),
and neoinstitutional theory suggests that “organizational survival is determined by
the extent of alignment with the institutional environment” (Kostova et al. 2008,
p. 997).
Thus, organizations and organizational cultures exist within a larger societal
culture framework, and this nested existence has some important ramifications for
understanding how the interplay between these cultures affects the impact of each
culture individually. One impact of increasing globalism is that organizational
cultures, especially in large multinational organizations, are increasingly likely to
override many aspects of societal cultures. The practices and expectations of large
organizations cut cross social and national boundaries, creating organizational
cultures that minimize societal cultural influence. It is therefore important to also
examine the effect of other forms of culture on organizational culture, recognizing
that there is a confounding effect of culture as well. For example, occupational
culture, or the norms and behavioral expectations within occupations, has a strong
influence on organizational culture (Kwantes and Boglarsky 2004), but occupa-
tional culture itself is confounded with societal culture as societal cultures often
have certain expectations of what qualifications are required for different occupa-
tions as well as the status of different occupations. In some nations, China and
India, for example, engineers have higher status than physicians, whereas in others,
Canada and the USA, for example, physicians have higher status than engineers.
Similarly, the amount of education a nurse must have before qualifying as a nurse is
much less in Hungary than the USA (Glazer and Gyurak 2008).
4.1 Voluntary Versus Involuntary Membership

with an Organization and Its Culture
Whether a person is part of a culture on a voluntary or an involuntary basis has real

implications on her or his adjustment, well-being, and acceptance of behavioral
norms in the culture. For example, when people choose to belong to a group (such
as an organization), their identity with the group will likely be different from those
who did not choose to be part of a group (Tajfel 2010).
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4.1.1 Voluntary
We learn a culture from the groups we grow up in and live among, but we also
experience culture from smaller groups within a culture. Societal cultures are not
homogeneous, and subgroups within any societal culture form around different
experiences, different issues, and different interactions. As such, many of these
smaller cultural groups are ones that are voluntarily joined, such as an organization
for which one chooses to take up employment. Individuals are attracted to join
groups where they have something in common with other group members. This
attraction fosters a group identity—“awareness of and attraction toward an inter-
acting group of interdependent members, by self-identified members of that group”
(Bouas and Arrow 1996, pp. 155–156). Group identification is thought to have its
basis in three different sources, according to Henry et al. (1999). The first is cog-
nitive, meaning social categorization. That is, an individual sees herself or himself
as a member of a particular group. Second is attraction, meaning that an individual
wishes to be a part of that group, while the third basis is behavioral, or focusing on
the interdependence of a given self with other members in the group as well as the
group as a whole.
This idea of group identity suggests that once a group is voluntarily joined, it can
exert a powerful influence over its members. This initial attraction and identification,
followed by group socialization processes furthers the existence of a cohesive set of
values, norms, and behaviors—in other words, culture. We see examples of these
sorts of culture in groups, such as in companies, rotary clubs, fraternities/sororities in
the USA where membership cuts across geographical boundaries, social class, and
even time periods, yet membership still results in a sense of shared values, beliefs,
and behaviors that give meaning to the group’s existence.
4.1.2 Non-voluntary
Group membership need not be voluntary, however, and often is not in organiza-
tional contexts. For example, it is quite common that employees are placed onto
work teams without being asked. Merely belonging to a group for any reason—
even random assignment—seems to be sufficient to promote a feeling of being a
part of that group (Social Identity Theory; Tajfel 2010) as well as promoting
in-group bias (see e.g., Turner et al. 1979). Therefore, attraction need not be at the
heart of being susceptible to group influences, and being a part of a given group
culture. It is not necessary to “like” group members, or to be a voluntary part of a
group that shares aspects of culture with those group members. Drawing on self
categorization theory, Turner et al. (1987) suggest that once an individual joins a
group, socialization processes ensure that individuals “learn the norms, beliefs,
values and ways of behaving that are shared by other members of the group”
(Guimond 2000, p. 337).
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4.2 Organizational Cultures 49
4.2 Organizational Cultures
Organizational culture refers to the outcome of overarching values, beliefs, and

assumptions that guide the organization’s implicit and explicit practices, policies,
procedures, and reward systems. The level of analysis is the organization, and
comparisons are made across organizational cultures. An organization’s culture
reveals its strategy for achieving its goals (French et al. 2000) and it tends to be
stable as its development has evolved over time and thus, has deep and strong roots
(Ostroff et al. 2013). However, it is important to emphasize that an organization’s
culture is not static. It is organic, even if slow to change and not easily malleable.
Changing organizational culture is no small task and requires whole-system
changes (i.e., from an organization’s structure to management process to physical
layout of the organization) instead of focal changes in certain domains of interest
(e.g., identifying and defining work roles).
Schein’s (2004) onion model provides a glimpse at the multiple layers that
would require change for an organization’s culture to change. To recap Schein’s
model, the outermost layer included artifacts, the second layer was comprised of
values, and the innermost layer consisted of the assumptions or beliefs. An orga-
nization’s culture is typically traced back to the founder of an organization and the
founder’s beliefs and values guide the organization’s practices. Schein (1983)
points out that, observable aspects of an organization’s culture are fundamentally
reflections of assumptions and beliefs held by people in the organization, which
influence the organization’s values and subsequent behaviors and practices.
Behaviors and practices are visible, surface aspects of an organization’s culture, for
example, office space configuration, norms for interacting with coworkers, and
office dress code.
Schein (1990) suggests that there are four steps inherent in the founding of an
organization that result in an organizational culture. First, the founder of the
organization notices a gap in an existing market, and has an idea for how to fill this
gap. Second, this idea is pitched to others, often likeminded individuals, and the
consensus of this advisory group, if the idea is sound and should be acted upon,
leads to the next step. Third, this founding group then takes actions required to
bring the organization into being by creating a new entity, and fourth, others are
then brought into the group as their expertise and/or other resources are deemed
necessary and advisable, and the history of the group is established. Throughout
this four-step process, and guided by the values of the founder and/or the founding
group, various approaches to reaching the goals related to each developmental step
are tried. The approaches that succeed are adopted as default practices and
behavioral norms. Thus, organizational culture at each of the deep, process, and
surface levels begins to emerge.
Similar to Schein’s (2004) onion model of culture, but in the context of orga-
nizational cultures, Erez and Gati (2004) also used the onion metaphor to describe a
nested model of culture with multiple layers and influence. They position global
culture at the outermost layer of the model, and individual culture (culture within
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the person) at the core, with organizational culture being one of the layers in
between global and individual cultures. In recognition of increasing globalization,
they suggest that these layers can influence each other through both bottom-up
(from individual to world) and top-down (world business needs to individual)
influences. In fact, they developed the concept of “glocal” culture (p. 595)
specifically in the domain of international business by highlighting the reciprocal
influences of global culture and the innermost individual culture (see Fig. 4.1).
While artifacts of culture (whether tangible or intangible, such as how people
address one another) are easily observed, merely describing culture is not enough to
really understand culture. In fact, Schneider and colleagues (e.g., Schneider and
Gunnarson 1996; Schneider et al. 1994; Schneider and Rentsch 1988) argue that
culture can be best understood by the rationale for why things happen in an orga-
nization the way they do.
The extent to which the founder and/or founding group has a long lasting effect
on organizational culture is variable; however, Ogbonna and Harris (2001) note that
a number of circumstantial factors, such as a change in CEO, a merger or
Fig. 4.1 The dynamic of top-down-bottom-up processes across the levels of culture. Adapted
from Erez and Gati (2004). Copyright 2004 by Wiley. Adapted with permission
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acquisition, can result in large organizational culture shifts as the organization

adapts to a new business environment, a change in leadership, or both. Further, it is
important to note that as organizations grow, organizational cultures become less
homogeneous. Organizational cultures may be “strong” cultures, with values deeply
held across all or almost all employees, or “weak” with little consensus or adher-
ence to organizational values and norms.
4.2.1 Organizational Cultures in Context
While work and organizations provide particular types of contexts with their own
norms, goals, and expectations, those contexts are nested within the culture of the
society and/or nation within which the organization exists. The relationship
between the societal and organizational cultural contexts is complex. At the more
macro end of the spectrum, societal culture is arguably more influential as it sets the
default pattern that individuals or employees use to understand situations (Triandis
1995). However, competent functioning at work requires decoding the organiza-
tional environment and making sense of the goals, norms, and behaviors of those in
the organization (Harris 1994). Gelfand et al. (2008) suggested that there are three
ways in which societal and organizational cultures may interact, given that each
culture reflects a different context in which behaviors or outcomes could take place.
First, they suggest that contextual factors may amplify various aspects of culture.
When amplification happens, specific cultural norms and/or values are more likely
to be salient, thereby increasing the strength of the effect on behaviors. This situ-
ation would typically reflect dominant societal culture norms which are either
reflected in a given organizational culture or supersede that organizational culture.
Second, culture suppressors may exist, where specific aspects of organizational
culture may suppress the expression of societal culture norms and/or values. The
third and final context effect posited by Gelfand and colleagues is that of culture
reversers. They suggest that it is possible that constraints in the working environ-
ment, or expectations of organizational culture, may actually reverse the expression
of societal culture norms and/or values.
4.2.2 Perspectives on Organizational Culture
Understanding that an organizational culture reflects some level of shared meaning,

and explicitly recognizing that an organization’s culture is not always monolithic
require a more careful scrutiny into what assumptions are used in determining just
what organizational culture is. Martin (1992) proposes that three different per-
spectives (i.e., integration, differentiation, and fragmentation) underpin both the
different definitions of culture and the strategies researchers take in defining the
methodological approach to studying organizational culture. Arguably, these three
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perspectives reflect implicit understandings of how culture operates. An integra-

tionist approach to understanding culture specifically focuses on commonalities,
whereas a fragmented or differentiation approach focuses on subcultures within a
larger culture (Martin and Frost 1999).
Researchers that have undertaken an integrationist perspective assume that
consensus across an organization on values and norms represents the organization’s
culture, as it reflects a shared understanding by all employees. This perspective
reflects a certain degree of objectivism in organizational culture, as it assumes that a
culture is clear to all who exist within it. Further, this approach is based on “claims
that cultures [are] characterized by consistency, organization-wide consensus, and
clarity” and the assumption that this will then lead to “greater organizational
effectiveness, as indicated by greater cognitive clarity, commitment, control, pro-
ductivity, and profitability” (Martin 1992, p. 61). Emphasis on clarity reinforces an
organizational culture that exerts an informational influence, clarifying for its
members what is and is not important to pay attention to, and what behaviors are
expected. Martin (1992) suggests an appropriate metaphor for this perspective is a
“clearing in a jungle” (p. 52).
The differentiation perspective views organizational culture as a collection of
numerous subcultures with overlapping norms around values and behaviors. The
fact that these subcultures overlap gives the appearance of a single, uniform
organizational culture when in fact such a single culture does not exist. Martin
(1992) notes that the elements of the differentiation perspective are “inconsistency,
subcultural consensus, and the relegation of ambiguity to the periphery of sub-
cultures” (p. 83). Inconsistency results from differing interpretation of events and
therefore differences in the meaning ascribed to a given event. For example,
rebranding may reflect a renewed and streamlined approach to the organizational
mission for some, a totally new organizational mission for others, and a reflection of
misused time and organizational resources to others. People in different “pockets”
of organizational cultures who interpret organizational events differently from
people in other “pockets,” but who have consensus within a given “pocket,” then
reflect a subculture in an organization. Employees in these subcultures share
meaning systems and understandings that in turn give rise to norms of values and
behaviors within each of the subcultural groups. This perspective suggests that
ambiguity is relegated to the edge of the various subcultures, as subcultures provide
clarity within themselves only. Any ambiguity around cultural differences is
assumed to be the result of no subculture forming to address and clarify the
ambiguous situation. As Martin suggests, the best metaphor for this is that “sub-
cultures are islands of clarity; ambiguity is channeled into the currents that swirl
around the edges of these islands” (Martin 1992, p. 94).
In contrast, the fragmentation perspective focuses directly on ambiguities around
meaning in organizations, and in doing so explicitly recognizes the complexity of
organizational functioning. This perspective views organizational culture as
implicitly pluralistic, and as a postmodern approach to understanding organizational
culture (Martin 1992). It reflects a recognition that organizational boundaries are
permeable with respect to issues in the societies within which they are embedded
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(such as racism, sexism, poverty, and other social issues). It also reflects a recog-
nition that organizational cultures change as the world of work is rapidly changing.
These changes in the work world are the result of a number of factors including, but
not limited to, technological advances and increasing globalization and result in a
dynamic and changing culture in an organization. The best metaphor for this
approach to understanding organizational culture is a web, as it highlights the fact
that facets in an organization are related to many other different facets (Martin
1992). This approach views consensus as the result of individuals coalescing
around issues, thereby paying attention to particular events and or facets of the
organization, and the connections between those.
4.2.3 Leadership and Organizational Cultures
According to Schein (2004) culture develops from “(1) the beliefs, values, and
assumptions of founders of organizations; (2) the learning experiences of group
members as their organization evolves; and (3) new beliefs, values, and assump-
tions brought in by new members and leaders” (p. 225). Leadership, then, is critical
to organizational culture, as organizational culture begins to develop from the
values, direction, mission, and practices of an organization’s founder as well as
successive leaders. George et al. (1999) point out that the organizational vision that
leaders develop and communicate to employees is a key leadership activity in
organizations. Building on Schein’s (2004) description of how leader behaviors
actually impact organizational culture, George et al. suggest that after an organi-
zational leader articulates a vision, s/he influences organizational members in five
key ways. These influences are a result of the leader’s (1) attention pattern (pay
attention—to what and how), (2) reactions to critical incidents, (3) role modeling,
(4) allocation of rewards and status, [and] (5) process and bases for new hires and
promotions (p. 555). In these ways, leadership is critical to developing, maintain-
ing, and reinforcing an organizational culture.
In addition to leadership behaviors having an impact on organizational culture,
personality traits of leaders may also be directly linked to organizational culture.
Giberson et al. (2009) empirically tested this notion by examining links between
organizational leaders’ personality, values, and organizational culture. While the
relationship between CEO values and organizational culture is not particularly
strong, there is enough evidence for the authors to claim that their study “provides
initial empirical evidence that organizational culture values are, at least to some
extent, a reflection of the CEO’s personality” (Giberson et al., p. 133).
While the evidence is clear that leadership in general has a direct effect on
organizational culture, specific types of leadership may have particular effects.
Jaskyte (2010) found, for example, that transformational leadership typically results
in higher cultural consensus. Cultural consensus reflects agreement among
employees about the organizational culture, indicating that the organization is a
strong culture as recognized and understood by organizational members. Ethical
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leadership also has specific effects on organizational culture. For example, Toor and
Ofori (2009) found that ethical leadership links to organizational cultures charac-
terized by trust and feelings of belonging on the part of employees, as well as
having an impact on employee willingness to put in extra effort on behalf of the
organization.
The relationship between leadership and culture, however, is not unidirectional,
as leadership may initiate and, to an extent, mold organizational culture, but that
culture will in turn support particular leader behaviors. For example, in a study of
222 public relations executives, Meng (2014) found
… participants’ recognition of the importance of having an organizational culture which
values communication efforts, supports clear statements of objectives emphasizing coop-
eration and teamwork, and encourages open communication among organizational mem-
bers. The results further confirmed that it is not enough to just put an excellent
communication team in place to wait for the chance to confirm the efforts they can bring to
improve organization performance. Rather, the success of communication leaders should be
able to actively influence organizational culture, to foster a culture that embraces com-
munication efforts, which can further encourage, value, and share open communication
among members. Thus, the direct and positive influence of public relations leadership on
organizational culture cannot be ignored (pp. 378–379).
Similarly, organizational culture can mediate the relationship between leadership

behavior and employee attitudes toward the organization such as organizational
commitment (Simosi and Xenikou 2010). Leadership behaviors can have a direct
effect on various employee attitudes, but evidence suggests that the type of orga-
nizational culture an employee is in may buffer a negative relationship, with a
positive organizational culture reducing negative effects of some leadership
behaviors. Alternatively, a positive relationship between leader behaviors and
employee outcomes can be enhanced by a positive organizational culture. Thus, the
relationship between leadership and organizational culture is complex, with
potential bidirectional impact as well as organizational culture serving as a mediator
or moderator variable on the relationship between leadership and employee
responses to that leadership.
4.2.4 Organizational Culture Change
Organizational culture change is a process that focuses on realigning an organi-

zation’s goals, structure, and technology in order to move the organization toward a
desired organizational culture (Howard and Associates 1994). Using principles of
organizational development, a systematic method for gathering and analyzing data
about how an organization is functioning in terms of its social systems, and
implementing and evaluating change, organizational culture change can only occur
when visible, audible, or tangible aspects of the organization are modified (Schein
1990). However, these tangible aspects of the organization are predicated on
underlying norms, values, and beliefs. Creating organizational culture change
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necessitates discovering the underlying elements of culture that are keeping the
organization from change and then reshaping organizational values, norms, and
beliefs to endorse attitudes and behaviors that reflect the desired culture (Schein
2006). To jolt change, organizations will often create cognitive dissonance among
the organization’s employees who will work toward reducing the dissonance by
implementing strategies that move organizations toward change (Schein 1990). In
other words, change happens when employees perceive a disconnect or an
incompatibility with “the way things are” and “the way things should be” if a
particular state is desired. An organizational culture that values tradition is likely to
change only if it becomes clear to employees that the traditional methods of work
are not profitable when competitors have more modern approaches and are
increasing their market share as a result, for example.
Creating organizational culture change requires support from top management
(Beckhard 1969) who are responsible for improving an organization’s visioning
(developing a picture of a desired future), empowering others to make change
(Argyris 1998), initiating a learning process (interactive listening and
self-examining process; French and Bell 1999), and engaging in problem-solving
(diagnose situation, solve problems, make decisions, and take actions) through
collaborative management (participation in creating and managing a culture; Schein
2006), and emphasizing interactive work teams (organization’s building blocks;
Nirenberg 1994). In order to initiate organizational culture change, organizations
will first change organizational structures, institute new processes, and create new
principles to guide affect, behaviors, and cognitions that will then become nor-
mative in the new organizational system. Thus, in organizational culture change
efforts, the system is the target of change, while the people within the organization
become the instruments of change (Schein 2006).
4.3 Multinational Corporations
Multinational corporations (MNCs) are complex systems that require a focused

strategy to uphold a worldwide organizational culture. It is therefore imperative that
those in leadership roles identify the factors that are of greatest strategic importance
and those that are less important. For example, some have indicated that Euro
Disney was a failure initially due to the executives’ inability to “let go” of what was
less important and to retain characteristics that are truly fundamental to the strategic
growth of the company (Brannen 2004). According to Brannen (2004), Disney
failed to recontextualize its brand in Paris, effectively omitting to give the brand a
new meaning in new cultural contexts. For Americans, practices and services
associated with Disney, such as the extreme customer service orientation and
personnel management systems, as well as the cowboy motif, representing rugged
individualism, were all interpreted by the French as abnormal customer service,
illegal personnel practices, and carefree individualism. Moreover, Disney was
attempting to take the American fantasy of European fairytales back to its place of
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origin. In essence, many cultural factors, including cultural values, beliefs, and
norms were not taken into consideration, and thus the globalization efforts were
originally met with resistance at the local organizational level.
According to Weick (1976), MNCs that are extremely tight and rigid in their
organizational culture, and therefore fail to employ flexibility and recontextual-
ization, are bound to break. Tightly coupled systems (as Weick refers to the rela-
tionship between organizational structures that are rigid), such as bureaucracies,
lack the variability to attend to significant changes, as opposed to loosely coupled
(i.e., flexible) systems which have the resources for all elements of the system to
respond integratively, while each element (e.g., subsystem) remains distinct
(Spender and Grinyer 1995). Thus, when organizational systems are loosely cou-
pled, the systems’ boundaries are permeable and can absorb changes without
affecting the MNC’s fundamental strategy. While some MNCs are capable of
engaging in a uniformed global strategic action (Hannan and Carroll 1995), MNCs
probably operate best when thought of as an “interorganizational grouping” as
opposed to a single organization (Ghoshal and Bartlett 1990, p. 604). By consid-
ering an MNC as a grouping of multiple organizations, executives are probably
more open to allowing each element to run its unit autonomously while still
maintaining interdependency. As Weick (1976) wrote, elements (of structures) of
loosely coupled systems are still tied together, but the knot is loose or with minimal
interdependence. Thus, “…loose coupling encourages individual elements to make
adaptations to local circumstances or events” (Koff et al. 1994, p. 3) without
straining the subsidiaries located in different countries. Furthermore, it is important
to recognize that the onus of change is not only on the MNC that must adapt to local
preferences, but local firms must also learn to adapt to new situations that are not
opposing and hurting their laws, value systems, and beliefs (Kao et al. 1990). Thus,
the most effective approach to developing an organizational culture is likely to be
characterized by what Martin would term “differentiation” as each local subculture
maintains both a level of similarity with the local subcultures in other geographical
areas of the MNC, but also exhibits a distinctiveness reflecting an adaptation to the
local environment.
4.4 Industry Cultures
The particular industry within which an organization exists may also provide
boundaries for culture. Unlike organizational cultures bounded by geopolitical or
regional differences, some aspects of organizational culture may differ with respect
to the purpose of the organization, or the industrial environment within which the
organization exists. Some institutional theorists (e.g., Dosi 1982) suggest that there
are shared meanings and assumptions for organizations within a particular context
since organizations exist within particular economic and social environments, and
there are reasons to assume that industries can constitute such a particularistic
environment. An interesting approach to this idea was carried out in a single
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4.4 Industry Cultures 57
societal setting, California, but in two different industrial settings—wineries and

museums. Using Schein’s (1985) framework, Phillips (1994) specifically examined
differences in five categories of cultural assumptions: (1) the relationship between
the group and the environment, (2) the nature of reality and truth, (3) the nature of
innate human nature, (4) the nature of human activity, and (5) the nature of human
relationships. Her findings suggest that there are, indeed, shared mindsets among
members of organizations within specific industries—in other words, a shared
cultural understanding of some basic assumptions. More specifically, she purports
that within the same industry there are similarities in how individuals view strategic
issues, such as how competitors are identified and group boundaries are demar-
cated, how interpersonal work relationships are formed and maintained, such as
lines and patterns of communication, and how social matters are addressed, such as
purpose of work, but across industries these factors differ. Other examples of
industries creating boundaries around cultural assumptions, and therefore organi-
zational cultures, come from areas such as the hospitality industry, which has been
described as having unique contextual factors related to work performance (Chen
et al. 2012), as the combinations of physical demands and service interactions
between employees and customers have emerged as important factors affecting the
work environment (cf., Shani et al. 2014).
4.5 Organizational Cultures Around Issues
In recognition that shared understandings can revolve around specific issues in an

organizational setting, a number of researchers have started qualifying the term
“organizational culture” to emphasize a specific shared understanding about a
particular aspect of the work environment. Two examples of these well-researched
cultures around issues are safety cultures and health cultures. Below is a description
of both; they are presented as examples of culture topics that may be addressed in
this series.
4.5.1 Safety Culture
Safety culture refers to behaviors, values, norms, and assumptions about safety that
are endorsed in an organization (Mearns et al. 1998; Mearns and Flin 2001). It is an
enduring feature of an organization (Moran and Volkwein 1992) and can explain
why certain behaviors occur (or do not occur; Schneider et al. 1994). Most studies of
safety culture are conducted in nuclear plants (e.g., Hofmann et al. 1995), off-shore
oil installations (e.g., Mearns et al. 1998), rail transportation (e.g., Clarke 1999;
Edkins and Pollock 1996; Sherry 1991), road work (e.g., Niskanen 1994), factories
or manufacturing companies (Cheyne et al. 1998; Goldberg et al. 1991; Hofmann
and Morgeson 1999; Zohar 1980, 2000), and aviation (Díaz and Cabrera 1997;
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Edkins 1998). An organization that has a strong safety culture is likely part of a
high-risk industry characterized by work activities that could compromise the safety
and well-being of its employees and other relevant stakeholders (Ostroff et al. 2013).
An organization’s culture develops over time. The extent to which an organization
may have a strong safety culture would be impacted by multiple factors (Gibbons
et al. 2006), including the depth of the organizational system’s values related to
(a) the protection of its stakeholders,
(b) care for people’s well-being,
(c) clear processes for the upkeep of equipment,
(d) documentation protocols to address any deviant or unexpected events that
might compromise or have compromised safety,
(e) high engagement of people throughout the entire organization, and
(f) having dedicated personnel to help educate and improve upon the organiza-
tion’s safety strategy.
An organization’s safety culture often manifests in observed artifacts, including
signs posting how many days a company has been accident-free, safety checklists
that people must complete as part of their work routine, and posted signs reminding
people about protocols for safe behaviors. Safety culture is normally assessed at the
organizational level and compared to other similar organizations. Thus, measure-
ment of safety culture is rolled up to the level of the organization and analyses are
performed at that group level (Zohar 2003). Some of the factors assessed include
leadership communication and style (e.g., communicating tolerance of risk
behaviors or safety compliance and reinforcing innovation for risk prevention),
psychosocial stressors (e.g., that might impact the extent to which people in a social
network implicitly or explicitly reinforce expectations for risky or safety behaviors),
organizational politics, reward and punishment structures, training and development
opportunities (Glazer et al. 2004).
An organization that reinforces preventative activities believes that “an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure” (Benjamin Franklin). As many organizations,
which emphasize risk prevention activities, are functioning in high-risk industries,
those that embrace Franklin’s belief are likely to be more effective in their line of
work than those organizations that do not. For example, airlines that follow the
minimum equipment list guidelines (Gibbons et al. 2006) of the U.S. Federal
Aviation Authority and require every pilot to physically walk around an aircraft and
thoroughly complete a checklist are more likely to have a good safety record than
airlines that skirt some of those protocols. And, while profitability is inevitably a
driver for any company, its success will only be as good as effectiveness. For an
airline, getting passengers and crew safely to another destination is ultimately a sign
of its effectiveness.
Safety cultures are affected therefore by both policies and practices, or norms.
Organizations that emphasize safety culture programs may still find themselves
facing serious injuries and death if subcultures within the organization undermine
organizational efforts toward safety. Thus, creating a strong and unified safety
culture is paramount if the positive results of such a culture are to be realized.
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4.5 Organizational Cultures Around Issues 59
4.5.2 Health Culture
Similar to findings related to safety culture, organizations promoting personal and

group activities that reinforce a healthy workforce are ones that have strong health
cultures. Healthy behaviors that are practiced by people throughout the entire
organization are reinforced in policy statements released by leadership and leaders’
actions that demonstrate authentic desire to align components of the organization in
order to achieve strategic goals. Example practices that are embedded within
policies found in some organizations include clear statements regarding the
importance of work–nonwork life balance and encouraging (with time and avail-
ability) engagement with wellness programs offered within the company or access
to wellness programs near to where employees live (with company reimbursement).
In organizations with strong health cultures, public statements are accompanied by
employee access to the services being offered. Example services include offering
only healthy snack and drink options in vending machines or cafeterias, creating
more opportunities for social support, and supervisory modeling of healthy work
behaviors (Golaszewski et al. 2008).
Despite efforts toward creating health cultures, health issues occur in a work-
force. Employee health issues may result from physical problems such as chronic
pain, cancers, or fatigue or from psychological problems such as depression or
anxiety (Loeppke et al. 2009). Organizations typically have policies in place to
guide how employees should behave when faced with these conditions—or, in
other words, how these conditions should be thought of and acted upon. Buck et al.
(2011) suggest, “people’s beliefs, attitudes, and social norms as well as more
objective contextual factors are important in understanding presenteeism, absen-
teeism, and return-to-work behaviour” (p. 502). Organizations, through their poli-
cies as well as through the health culture within the organization, place both explicit
and implicit expectations on employees. For example, at some organizations senior
workers may model to more junior employees that showing up to work regardless
of health conditions is considered the proper “work ethic” at that organization
(Baker-McClearn et al. 2010), thereby resulting in high rates of presenteeism.
Presenteeism refers to an employee’s attendance at work despite being physically or
mentally unwell (Garczynski et al. 2013), which leads to underperformance and
burnout (Ferreira and Martinez 2012). To eradicate these unhealthy practices, some
organizations have begun to eliminate setting a maximum number of sick day
restrictions in order to avoid presenteeism, thus also exhibiting support for a strong
health culture.
Even organizations that promote health cultures might have times when the
organization, knowingly or unknowingly, propagates a stress climate, in which an
organization does not handle challenges and demands in a timely and transparent
manner, thereby creating more appraisals of distress and fewer appraisals of eus-
tress among its employees (Kozusznik et al. 2015). In order to inhibit a stress
climate, organizations must develop, employ, and monitor implementation of
organizational policies and promote organizational norms for a health culture.
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As a culture around an issue, as with safety cultures, it is important to recognize

the two strongest influences on this culture—that of organizational policies and that
of employee norms. While organizational policies apply to all employees in an
organization, how they are interpreted and enacted upon may differ depending on
subcultures in an organization. Despite official organizational policies related to
how to handle illness, “pockets” within an organization may enact or even con-
tradict these policies through strong subcultural norms. Nicholson and Johns (1985)
refer to an “absence culture” as the opposite of a health culture and note that this
culture has been found to vary across national samples, occupations, organizations
and units within an organization, strongly suggesting that subcultures within an
organization may have behavioral norms that differ from the stated policies of the
organization as a whole. More recently, cultures around health have been impacted
by the increasingly widespread use of wellness programs in the workplace.
Advocates for wellness programs in the workplace suggest that these programs are
closely tied to the culture of an organization (Ginn and Henry 2003) although
findings suggest that these programs are not always equally endorsed throughout an
organization (Juniper 2011).
4.6 Intraorganizational Cultures
In medium-sized to large-sized organizations, multiple units and multiple sites can

easily operate in the absence of much interaction with other parts of the larger
organization or with headquarters, resulting in a loose organizational culture. As a
result, the head of a unit or site typically drives the unit’s and/or site’s culture,
which may or may not align well with the organization’s culture overall.
Sometimes, different activities in different organizational units and sites of large
organizations may require that unit or site cultures differ. For example, a plant
operations unit must maintain a safety culture and avoid risk-taking, whereas the
marketing and sales unit of that same organization must take risks and demonstrate
creativity. Similarly, a site geographically located far from headquarters might need
to incorporate practices, procedures, and policies that fit the greater societal culture
it exists in. An example of this may be seen in a single MNC offering free
condiments in U.S. fast food locations, but charging for condiments in some
Eastern European fast food locations. While organizational culture looseness may
be a positive in situations such as this, allowing an organization to adapt to
demands of specific locales, there are times when misalignment of unit cultures
with organizational cultures results in attrition and possibly a need to rebuild a unit.
There may be times when a site culture’s inability to align with the headquarters
might cause headquarters to withdraw from the site. A misalignment of cultures
may also result in the need for personnel changes, such as the case when an
organization’s leadership fails to recognize the need for a unit to operate differently.
Even when personnel changes occur, however, both overarching organizational
cultures, as well as subcultures tend to maintain their cultures at various levels.
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4.6 Intraorganizational Cultures 61
Schneider (1987) and Schneider et al. (1995) suggested that four processes are
responsible for the continuation of organizational culture over time: attraction,
selection, socialization, and attrition. This framework is one that incorporates an
understanding of organizational culture from both the group level and the individual
level (Schneider et al. 1995). Consistent with other theorists, as noted above, this
approach to understanding organizational culture starts with the values and norms
laid out by the founder or founding group of the organization; however, this
approach focuses on and addresses continuation and consistency in organizational
culture rather than the culture’s founding. What happens after those initial norms
are established is viewed as an iterative process between the organizational level
(organizational culture, or shared values and norms) and the individual employee
level (values and preferred behavioral norms).
Attraction to an organization occurs as the result of an implicit or explicit
evaluation by a prospective employee of the culture of the organization, and the
extent to which s/he finds that culture appealing. A positive assessment of an
organization would result in an individual including an organization in her/his job
search, and then applying for employment with a given organization. The selection
process mirrors this evaluation, but at the organizational level. As organizations
assess various candidates for positions, an evaluation of the degree to which can-
didates might be expected to fit in with the culture of the organization plays a role in
determining which candidates will be selected to join that organization. Once the
selection occurs, and candidates become employees, socialization occurs, where the
organizational culture is taught to the newcomers, and the new employees again
assess their fit with the organization as they start the job and see the degree to which
their initial impression of the organizational culture is correct or not. The attrition
process occurs if and when employees realize that the expected fit is not a good one
after all, and they opt to leave the organization.
Thus, organizational culture is maintained by attracting and selecting the types
of prospective employees who share the same values as are found in an organi-
zation, and who may therefore be expected to fit in well. The culture is further
maintained by self-selection out of the organization by employees who do not share
a match with the values of the organization or a preference for the surface, or
behavioral, level of a given organizational culture. While not all employees in an
organization endorse aspects of organizational culture to the same extent, this
model does provide an understanding of the processes that keep an organizational
culture relatively stable, despite individual differences and personnel change.
4.7 Team Cultures
As Erez and Gati (2004) note in their glocal model of cultures (see Fig. 4.1), there
are multiple layers of cultures within organizations. In addition to an organizational
culture and a culture based on specific issues, such as safety and health, divisions,
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units, or departments of an organization also have subcultures within the larger

organizational culture. These cultures partly adopt characteristics of the entire
organization, but also reinforce their own characteristics. Similar to a person who is
bicultural and is able to frame switch her or his behaviors based on the cultural
environment s/he is in, employees of an organization are able to switch their frames
of reference depending on the situation they are in within the organization. For
example, a supervisor of an organizational unit might reinforce a team culture of
open dialog and contribution within the team, but when in a larger
organization-wide briefing, otherwise vocal contributors might remain quiet. Thus,
while a team culture reinforces egalitarian values among team contributors, the
organization culture might reinforce hierarchy values. Still, an organization’s
practices do influence a team’s effectiveness when considering organization-wide
reward systems (that reinforce behaviors based on individual or group perfor-
mance), educational systems (that offer training and development opportunities),
and information systems (that provide or limit access to relevant data; Hackman
1990).
Another important feature in today’s organizations is the advent of global teams
that work across geographic boundaries, time, and space (see, e.g., Glazer et al.
2012). The formation of global teams is typically motivated by a desire to have the
strongest personnel contributors working toward addressing an organizational need.
Global team members communicate with each other, synchronously and/or asyn-
chronously, through computer-mediated communication and therefore these teams
are often referred to as global virtual teams (GVTs; aka transnational or globally
distributed teams). GVTs can perform their jobs anywhere and anytime around the
globe. They develop their own team culture, often influenced by the headquarters,
particularly if the lead project manager is from the headquarters. To date, there is
little research on team cultures of GVTs and how the GVT’s culture shapes team
and individual performance, though there are studies looking at team dynamics
(e.g., Maznevski and Chudobo 2000).
4.8 Summary
This chapter focused on the organization and varying components that may be
addressed by contributions to this series. In particular, concepts related to the
situation of the organization as embedded in layers between the person and both the
nation and industry environment, organizational culture, types of organizational
cultures, and teams within organizations were introduced. In the next section we
focus on the individual contributors in the workplace, focusing on the concept of
work, work roles, occupations, attributes of the person, person perceptions of sit-
uations, and the role of human resources in selecting contributors and developing
their competencies.
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References 63
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Chapter 5
Work and Culture
The culture of an organization, embedded within the societal context, provides the
milieu within which work is performed and experienced. Ultimately, psychology is
the study of individuals, and understanding contextual influences is critical in
studies involving a person’s affect, behaviors, and cognitions. This extends as well
to understanding a person’s experience of work. The definition of work is as
complex as the definition of culture. Okhuysen et al. (2013) note, in their intro-
duction to a special Academy of Management Review journal issue on work, “the
number and variety of uses of the term show that the scope of work is vast, and
thus, it is difficult to fully account for the phenomenon we seek to study” (p. 491).
Basically, “work” is the term that refers to behaviors individuals engage in inde-
pendently or in conjunction with others, as well as their exertion, effort, or action
toward a goal, and productivity. Each person who works is contributing to fulfilling
some activity that is typically associated with an end goal, whether it is a product,
service, idea, or composition. Coordination with other people is always an aspect
that influences a person’s work experiences, even if other people are not physically
present while work is being done.
Since work includes coordination of activities, it inevitably always takes place
within a context, typically in an organizational or team context. In an employment
context, work meets a need for producing or acquiring some type of commodity or
service for or by another. Hence, when researchers study work, they actually
address the context in which work takes place (Okhuysen et al. 2013). For example,
information technology professionals in a high-tech start-up have different work
expectations (e.g., innovation) than information technology professionals in an
organization (e.g., support staff). It is presumed that activities done “at work” are
not the same as those done elsewhere. However, researchers are also recognizing
the blurring of contextual lines, as activities for work can happen in many different
venues and thus “going to work” no longer refers to work as a destination, but
rather, as an activity. Factors that impact the experience of work may include

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68 5 Work and Culture
occupational and organizational role, relationships with others, the centrality of work
(i.e., the extent to which work is important in one’s own life; European Social Survey
2004), and the degree of financial compensation. Literature on work often treats these
experiences as if they are context-free even while focusing on antecedents and
consequences of various work experiences. However, because these experiences take
place in a larger societal and organizational context, it is important to explicate the
direct and indirect effects of these contexts on a person’s work experiences.
Indeed, while for some people work is a burden, for others it is an opportunity to
develop and use one’s skills to fulfil the needs and demands of the organization, or to
reap rewards in exchange for fulfilling a person’s social needs (Edwards and Van
Harrison 1993; Ruiz-Quintanilla and England 1996). It is clear that cultural factors,
including history, values, conceptualization of time, economic circumstances, and more
influence the meaning of work (Okhuysen et al. 2013). Drawing on Chaps. 2 and 3,
within each nation there are differing conceptual and functional meanings of work. For
example, in Japan work is associated with money earned; in Germany a common view
is that others profit by an individual’s work; and in the Netherlands work is often seen
as an opportunity to contribute to society (England and Harpaz 1990). These different
viewpoints reflect very different meanings, as it could be said that the Germans and
Japanese view is more negative and the Dutch view more positive.
For the purposes of this series the word “work” encompasses the person, his or
her experiences of work, and the result of work, that is, performance. The person
aspect takes into consideration worker characteristics, occupations, jobs, tasks, and
careers. It also examines personnel-related activities such as attracting, hiring,
socializing, and retaining the right people for a given work setting (Schneider 1987;
Schneider et al. 1995). These individual differences and activities are of particular
relevance to how a person experiences work. These experiences in turn relate to
worker’s performance, including affects, motivations, behaviors, and cognitions.
5.1 Work: Person/Input
In personnel and work psychology, specific topics within I/O Psychology, much of
the research and applied foci are on the role that characteristics of a person play in
work activities and processes. In particular, person characteristics are central aspects
of job analyses, which then serve as the foundation for attracting, selecting, training
(socializing), and retaining employees. Person characteristics can include biograph-
ical variables such as education level and work experiences, as well as sex and age.
They also include an individual’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteris-
tics, such as attitudes and personality. Research on personal characteristics has not, in
the past, necessarily considered cultural context. As companies become increasingly
culturally diverse, international, and multinational, the relationship of various factors
to person characteristics in one country, or for people of a certain cultural back-
ground, should not be expected to cross cultural boundaries.
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5.1 Work: Person/Input 69
Individual differences have also been shown to relate to a person’s occupational

choice (Holland 1985), which might explain why people in certain occupations
share similar values and goals. In fact, the term “occupational culture” was coined
to refer to norms and expectations held in common by members of an occupation
(e.g., Ames and Rebhun 1996; Fonne and Myhre 1996; Rigakos 1995; Meyerson
1991; Shore 2001). Bloor and Dawson (1994) suggest that researchers should pay
attention to how professionals “individually and collectively, make sense of and
structure their worlds” (p. 281), as unique training and occupational experiences
have a common impact on members of a particular occupation. In other words, the
profession or occupation an individual belongs to shapes, creates, and sustains a
group culture within that occupation. The subtopic area of I/O Psychology that is
Occupational Psychology specifically deals with how factors and tasks common in
given occupations affect how individuals experience their world and perform their
role(s).
The different layers of culture: deep, process, and surface mentioned above
(Sect. 3.6), also operate at the occupational level. Normative beliefs (i.e., the deep
layer) influence the actions and interactions of group members, and are based on
values that group members hold in common. Behaviors at the surface level of
culture, such as saluting in the military, wearing particular uniforms (e.g., white lab
coats in a hospital), may be evident within occupations. The sensemaking (Harris
1994) that is experienced as a result of engaging in particular occupational activities
explains, at least in part, the rise in shared values, beliefs, and behaviors among
individuals who are in the same occupation.
Previous research has demonstrated differences among members of different
occupations with respect to the types of values, norms, and behaviors endorsed. For
example, Kwantes and Boglarsky (2004) found that individuals’ descriptions of
their ideal organizational culture, that is, the culture in which they thought they
could be most productive, differed by occupation. Although all respondents
declared a desire to work in environments where they were free to be productive
and to learn and grow, members of some occupations, such as management of
information systems and marketing, placed a higher priority on being able to think
outside the box and members of other occupations, such as secretarial, placed a
higher priority on stable expectations in the workplace.
5.2 Work: Throughput/Process
Since work is an iterative process, many of the throughputs identified in this section
are also considered as outputs in research and practice. Likewise, many of the
outputs identified in the subsequent Sect. 5.3 are at times conceptualized as
throughputs. The variables identified in this section as throughputs are presented
here simply due to the fact that they are primarily studied as such, and not to
suggest that they may only be thought of as throughputs.
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What a person actually experiences at work is the result of a confluence of

societal culture, organizational culture, occupational culture, and subcultures within
organizations, as well as interpersonal interactions with colleagues, superiors,
subordinates, and other stakeholders. To understand what a person experiences,
therefore, the context in which work takes place is a crucial determining factor.
Each aspect of the context directly, additively, or multiplicatively influences a
person’s experiences at work. In short, any one person’s experiences will unlikely
be identical to another’s in the organization. Each person will perceive her/his
experiences uniquely on the basis of the aforementioned contextual factors.
5.2.1 Situated Cognition
Just as members of societal cultures have shared experiences and meanings, so do

members of organizational cultures. Organizations are fundamentally social sys-
tems, with meaning determined by, and communicated between, members of that
organization (Weick 2001). Harris (1994) points out that schemas particularly
relevant to the organizational context are the ones at the heart of organizational
culture. In other words, to understand organizational cultures, one must understand
situated cognition in organizations. Harris asserts that situated cognition in orga-
nizations reflects sensemaking in context, and that “five categories of
in-organization schemas seem to capture the range of knowledge needed for these
sensemaking efforts: self, person, organization, object/concept, and event” (p. 312).
In-organization schemas about the self for employees refer to an employee’s gen-
eralization of his or her values and behaviors while working and interacting with
other employees. Person-in-organization schemas reflect knowledge and assump-
tions of both individuals and groups that an employee interacts with in an orga-
nization, and the roles that each plays. Organizational schemas most closely reflect
organizational culture, according to Harris, as they represent an employee’s gen-
eralized ideas and knowledge about his or her organization. Object/concept sche-
mas are the ideas that employees have related to meanings of nonsocial aspects of
the organization, such as the kind of equipment and material resources to perform
job or the kind of holiday gifts given to employees. Event-in-organization schemas
are those ideations around social activities and encounters in the workplace. These
schemas also encompass ideas about what behaviors are expected, and what
“proper” behavior is—in other words, behavioral norms evident in the surface level
of organizational culture. As employees interact and exchange thoughts and ideas, a
collective as well as an individual sensemaking process takes place as some con-
vergence in interpretations takes place (Moussavi and Evans 1993). This conver-
gence reflects “a cognitive paradigm that sees the organization as the result of social
constructions based on its members’ collective cognitive schema” (Allard-Poesi
1998, p. 397).
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5.2 Work: Throughput/Process 71
Situated cognition therefore highlights the fact that the context within which
people exist is important for how they make sense of their work-world. The context
within which a person works coupled with the values others place on particular
actions and attitudes sets the stage from which an individual can make sense of
experiences. For example, if an employee observes colleagues using the organiza-
tion’s products any chance they get, the employee may vicariously become vested in
the organization too and begin to feel attached to their workplace. Thus, by learning
what is rewarded and what is punished/discouraged through social learning and
vicarious experiences an individual makes sense of her/his work environment and
develops the ability to adjust her/his behaviors to achieve desired goals.
When it comes to work experiences, individuals make sense of their work
activities through organizational cultural factors, such as status and roles. Their
experience and understanding of status and roles shapes how they perceive events
and relationships with others.
5.2.2 Motivation
Motivation is a complex topic that can be studied from a number of different

perspectives and theories, and culture influences each perspective and theory (see
Erez et al. 2001). It is generally studied at the individual level with researchers
studying the implications of sociocultural environment on motivation. In some
contexts, it is believed that hard work always brings its own rewards, whereas in
other contexts it is believed that outcomes related to work are due more to fate than
to hard work (Leung et al. 2002). More generally than a work ethic, culture exerts a
particular effect on motivation by shaping individuals’ cognitions regarding the
meaning of work, or the centrality of work. Social culture molds individual ideas
about work and work goals, as it supports the pursuit of some goals and discourages
the pursuit of others (Schwartz 1999). Due to the complexity of the topic, this
section maintains a more generic discussion of motivation across cultures, but by no
means attempts to address the myriad of research streams on motivation.
In 1955, Morse and Weiss reported the results of a survey that asked employed
American men why they worked. They found that while 80% of their respondents
indicated that they would continue to work even if it was not required for economic
reasons, 32% of those indicated that their primary motivation to work was their
interest in the work, and 14% indicated that they would “feel lost” or “go crazy”
without work (p. 192). Morse and Weiss concluded, “for most men working does not
simply function as a means of earning a livelihood. Even if there were no economic
necessity for them to work, most men would work anyway. It is through the pro-
ducing role that most men tie into society, and for this reason and others, most men
find the producing role important for maintaining their sense of well-being” (p. 198).
Dhar (1994) found similar results in a sample of Indian executives who participated
in a leadership training institute. Of the 82 respondents, 78 indicated that even if they
found themselves in a situation in which they no longer had to work to earn a living
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and most needs could be fulfilled without having to work, they would still work. The
executives cited reasons why they would want to continue to work and Dhar grouped
those reasons into seven categories. The reasons included: (1) to stay busy/engaged,
(2) to fulfill/satisfy needs, (3) to contribute to society, (4) to maintain physical and
mental health and well-being, (5) to earn more money, (6) to continue professional
development, and (7) to maintain a sense of discipline. From these early U.S. findings
and more recent findings from India, it is clear that engaging in work has meaning
beyond an exchange of work for pay.
Studies such as the above are often placed in the category of research on the
meaning of work. One of the first major cross-cultural organizational research
endeavors was to understand the meaning of work or work centrality (MOW 1987).
The meaning of work may be broadly characterized in two dimensions: the personal
meaning of work and the social meaning of work (Anuradha et al. 2014). The
personal meaning of work is derived from the motivation to engage in work that is
interesting and helps an individual achieve innate goals. This personal meaning of
work is likely influenced by intraindividual factors including those examined by
motivational theorists such as McClelland’s (McClelland and Boyatzis 1982) who
indicated that the need for achievement, power, and affiliation are pivotal in the
workplace. Other theories of motivation, such as Maslow’s (1954) hierarchy and
Alderfer’s (1969) needs for existence, relatedness, and growth also reflect personal
meaning of work. Further, more recent work in wellbeing (see, e.g., Dolan and
Metcalfe 2012) highlights the importance of a sense of purpose and of meaning.
Work is frequently a significant source of daily purpose for many individuals.
Indeed, preliminary work by Meyer and Glazer (2013) shows that for university
students and hospital nurses having a sense of meaningfulness in life mitigates the
effects of stressors (Time 1) on strains (Time 2).
In contrast, when thinking of work as having social meaning, one thinks of the
social and economic functions of work and the extent to which these functions
fulfill basic social and economic needs. Social context with respect to economic
conditions certainly plays a role in the extent to which work has economic meaning;
however, cultural norms and values can also be seen to play a role in the extent to
which the meaning of work is socially related.
Empirical evidence suggests that culture does, indeed, exert a strong influence
on the social meaning of work, as attributions about the meaning of work may differ
in various cultural contexts (Kuchinke et al. 2010) such that employees in different
contexts may experience different “costs,” such as role ambiguity, role overload,
and work stress, from the way meaning is ascribed to work, or aspects of work.
Morin (2004) highlights the fact that when referring to the “meaning of work” one
is actually referring to the process of ascribing meaning and that process and its
result represents a subjective experience.
Anuradha et al. (2014) note that in their sample of managers in India, social
norms regarding work constituted an important motivating ideology. Many of their
respondents were reported to have said that they worked because a strong “social
distaste for idleness” (p. 9) propelled them to be involved in activities that were
expected of them. The authors further note that the strong work ethic they found in
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their sample was described distinctly different in etiology from the Protestant Work
Ethic (PWE). The PWE, as a specific form of work ethic tied to the history and
roots of American culture, specifically individualism and an achievement orienta-
tion (Spence 1985), may be found in multiple cultural contexts as it is tied to a
number of current work values in young people (cf., Aygün et al. 2008).
Nonetheless, contrary to the PWE, where the meaning of work is tied in with
gaining individual salvation, in India, as Dhar (1994) found and Anuradha et al.
(2014) reinforced, work is valued for providing a means for fulfilling one’s duty to
family as is emphasized in Hindu philosophy. Thus, it can be seen that the meaning
attributed to work does, in part, reflect culture and culturally accepted values and
therefore impacts work values.
5.2.3 Work Values
Work values refer to the importance an individual gives to specific work-related

outcomes (Sagie et al. 1996). A person’s work values guide a person’s choice of
organization, acclimation to an organization, and retention in an organization
(Schneider 1987). Unlike work centrality, employees’ work values are specific
fundamental determinants of organizational behavior (Schneider 1987). They are
comprised of the thoughts, feelings, or beliefs that are most important to a particular
person and influence almost every aspect of their lives, from their responses to
others to their commitments to personal and organizational goals (Posner et al.
1985). A key aspect of the various definitions of work values is the emphasis on the
work context. Work values are situation specific (Glazer and Beehr 2002) and what
an employee values in one situation, such as his or her job environment, may not be
a value he or she holds in a different environment. In other words, context shapes
which values hold the greatest priority for an individual in the work setting.
Work values may be both intrinsic, such as independence, security, and mean-
ingful, and extrinsic, such as money, promotion opportunities, benefits, and
opportunities for long-term career goals. Work values can also be categorized along
three types: (a) instrumental values, referring to work-related end states that are
concrete and of practical use, (b) affective values, reflecting work-related outcomes
that enhance a person’s emotional state, such as opportunities to work with people,
and relationships with colleagues, supervisor, and others, and (c) cognitive values,
that address a person’s thoughts about his or her own interests, involvement with
the organization, level of responsibility, and autonomy (Elizur 1993).
Work values may also be conceptually organized along two basic modalities.
The modalities are outcome and system performance contingency (Sagie et al.
1996). The outcome modality focuses on the end state, whereas the system per-
formance contingency modality focuses on values derived from incentives, which
are not contingent upon the outcomes of task performance. In other words, the mere
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linkage to the organizational system yields the system rewards (e.g., being able to
take a sabbatical after a specific number of years in an organization; Elizur et al.
1991). Outcomes that are contingent upon performance are also of relevant interest
in the work values domain. Rewards that a person strives to earn through engaging
in specific behaviors are important motivators to which employees assign weight
(Elizur 1993).
Work values also play a vital role in the success of an organization by affecting,
for example, the way customers are perceived and treated, the way employees and
their efforts are viewed and rewarded, and the future path of the organization (Boxx
et al. 1991; Ravlin and Meglino 1987). Organizational values that are clear and
understandable enhance employees’, as well as their organization’s performance
(Posner et al. 1985). Moreover, organizational goals were seen as more important to
employees who felt that their values aligned with the organization’s goals and less
important to employees who felt their values were not aligned. Perceived value
alignment reinforces employees’ sense more control, security, and power (Enz
1988). Per the Job-Demands Control Theory, when individuals feel they have
control over demanding situations, they are more likely to achieve their goals
(Bakker and Demerouti 2014). Indeed, value congruence also produced feelings of
personal success and less perceived role stressors, which produced a significant
effect on positive work attitudes (Posner 1992). Kemelgor (1982) and Feather
(1979) also found a positive relationship between high levels of value congruence
and job satisfaction among employees. In contrast, employees whose values were
not compatible with their organization’s values, often felt work-related demands
were the cause of most of the stress in their personal lives. These individuals
reported higher levels of job-related stress spilling over into their personal lives,
than individuals whose values were compatible with the organization’s values.
Employees whose values are compatible with the organization were more con-
fident that they would remain with the organization for the next five years, as well
as more willing to work longer hours if need be than employees whose values are
not compatible (Posner et al. 1985). Moreover, manager value congruence posi-
tively related with how important internal stakeholders (e.g., colleagues and sub-
ordinates) were perceived. Shared value systems also relate to greater
organizational commitment, job satisfaction, sense of group cohesion, ethical
behavior, and reduced feelings of job and personal stress (Boxx et al. 1991; Posner
et al. 1985). When departments share similar values to those in top management,
there is more information sharing, communication, and trust between the two (Enz
1988).
Focusing on the value congruence between work groups, managers, and sub-
ordinates, value congruence among group members helped incumbents perceive
and interpret information in a similar manner and subsequently, employees felt
more satisfied with their interpersonal interactions (Kemelgor 1982; Ravlin and
Meglino 1987). Meglino et al. (1989) also found that value congruence between
managers and their subordinates yielded greater employee job satisfaction, orga-
nizational commitment, and on-time reporting to work. Value congruence between
managers and subordinates improves interpersonal interactions (Meglino et al.
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1989, 1991). Value dissonance, in contrast, creates problems with motivation,

communication, and commitment (Kemelgor 1982). When people share similar
value systems, they tend to perceive the environment and situations similarly, and
behave in similar fashions. Invariant values lead to people being able to better
predict and understand the behaviors of others, leading to more effectively being
able to coordinate actions (Meglino and Ravlin 1998). Improved communication
and cooperation between managers and subordinates could be the cause of the
increased job satisfaction and commitment that has been demonstrated (Kemelgor
1982; Meglino et al. 1989, 1991).
Typically, members of a work group share similar work value priorities (Jehn
et al. 1997). When individuals do not share the same values as their fellow
employees they might feel out of place and leave the company to find a work setting
more compatible with their needs and values. Reduction of turnover is one reason
why organizations’ and employees’ work values should have some degree of
congruence. This values congruence approach in research on person–environment
fit suggests that the degree of match between individual and organizational values
can impact employee attitudes and behaviors (Kristof-Brown et al. 2005; Schneider
et al. 2000) either positively or negatively.
With positive outcomes at the individual level, one would imagine that value
congruence would have a positive effect on employee performance. For example,
improved interactions make it easier for employees to seek and receive feedback on
their performance, therefore leading us to believe there would be an increase in
performance (Meglino et al. 1989). Further, it could be presumed that more satis-
fied, happier, and committed employees would perform better. However, research
has failed to find that greater value congruence relates to improved performance of
employees (Adkins and Russell 1997; Meglino et al. 1989). Moreover, there are
times when having an organization consisting of employees who all have a good fit
may be detrimental to the organization itself. Value homogeneity within superior–
subordinate work groups does not just lead to positive outcomes, such as perceiving
and understanding information in a similar manner, but it can also lead to possible
negative outcomes (Kemelgor 1982). When decision-making activities are the main
tasks of groups, high value congruence may lead to stifled creativity, risk taking,
and initiative. Cohesion that might develop out of value homogeneity can foster
conformity that leads to defensive avoidance and ultimately groupthink (Kemelgor
1982). Consistently selecting workers with similar value profiles, or fit with the
organizational values might result in a static organization that is resistant to change
(England and Lee 1974; Schneider 1987), even when it is necessary for the viability
of the organization.
Contrary to expectations, Meglino et al. (1989) study indicated that value con-
gruence negatively related with the quality and quantity of production, which was
their measure of performance. They found it to be unrelated to the performance
dimensions of work habits and personal characteristics. Adkins et al. (1996) showed
that interdependence (or individuals working closely with each other) moderates the
relationship between value congruence and performance. Performance was assessed
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by past performance reviews. They speculated that high value congruence leads to
socializing with others with similar values, at the cost of performing required job
tasks. Future research needs to examine the relationship between work values and
job performance in order to determine why the relationship is not positive (Meglino
et al. 1989).
5.2.4 Decision-Making
Decision-making refers to an act of making a judgment after having processed

information that includes a problem in the context of a specific situation (Glazer and
Karpati 2014). Schramm-Nielsen (2001) identified four ways through which deci-
sions are achieved. One approach for arriving at a decision is to employ rationality
or sensible, deliberate reasoning. A second approach is accidental or driven by
intuition and possibly later logically justified. Third, decisions may be influenced by
a person’s emotional state and, thus, potentially irrational. Finally, decision-makers
might be action-oriented and base decisions on past experiences and empirically
based evidence.
The process of decision-making is generally a linear process for people in
Western cultures, whereby a decision-maker perceives and makes sense of a
problem, then searches for, evaluates, and selects a potential solution (Angie et al.
2011). However, even how that linear process occurs can differ across Western
cultures. For example, in France, valuing Descartes’ reasoning model and intel-
lectualism reinforces the act of thinking through all possible alternatives, including
anticipating potential implications certain decisions would have. However, in
Denmark, valuing a pragmatic, functional approach to decision-making, decisions
are made after sampling some data from various sources, but not exhausting all
possible variations of alternative solutions (Schramm-Nielsen 2001). In Germany
rationality augmented by hierarchy influences the decision-making process
(Khairullah and Khairullah 2013).
Decision-making is not universally undertaken as a clear linear process, how-
ever, that takes into consideration the problem and alternatives. A number of other
factors, including the availability of choices, extent of accountability, relationships
among stakeholders (e.g., who is affected by the decision, how important is the
decision on a person’s reputation), recognition of familiar patterns, and how people
construct the narrative (i.e., explain a situation to themselves), are consciously or
unconsciously considered (Angie et al. 2011; Lipshitz et al. 2006; Weber and
Morris 2010). For example, in China decision-making is nearly entirely a formal
chain of command process, with the people at the top making decisions under all
circumstances (Lipshitz et al. 2006; Ralston et al. 1993).
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5.2.5 Negotiation
To engage in negotiations that result in positive outcomes among involved parties,

it is necessary to understand the normative practices preferred by the other party. In
one study of negotiation styles, for example, Chang (2011) found that Philippine–
Chinese negotiation style is more accommodating (i.e., nonassertive; individuals
forgo their own interests for the benefit of others’ needs) and withdrawn (i.e.,
conflict avoidance), whereas Taiwanese negotiation style is more competitive and
aggressive. Knowing these practices helps negotiating partners anticipate their
counterparts’ strategies and adjust their own strategies to increase positive nego-
tiation outcomes (Lee et al. 2013).
The social motives of parties in negotiation affect the outcomes of those nego-
tiations, as highlighted by the results of two research projects (Liu et al. 2012).
Participants were put into dyads comprised of Chinese and American business, law,
and science students. Dyads were formed into both intercultural (one person from
each culture) pairs or intracultural (both from the same culture) pair and asked to
participate in a negotiation simulation. The results of the study suggest that con-
sensus was more likely to exist in intracultural dyads than intercultural dyads and
that social motives moderated this relationship. Specifically, concerns for saving
face, a social motive, elicited greater consensus in intercultural dyads than intra-
cultural dyads, whereas the social motive—a need for closure, hindered consensus
in intercultural dyads compared to intracultural dyads.
In two studies using U.S. and East Asian samples, researchers found that
intercultural negotiations were less successful than intracultural negotiations.
Specifically, Adair et al. (2001) found that negotiations between the U.S. and the
Japanese negotiators were less successful than negotiations among people of the
same nationality. They compared U.S. and Japanese dyads’ negotiation behaviors
and found that Japanese negotiators exchanged information indirectly and used
more influence in intracultural negotiations, which is consistent with Japan being a
high context culture (i.e., communication is indirect and highly linked to rela-
tionship to others, social hierarchy, and behavioral norms). In contrast, the U.S.
negotiators employed a direct style to communicate information, both intracultur-
ally and interculturally, because the USA is a low context culture (i.e., communi-
cation is explicit and clear). In addition, when engaging in intercultural
communication, Japanese negotiators were more likely to adapt their negotiation
style than U.S. negotiators. This might explain, in part, Liu et al. (2010) findings
that communication quality (measured in terms of comprehension/clarity, coordi-
nation in communication, and ease of communication) was lower among Chinese–
U.S. intercultural negotiation groups (of students) than intracultural negotiation
groups.
Additional study of negotiation parties’ size reveals differences across cul-
tures too. Gelfand et al. (2013) found that in the USA, teams outperform solos in
negotiation whereas in Taiwan teams had subpar negotiation outcomes in
comparison to U.S. teams. They surmise that Taiwanese team members’ values
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toward harmony caused Taiwanese team members to be overly concerned with

self-monitoring and maintaining optimal harmony within the group that positive
negotiation outcomes were not attained. Their results were consistent with
Curhan et al. (2008) who found that egalitarian dyads were less efficient in
economic outcomes, but had higher relational capital than hierarchical dyads.
Furthermore, negotiators who come from individualistic cultures, such as the
USA (compared to a more collectivist Japan) saw themselves as engaging in
more fair behaviors than others and were more skeptical of offers made by their
counterparts (Gelfand et al. 2002). However, Indian negotiators were even less
trusting of their counterparts than American negotiators (Gunia et al. 2011).
Culture can also regulate how emotions are communicated during negotiation.
Adam and Shirako (2013) examined how the culture of the individual expressing
emotion influences negotiation outcomes. Because East Asians are generally less
emotionally expressive than Euro-Americans, it was hypothesized that when East
Asian negotiators expressed anger, it would have a stronger value than when
Euro-Americans expressed anger during negotiation. Adam and Shirako’s
hypothesis was supported, as when East Asians were viewed as angry, negotiations
were more cooperative than when American negotiators expressed anger. The
authors suggest the outcome may be because when East Asians expressed anger,
they were viewed as more threatening. Similarly, Liu (2012) found that given the
same persuasive messages by their counterparts, U.S. negotiators expressed less
compassion, were angrier with their counterparts, and attributed more responsibility
to their counterparts for any negative behaviors. U.S. negotiators were also more
competitive than Chinese negotiators and more likely to favor competitive-oriented
goals that emphasized getting the best deal or getting power over their counterparts.
However, when Chinese negotiators were angry, they were more likely to engage in
competitive behavior and U.S. negotiators were more likely to engage in cooper-
ation when they were angry.
In another study of businesspeople who took part in a simulation, Tinsley (2001)
found that people in cultures endorsing individualism, egalitarianism, and poly-
chronicity were more likely to use strategies that provided for their own interests.
More specifically, American and German negotiators were more likely to use
interest strategies than Japanese negotiators. Cultures low in explicit contracting,
hierarchical, and higher in collectivism were more likely to use strategies to gain
power over the other groups. Thus, Japanese negotiators used power strategies more
than German negotiators and German negotiators used more power strategies than
U.S. negotiators. Additionally, German negotiators were more likely to use nega-
tive remarks than the other groups, while U.S. negotiators made more positive
remarks than the other groups.
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5.2.6 Justice
Mainstream literature on organizational justice considers this domain from three

primary perspectives: procedural justice, distributive justice, and interactional jus-
tice. Each of these perspectives is rooted in cognition and the bases upon which one
considers events to be fair. Procedural and distributive justice types are grounded in
equity and equality theories, respectively (Adams 1965; Thibaut and Walker 1975),
whereas interactional justice is grounded in social exchange theory (Cropanzano
et al. 2002). Procedural justice refers to the perceived fairness regarding the process
taken to reach decisions, while distributive justice refers to perceptions of fair
outcomes, not necessarily taking into consideration the process. In contrast, inter-
actional justice has to do with a subordinate’s perception of the fairness in how the
supervisor treats him or her with respect to the procedures used in making decisions
that affect the subordinate (Luo 2006). In other words, interactional justice deter-
minations result from the subordinate’s reflection on the supervisor’s communi-
cation of expectations for obtaining desired outcomes (Bies and Moag 1986). This
third domain may be further divided into two subdomains, interpersonal justice and
informational justice (Greenberg 1993). Interpersonal justice addresses the rela-
tionship (e.g., maintaining honesty, respect, and courtesy) held between the sub-
ordinate and supervisor, whereas informational justice addresses the kind of
information made available (including transparency, open exchange of information,
and feedback) to the worker (Luo 2006).
Societal culture plays a role in the impact of these different aspects of justice. In
a 13-country study, Fischer et al. (2011) found that while Colquitt’s (2001)
four-factor model of justice (including, distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and
informational justice) is invariant across cultures, the four factors are not invariant
in terms of their intercorrelations and reliability coefficients. One reason for these
findings might be rooted in the saliency of different justice factors in a given
national context. For example, according to Luo (2006), in Chinese joint ventures,
interactional justice helps to mitigate the negative consequences that differences in
national culture might have on interorganizational attachment (measured in terms of
social links between executives, between board members, and sharing of knowl-
edge and work routines). However, in a study of 137 Chinese hotel employees
across 42 hotels, Leung et al. (1996) found that interactional justice does not
correlate with job satisfaction, whereas procedural justice more strongly, and
positively, correlated with job satisfaction than did distributive justice. Furthermore,
Shao et al. (2013) note that in North America, distributive (vs. procedural) justice
tends to more strongly positively correlate with job satisfaction. In fact, they found
that the importance of, and implications of, justice are a function of national culture
(as meta-analytically evaluated on the basis of 190,000 employees across 32 distinct
countries and regions). More specifically, relationship-oriented concerns are more
relevant in feminine (vs. masculine) cultures. Concerns over managing uncertainty
are more salient in high (vs. low) uncertainty avoidance cultures. Questions of
morality are more salient among low (vs. high) power distance cultures. Finally,
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interactional (or instrumental) justice more strongly relates to organizational iden-

tification and trust among people in individualistic (vs. collectivistic) cultures.
A similar relationship between interactional justice and individualistic/collectivistic
cultures is also observed in Seger-Guttmann and MacCaromick’s (2014) study of
32,234 staff and managers located in 130 companies across 34 countries. More
specifically, while there is a stronger positive relationship between interactional
justice proactive engagement to resolve customer service failures (i.e., service
recovery), people in individualistic (vs. collectivistic) cultures who, according to
their managers perceive high levels of interactional justice are more likely to engage
in service recovery (also according to their managers). The authors suggest that the
meaning of interactional justice differs across cultures, such that interactional justice
is normative and thus expected of employees in collectivistic cultures, whereas in
individualistic cultures, taking on activities to resolve customer service failures may
be viewed as extra-role behaviors.
There is also evidence that, contrary to Kirkman et al. (2009), who found that
there were no differences between the USA and China in terms of the extent to
which procedural justice mediates the relationship between transformational lead-
ership and organizational citizenship behavior, different cultural attributes will
make some forms of justice more salient than others (Shao et al. 2013). Moreover,
different justice factors more strongly correlate with one another in high power
distant and collectivistic cultures, potentially because there is less value for a refined
distinction between the justice factors (Fischer et al. 2011). For example, Brockner
et al. (2001) found that people in the USA and Germany (low power distance
cultures) compared to people in China, Mexico, and Hong Kong (high power
distance cultures) had lower organizational commitment and satisfaction when they
did not have voice in a decision-making process.
5.2.7 Trust
Trust is fundamental to work in organizations. Work in organizations reflects a

sharing of different types of labor in the pursuit of a common goal, and therefore
means that people’s work activities in organizations are interdependent. To sustain
this interdependence, trust must exist. Basically, trust is the willingness to be
vulnerable or, as stated by Robinson (1996), it reflects “one’s expectations,
assumptions, or beliefs about the likelihood that another’s future actions would be
beneficial, favorable, or at least not detrimental to one’s interest” (p. 576).
In the workplace, trust may occur at three different levels: individual, team, and
organizational (Fulmer and Gelfand 2012). Trust in the organization has impor-
tant implications, as it has been associated with different workplace attitudes and
outcomes, such as OCB (Podsakoff et al. 1990, 2000) and knowledge sharing
(McEvily et al. 2003). Trust both mediates and moderates many other relation-
ships in organizations such as psychological contract type and perceptions of
contract violation (Kraft and Kwantes 2013). teams form a more proximal and
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immediate social unit than do organizations as a whole, and work team trust has
been shown to have a strong relationship with employee attitudes towards the
organization as a whole (Costa 2003). Trust in individuals in organizational
contexts may be explained by social exchange theory, which posits, in part, that
interactions evolve into trusting relationships over time and as the result of
mutually beneficial exchanges (Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005).
Trustworthiness differs from trust in that while trust is the willingness to be
vulnerable, trustworthiness reflects an extent to which the “other” can be trusted.
Researchers have proposed that trustors (people giving trust) enter relationships with
certain expectations, which are influenced by their cultural habits and assumptions,
and whether their partners (trustees) meet or violate these expectations will influence
trustors’ judgments of the trustee’s trustworthiness (Huff and Kelley 2003).
The basis upon which individuals determine whether or not to trust another is, in
part, determined by social culture, as both values and norms of behavior affect
individuals′ expectations of each other and the extent to which the other may be
trustworthy (Doney et al. 1998). Conceptualizations of trustworthiness in business
contexts may further vary across social cultures because people’s communicative
behaviors and their attributions of trustworthiness are often influenced by culturally
based habits and assumptions (Rousseau et al. 1998) as well as across roles, as the
organizational or hierarchical position held by the person being trusted may also
influence people’s expectations of that person (Chou et al. 2008). Further, social
cynicism, or a lack of trust, has been found at a societal level and at an individual
level to vary across cultural contexts (Bond et al. 2004; Leung et al. 2002).
Factors contributing to the measurement of trustworthiness most commonly
studied in the literature are ability, benevolence, and integrity (Schoorman et al.
2007). While these determinants of trustworthiness may be etic, important emic
determinants are also found. Both societal culture and role relationships interact to
affect assessments of trustworthiness. For example, Talaei et al. (2014) found in a
qualitative study that when individuals described a trustworthy family member, the
top three themes for both Americans and Iranians were identical but ordered dif-
ferently in terms of frequency. In the American sample “supportive,” “honest,” and
“keeps secrets” were most frequently endorsed, and “keeps secrets,” “supportive,”
and “honest” were most often cited as important to trustworthiness in the Iranian
sample. They found that the Iranian sample uniquely identified “safe keeping” and
“devout” as important in determining the trustworthiness of another. Roles within
the workplace also result in differing bases for determining trustworthiness (Lin and
Kwantes 2014). In a comparison of trustworthiness descriptors in Canada, the USA,
China, and Taiwan, China emerged as having distinctly different bases for trust-
worthiness in the workplace. Chinese participants were more likely to use intrap-
ersonal descriptors, possibly reflecting the complex in-group/out-group dynamics of
Chinese culture, where one’s loyalty is extended to a tight-knit in-group (e.g., one’s
kin or close friends) but out-group members are viewed as competitors for limited
resources. Consequently, in the competitive arena of a workplace, greater focus and
value is placed on an individual’s performance rather than the maintenance of the
more relational aspects of work.
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5.2.8 Commitment
Organizational commitment is a multidimensional construct, and includes affective,

continuance, and normative commitment (Becker et al. 1996; Finegan 2000; Meyer
and Allen 1991, 1996; Meyer et al. 1993). Affective commitment is defined as an
emotional attachment one feels toward the organization. Normative commitment is
defined as the feelings of obligation one has to remain with an organization.
Continuance commitment is defined as the recognition that because one has
accumulated investments in the organization, it would be too costly to leave, or that
alternatives of a comparable nature are limited (Meyer and Allen 1991).
Each dimension of commitment produces different effects or consequences for
work-related behaviors (Meyer and Allen 1991). For example, affective commit-
ment and normative commitment positively correlate with task performance and
organizational citizenship behavior, whereas continuance commitment correlates
negatively with task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (Allen
and Meyer 1993, 1996; Meyer and Allen 1991; Meyer et al. 1989).
Studies that compare organizational commitment across cultures (e.g., Wasti
2003) have focused on individuals’ attitudes in the workplace and compared atti-
tudes of a group of people across similar professional, occupational, and organi-
zational backgrounds in order to identify how national culture characteristics might
influence any differences. Antecedents and consequences of organizational com-
mitment may differ across cultural contexts. Kwantes (2003) used a sample of
engineers in India and the United States to examine how contextual performance, or
OCB, is impacted by organizational commitment. While some findings were similar
in the two samples, for example, affective commitment related to behaviors char-
acterized by taking individual initiative in both cultural contexts, differences
emerged, as well. Interpersonal helping, or behaviors intended to assist co-workers
with their work, related to affective commitment in the USA only while personal
industry, or working diligently, related to affective commitment in India only. In a
different study, collectivism, as measured at the individual level, predicted nor-
mative commitment in India, but affective commitment in the USA (Kwantes
2009). This differs a bit from Glazer et al.’s (2004) study in which neither con-
servation nor self-transcendence values related to affective commitment or con-
tinuance commitment among nurses in the USA. Moreover, Glazer and colleagues
also found that more of Schwartz’s (1992) higher order human values correlated
with affective commitment than continuance commitment among a sample of
nurses in Hungary, Italy, the UK, and the USA. In particular, openness to change
values negatively correlated with affective commitment across the four countries,
while conservation values positively correlated with affective commitment in
Hungary and Italy, but not the UK and the USA. Clearly the nuances of the
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relationship between culture at the individual level, and various aspects of work
experience play out in different ways for individuals in different national and
professional contexts.
5.3 Work: Outcomes
5.3.1 Contextual Performance
Contextual performance is comprised of helping behaviors toward other employees

or the organization that are not directly related to their chief task function
(Goodman and Svyantek 1999), or in other words, volunteering to carry out actions
that are not formally part of one’s job. Some examples of such actions are helping
others with tasks unrelated to their own work, obeying organizational rules or
procedures, both supporting and endorsing organizational goals or objectives,
putting forth extra effort to successfully complete tasks, cooperating with others,
offering suggestions for improvement and undertaking self-development (Goodman
and Svyantek 1999; Motowidlo and Van Scotter 1994). Contextual performance
has historically, and more commonly, been referred to as organizational citizenship
behavior (OCB). One way to categorize the various types of organizational citi-
zenship behaviors is to separate them into two dimensions, altruism and generalized
compliance (Smith et al. 1983). Altruism refers to personally helping another
individual with a task and generalized compliance refers to helpful behaviors not
specifically directed at an individual (Kim 2006). Advancing Smith et al.’s (1988)
framework, Organ et al. (2006) proposed a five-dimensional framework, consisting
of altruism, courtesy (i.e., helping to prevent work-related conflicts), conscien-
tiousness (i.e., sustaining organizational norms), civic virtue (i.e., constructively
engaging in organizational life), and sportsmanship (i.e., accepting the challenges
in an organization). This five-dimensional framework has been validated outside
North America. For example, Fahr et al. (1997) found that three of the five
dimensions were relevant in Taiwain, including altruism, conscientiousness, and
civic virtue. Lam et al. (1999) validated the five-dimensional framework in Japan,
Australia, and Hong Kong. It was also validated in Dutch-speaking contexts
(Lievens and Anseel 2004). Lam et al.’s (1999) findings echoed those of Farh
et al.’s (1997), concluding that altruism, conscientiousness, and civic virtue are
likely universal (i.e., etic), whereas courtesy and sportsmanship and courtesy tend
to vary as a function of cultural performance norms (i.e., emic).
Societal culture may have an impact on what an employee considers to be in-role
contextual performance versus extra-role contextual performance, however.
Studying the extent to which individuals viewed many work dimensions commonly
measured as organizational citizenship behaviors in Western contexts, Kwantes
et al. (2008) found that cultural beliefs (as measured by the Social Axioms Survey;
Leung et al. 2002) had a large impact on whether these behaviors were considered
[email protected]
in-role or extra-role. For example, volunteerism behaviors were considered more

in-role than extra-role as individual beliefs in reward for application increased.
Conscientious organizational behaviors were considered in-role when beliefs in
reward for application and social flexibility were high, but extra-role when social
cynicism and fate control were high. These effects were found over and above any
effects due to ethnicity, suggesting that the socially transmitted beliefs had a
stronger effect than demographics. Furthermore, Lam et al. (1999) asserted that
employees from more collectivist nations (i.e., Hong Kong and Japan) were more
likely to consider courtesy and sportsmanship as part of their job than Western
participants. Jiao et al. (2013) also concluded that people in Confucian Asian
countries (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and
Japan) were more likely to view OCB as part of their job than people in Anglo
countries (England, Australia, Canada, the USA, Ireland, and New Zealand).
5.3.2 Task Performance
Task performance behaviors are those that support the technical core of the business
operation, while contextual performance behaviors do not necessarily directly support
this core, but support the broader organizational, social, and psychological environ-
ment from which the core functions (Motowidlo and Van Scotter 1994). Goodman
and Svynatek (1999) found that task performance ratings were affected by employ-
ees’ perceptions of the organization’s warmth and competence, such that the more
warmth and competence perceived the higher the task performance ratings.
In a study of international managers taking part in an executive development
program, Ang et al. (2007) examined the extent to which cultural intelligence
affected task performance. The managers worked in pairs to engage in a
problem-solving simulation. In one study, peer partners evaluated task perfor-
mance, whereas in a second study, supervisors evaluated task performance. The
results indicated that metacognitive intelligence (i.e., a higher order cognitive
processing that focuses on knowing when and how to behave, and to regulate one’s
own thought processes) and behavioral intelligence (i.e., ability to take verbal and
nonverbal actions at culturally appropriate times) positively related to task perfor-
mance. Putting forth effort to learn about and work with people from a different
culture (i.e., motivational intelligence) and knowing about normative and conven-
tional interactions and practices (i.e., behavioral intelligence) did not predict task
performance in either study. These findings, albeit preliminary, suggest that the
abilities most relevant for preparing international assignees to fulfill work tasks in a
host national setting are the abilities to know when and how to behave and suspend
culturally biased judgment in a given cultural setting and an ability to behave in a
culturally appropriate manner.
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5.3 Work: Outcomes 85
5.3.3 Work Stress
The research domain of work stress includes the study of (a) stressors (i.e.,
strain-producing events or conditions) or stimuli, (b) cognitive and emotional
evaluation of and coping strategy employed to deal with stressors, (c) psychologi-
cal, behavioral, and physiological strains (i.e., responses to the evaluations of
stressors, such as depression, overeating, or headaches), (d) implications of the
strains (such as decreased performance), and (e) other personal/individual difference
(e.g., self-efficacy, Type A Behavior Pattern) and contextual, situational, and
environmental factors (e.g., job autonomy, job control, climate for trust) that might,
at any point in the conceptual model, influence stressors, coping, and strains. To
simplify here, the research domain will be generally referred to as “stress.”
Research on work stress has a rich and international history. Over the past two
decades there has even been some momentum to study the domain from a
cross-cultural lens. As the literature base increases, evidence is showing that culture
influences the extent to which (1) stressors are perceived, (2) stressors lead to
strains, (3) personality plays a role in job stress, (4) the implementation of and
evaluation of a coping strategy to deal with stressors, as well as the kinds of strains
people experience (Glazer 2008; Glazer and Beehr 2005; Glazer et al. 2004; Höge
et al. 2015; Liu et al. 2015; Morimoto et al. 2013).
Studies on work stress have drawn upon several different theoretical models that
have developed over the past six decades. One is role theory (Katz and Kahn 1978),
which basically addresses the kinds of stressors individuals experience as a result of
the roles they play in the workplace. From this theory, Lazarus and Folkman (1984)
developed the transaction theory of stress, stipulating that properties of the person
and properties of the situation will interact with stressors to either mitigate or
intensify strains. A related theory to the transactional theory is that of person–
environment (P–E) fit (Caplan and Van Harrison 1993; French et al. 1974).
According to P–E fit theory, stress is the result of an incongruence or incompati-
bility between a person’s resources or capabilities and the demands of the envi-
ronment (Edwards et al. 1998). Another is the Job Demands-Resources model
(Karasek and Theorell 1990) that identifies high strain jobs on account of jobs
characterized by high demands and scarce resources to fulfill the demands. More
recently, researchers have focused on the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll
1989), which stipulates that people will work hard to conserve as many precious
psychological or physical resources in order to cope with stressors, and when those
resources are threatened or reduced, a person is more likely to develop strains. Of
these theories, role theory, the transactional theory, and the JD-R theory have
received the most attention in cross-cultural research. The P–E fit theory has also
received some attention, but more in terms of person–organization value incon-
gruence as noted earlier.
According to Glazer and Beehr (2005) the most common stressors studied are
role stressors, including role overload, role conflict, and role ambiguity. Stressors
that emanate from a person’s role (e.g., supervisor, subordinate, colleague, vendor,
[email protected]
client) develop when expectations for behaviors are too demanding, constraining, or
ambiguous. Role overload can refer to excessive demands to complete work within
a given timeframe (also known as quantitative role overload) or it can refer to
demands that exceed a person’s knowledge of how to fulfill the expectations (also
known as qualitative role overload). Role conflict is a stressor that develops when
demands or expectations from others and/or one’s self compete. Finally, role
ambiguity refers to a lack of understanding or lack of clarity regarding the
expectations of a role. These role stressors are also categorized as “generic” because
they can occur in nearly any situation. In contrast, domain-specific stressors might
include demands that pertain specifically to a person’s job or situation that might
not be found in any other situation. For example, demands associated with being a
door-to-door salesperson are not the same as demands associated with being a
programmer sitting in an office cubicle. Glazer and Beehr’s research on generic role
stressors has shown that their implications on nurses’ psychological and behavioral
well-being differ across cultures. For example, role ambiguity had a stronger path to
anxiety for nurses in Italy and the UK than nurses in Hungary and the USA and
whereas role conflict did not relate to anxiety for nurses in Italy, it did for nurses in
the other three countries. Moreover, nurses as a result of anxiety, nurses in the USA
indicated a greater intention to leave than nurses in Italy and Hungary.
In later research of 6509 managers from 24 countries/geopolitical entities, Yang
et al. (2012) found that the effects of stressors on individuals’ well-being and strains
may be, in part, due to culture and/or cultural context. Specifically, people in indi-
vidualistic cultures perceived themselves to have a higher workload than people in
collectivistic cultures despite working the same number of hours. Moreover, for
people in individualistic cultures, the negative relationships of perceived workload
and organizational constraints (i.e., factors in the workplace that make it difficult to
perform one’s job, e.g., poor equipment or inadequate supplies) with job dissatis-
faction and intention to leave the organization were stronger than for people in
collectivistic cultures. The authors conclude that managers in individualistic cultures
are more likely to react more negatively (i.e., lower job satisfaction and greater
turnover intention) to high workload and organizational constraints than managers in
collectivistic cultures because an independent self-construal would necessitate
working independently to reduce barriers to goal fulfillment. It is also possible that in
collectivistic cultures, when workload and organizational constraints present, people
implicitly know they can count on their colleagues to lend a hand (i.e., people see
themselves as interdependent with others), whereas in individualistic cultures, every
person fends for himself or herself. Despite this explanation, Yang et al. also found
that there were no cultural differences in the relationships of workload and organi-
zational constrains with job dissatisfaction and turnover intention.
Yang et al.′s (2012) work suggested that some aspects of culture reinforces social
support mechanisms to aid in buffering people against the negative implications of
stressors on strains. Glazer (2005), in fact, found that emotional social support from
supervisors is more acceptable among people in autonomous (Anglo and Western
European) cultures than conservative (Asian and Eastern European) cultures, whereas
instrumental social support from co-workers was stronger among people in
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5.3 Work: Outcomes 87
conservative than autonomous cultures (see Table 3.1 for definitions). In a later
study, Brough et al. (2013) found that the interaction of supervisor social support and
job demands accounted for significant variance in psychological strain among a
cross-section of Australians, but not among Chinese nor longitudinally among either
cultural group. Moreover, the interaction between job demands and colleague support
did not yield significant variance in work engagement in a cross-section or longitu-
dinal sample of Chinese or Australians.
Thus, while the one cross-sectional result from Australia might extend Glazer’s
findings indicating acceptance of supervisor support in an Anglo country may have
ameliorative effects, the rest of Brough et al.’s findings do not continue to provide
that support. Similarly, Park et al.’s (2012) findings draw off of Glazer’s (2005)
contentions that coworker support is more accepted in Asian than Anglo cultures, as
they concluded that in a culture where interdependence is normative (i.e., Japan),
the situation is ripe for support (due to a stressful event), and the recipient of the
support is open to receiving it, perceived support from spouse/partner and friends
serves to protect a person from subsequent negative chronic health problems.
Similar analyses did not yield the same results for Americans. Research findings on
the ameliorative properties of social support as a resource to cope with stressors
deleterious effects on various outcomes continue to require empirical inquiry and
more studies like the above need to shed light on the impact of culture on those
relationships (Beehr and Glazer 2001).
5.4 Summary
This chapter integrates the literature that taps into the ways people experience work.
Work takes place within a context—typically in an organizational culture.
Organizational culture forms a meso-level variable between the macro societal
culture level and the micro personality level. Ultimately, then the experience of
work is affected by the interplay of these three sets of values, beliefs, and expec-
tations. How an employee experiences her or his work depends on how he or she
makes sense of the work environment and interactions with relevant work stake-
holders. This cognitive effort is otherwise known as sensemaking. Sensemaking
relies on input from societal and organizational cultures, as well as professional
norms, and impacts work-related activities, such as decision-making, negotiating,
attitudes associated with organizational commitment, trust at work, and others.
Even perceptions of work stressors and strains are results of making sense of one’s
experiences within a given situation and context. The next chapter departs from
describing culture, organizations, and work to untangling the complex topics of
cross-cultural competence and cultural intelligence, which are becoming increas-
ingly noticed as essential for ensuring quality human experiences within different
cultures, organizations, and work.
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Chapter 6
Cross-Cultural Competence and Cultural
Intelligence in the Workplace
Cross-cultural competence (3C) and cultural intelligence (CQ) are two interrelated
constructs that assess an individual’s ability to effectively perform in cross-cultural
situations. This ability is becoming increasingly important due to globalization and
the high costs associated with expatriate failures. Globalization, defined as inter-
dependence among countries, has increased the intercultural interactions many
experience daily (Erez and Shokef 2008). These interactions often result in chal-
lenges for people in both domestic and international organizations. Domestically,
immigration has increased the cultural diversity in many organizations across the
globe. Internationally, organizations are realizing that they must do business in all
parts of the world to compete. Therefore, in order for companies to succeed,
managers must be effective in other cultures (Morris et al. 2014). CQ and 3C are at
the heart of what managers need to understand to participate in today’s global
market. This becomes increasingly important when considering the statistics of how
many expatriates leave their assignments early. It is estimated that expatriate failure
costs the U.S. alone at least 2 billion dollars a year (Martinko and Douglas 1999). In
order to avoid failures, expatriates need to develop 3C and CQ.
Competence, in the realm of work, refers to a level of proficiency or expertise
that yields feelings and perceptions of having capabilities essential for successfully
performing a job or fulfilling a duty. An individual can self-rate her or his level of
competence or it can be rated by others. In contrast, a competency is “an underlying
characteristic of an individual which is causally related to effective or superior
performance in a job” (Briscoe and Hall 1999, p. 37).
6.1 Cross-Cultural Competence
While it is universally considered important, researchers have not yet agreed upon a
universal definition of cross-cultural competence perhaps because, as Leung et al.
(2013) suggested, 3C is a “polysemous term with different meanings to different
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96 6 Cross-Cultural Competence and Cultural Intelligence …
groups of researchers” (p. 992). These differences may be seen even within uni-
versity communities. Operationalizing cross-cultural competence is particularly
important for evaluating whether universities stating internationalization as a
strategic goal are achieving that goal, yet it seems that administrators of institutions
of higher education and intercultural scholars define intercultural competence dif-
ferently. Deardorff (2006) employed a Delphi method whereby these experts pro-
vided their opinions on the definition of intercultural competence and how to
measure it with the explicit goal of reaching consensus among the experts.
Administrators considered the term intercultural competence as interchangeable
with the terms “cross-cultural competence, global competence, and global citi-
zenship” (p. 247) and their preferred definition was not as nuanced as the definitions
scholars preferred. Administrators preferred “‘Knowledge of others; knowledge of
self; skills to interpret and relate; skills to discover and/or to interact; valuing
others’ values, beliefs, and behaviors; and relativizing one’s self. Linguistic com-
petence plays a key role’ (Byram 1997, p. 34)” (Deardorff 2006, p. 247). However,
scholars preferred the definition: “‘the ability to communicate effectively and
appropriately in intercultural situations based on one’s intercultural knowledge,
skills, and attitudes’ (Deardorff 2004, p. 194)” (Deardorff 2006, pp. 247–248).
Generally, 3C focuses on cognitive–affective state in which one is perceived to
have proficiency and expertise on cross-cultural issues. Hammer et al. (2003) define
intercultural sensitivity, the affective component of 3C, as the ability to accept,
value, and experience cultural differences. Sensitivity is also a foundational con-
struct for the awareness and skills components of 3C. Heppner et al. (2012) con-
ceptualize 3C, with a focus on national culture, as cross-cultural awareness,
knowledge, and skills. Others focus on knowledge (information or facts), skills (i.e.,
behavioral aptitudes), abilities (e.g., tolerance for ambiguity), and other character-
istics (e.g., curiosity and motivation) required to perform a job as operationalizing
competencies that when a person excels in all areas, s/he is said to have a high level
of 3C (Abbe et al. 2007; Matsumoto and Hwang 2013; McCloskey et al. 2010). In
order to develop 3C, one must first learn about oneself (i.e., self-awareness), fol-
lowed by learning how to relate with others (i.e., intercultural sensitivity), and third
developing an openness to understanding others (Black and Mendenhall 1990).
Thus, 3C is evident through a person’s ability to interact with people in different
cultural environments and situations, as the result of an ability to make sense of
situations that are not inherently (or natively) schematic and to share thoughts about
topics without widening cultural divides (Greene Sands and Greene-Sands 2013).
Drawing on Heppner et al.’s (2012) framework, Wang et al. (2015) organize the
aforementioned concepts into three coherent 3C predictor factors. These factors are
(1) individual/psychological difference factors—personality, attitudes, and coping,
(2) behavioral factors—immersion experiences, and (3) cognitive factors—making
sense of experiences (i.e., sensemaking). Based on the work of Leung et al. (2013),
one must also have developed cultural meta-knowledge, that is, declarative
knowledge about the knowledge people of a certain culture have. Knowing what
people in another culture believe or know helps individuals communicate with
members of another culture. Leung et al. showed that when participants thought that
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6.1 Cross-Cultural Competence 97
others they were communicating with had the same cultural background, partici-
pants were less explicit with their navigation instructions, relying more on land-
marks, whereas participants who thought others were from a different culture, the
landmarks would not even be mentioned.
A high level 3C is difficult to find among many international assignees. Some
have individual dispositions that make them prone to adapting to new situations
with ease, whereas for others several actual intercultural experiences and training
would be required to have even some competencies, let alone competence. This
assertion begs the question: can 3C be trained? According to Wilson et al. (2013)
both personality (as measured by the Big 5: openness, conscientious, extraversion,
agreeableness, and neuroticism) and situational factors (e.g., prior experience
abroad, language proficiency, cultural distance) influence whether a person might
develop a high level of 3C. Thus, given the right circumstances, a motivated person
may be able to develop some level of 3C, but without this motivation to learn, 3C
cannot develop. The implications on organizational selection and training are rather
straightforward. When selecting a person for an international assignment, be sure to
select a person who already has 3C or a person who is highly motivated to learn,
open and flexible to new environments, and thoughtful about considering other
cultural norms.
6.2 Cultural Intelligence
CQ is defined as “global people skills” or the ability to behave appropriately and

effectively in culturally different situations (Thomas 2006). While the conceptual
definition is fairly well agreed upon, a model of the construct is not. Earley and Ang
(2003) incorporated four factors to operationalize CQ, including cognitive intelli-
gence, metacognitive intelligence, motivational intelligence, and behavioral intel-
ligence. Cognitive intelligence refers to declarative knowledge of a particular
culture, such as knowing nonverbal communication rules. Motivational intelligence
focuses on the desire and effort put forth to learn and understand observations and
experiences in unfamiliar sociocultural contexts, such as reading books to learn
more information about normative workplace relationships between supervisors and
subordinates. Metacognitive intelligence refers to knowing how to gain knowledge
of the culture and understand how to apply it to the relevant sociocultural context.
Behavioral intelligence refers to demonstrable actions in a given sociocultural
context, such as bowing more steeply than a superior in Japan.
In contrast, Thomas (2006) operationalizes CQ with three factors, including
knowledge, mindfulness, and behaviors. Thomas’s operationalization, similar to
others’ operationalization of 3C (above), considers not only declarative and pro-
cedural knowledge under the knowledge component, but also sensemaking and
motivation. Motivation falls under knowledge, because it is a cognitive factor
reflecting what a person wants or desires. Earley and Ang (2003), as stated above,
distinguish between cognitive intelligence and motivational intelligence, whereby
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cognitive intelligence has to do with what people know and motivational intelli-
gence reflects an individual difference describing a person’s determination to
acclimate to a different socio-cultural environment. Mindfulness, according to
Thomas, refers to an astute awareness of one’s present environment and experi-
ences, and it links knowledge with behavior. Because mindfulness “regulates
cognition” (Thomas 2006, p. 86), it is considered a metacognitive strategy that
enables individuals to attend to one’s own experiences, to others’ experiences, and
to when and how to interact with the environment. Thus, it relates to Earley and
Ang’s metacognitive intelligence factor. Finally, the behavior component refers to
skills individuals have to be able to demonstrate competence in a cultural envi-
ronment, as well as ability to know when not to behave in certain ways. It resembles
Earley and Ang’s behavioral intelligence component, though while Earley and Ang
might consider a deep bow to a Japanese superior as indicative of behavioral
intelligence, Thomas acknowledges that just because someone knows to and can
bow, it does not mean s/he should bow.
According to Wang et al. (2015), 3C factors addressed above predict CQ. In a
four-point longitudinal study (from pre-departure to 3 months post-arrival), they
found that connectedness with the host culture, anxiety levels, coping through
family support, and perceived language discrimination predicted international stu-
dents’ scores on CQ at 3 months post-arrival. More specifically, Chinese interna-
tional students studying in the USA, who started off with a high level of CQ, but
also perceived language discrimination (e.g., opinions not taken seriously because
of language ability) and high levels of anxiety, had a significant decline in their CQ.
Nonetheless, high scores on CQ positively related to life satisfaction. Thus, indi-
viduals who are open to new experiences, sociable and have good communication
skills are likely to “find cultural intelligence easiest to acquire” (Thomas and Inkson
2008, p. 23). Although individual differences in values, personality, and predis-
positions may not be necessary to develop CQ or 3C, if present, certain personality
factors can speed up (or enable) its development (Greene Sands and Greene-Sands
2013; Thomas and Inkson 2008). Employing Earley and Ang’s (2003) cultural
intelligence model, Ang et al. (2006) empirically examined the relationship between
the five-factor model of personality and found that openness to experience posi-
tively related to all four intelligence components (cognitive, metacognitive, moti-
vational, and behavioral), and extraversion positively related to all intelligence
components, but metacognitive intelligence. Thus, personality characteristics are
sufficient but not necessary predictors of the ability to develop 3C or CQ.
With mindfulness, one becomes aware of one’s own attributions, and, more
importantly, the attributions that others will be made of one’s behavior. For
example, Camiah and Hollinshead (2003), in a study of attributions Western
expatriates made of their Russian colleagues and vice versa, found that Russians
make less of a distinction between personal and professional life, and this results in
Russians divulging personal information to their coworkers. More specifically,
American expatriates perceived the Russians as being too open and unprofessional,
and the authors asserted that the Russians experienced the rebuffing as a sign that
Americans needed to “lighten up.” The greatest source of problems between
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6.2 Cultural Intelligence 99
individuals in the two cultures was the difference in how unequal pay is perceived.
Russians perceived large differences in pay negatively, whereas Americans
expected it. Camiah and Hollinshead’s suggestion to surmount these problems
based on differing attributions assumed that adjustment will come easiest to those
who focus on relationship building. A relationship allows open exchange of attri-
butions that can be used both as a building block for future interactions and
abstracted to other experiences.
6.3 Summary
Differentiating between cross-cultural competence and cultural intelligence is

clearly a challenge. Some studies suggest that factors related to 3C are predictive of
CQ, but several of the measures of the multi-faceted 3C are also predictors of the
multi-faceted CQ. Research comparing these different measures and delineating
more clearly their unique properties are needed, else the concepts will become little
more than interchangeable terms, as they are currently in some, but not all, studies.
Generally, researchers have identified that cross-culturally competent individuals
and culturally intelligent individuals will have good overall health and well-being
(Wang et al. 2015), personal adjustment, good interpersonal adjustment, and
effectively perform tasks (Deardorff 2006; Thomas and Fitzsimmons 2008). In
order to successfully develop 3C or CQ one must have cross-cultural experiences
that include interpersonal interactions, be aware of their experiences, demonstrate
interest in their experiences, make sense of their experiences, and process their
growth through the experiences. A differentiating factor between 3C and CQ is that
for 3C, sensitivity is the link between knowledge and behavior, whereas for CQ,
metacognition and mindfulness is the link between cognitive intelligence and
behavioral intelligence—it focuses on knowing when and how to act and when to
suspend judgment. However, even the concepts of sensitivity and mindfulness
overlap in that both focus on awareness and consideration of others and the situ-
ation in which one is embedded. In short, perhaps the most distinguishing aspect of
3C and CQ is the researcher’s orientation, social/organizational psychology (dis-
tinguishing between knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics) or
cognitive/behavioral psychology (with a focus on cognitive and motivational,
metacognitive/mindful, and behavioral intelligence).
The implication of these findings is that some aspects of 3C or CQ can be
learned in the classroom, some through experiences, and some are simply a matter
of a person’s desire. If there is desire to enjoy effective intercultural interactions, a
person’s motivational intelligence or disposition toward openness to new experi-
ences would lead someone to learning more about other cultures and trying new
practices, foods, and activities. The more experiences people have and the more
people think about the experiences, the more they become cross-culturally com-
petent and culturally intelligent.
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References
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Chapter 7
Conclusions
Culture pervades all of human existence, from shaping views of how the world
works to shaping expectations of whom one will meet over the course of the day to
shaping how we interact with others to shaping our breakfast choices. It is subtle, as
it influences the parameters of human thinking with respect to possibilities, what is
“normal” and “abnormal,” as well as what is important or not. Culture is rarely
explicitly examined in everyday life but rather is something that is typically taken
for granted. The phenomenon of “culture shock” when exposed to different ways of
thinking or behaving provides a good example of this, as the shock follows from a
direct challenge to assumptions that “this is how the world works” when other
cultural systems do things differently and the realization that grand assumptions
about how the world works actually reflect a very particularistic perspective and
understanding.
Many disciplines have developed their own methods to understanding culture
and its outcomes, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. A scientific
approach to understanding culture and its effects in and on society, employees, and
in organizations, however, requires that culture be operationalized, which is a
difficult task for a construct that is so pervasive and subtle. The construct has been
operationalized at the societal level, the intra-individual level, and at every level in
between. As emphasized in this monograph, the purposes for which culture is
addressed, as well as the antecedents and consequences of culture that are of interest
for any project, require clarity in conceptualization and precision in measurement,
as the criteria used to measure the antecedents and consequences are directly linked
to how culture is operationalized, measured, and ultimately used in research models
and applications for understanding human behavior.
This series acknowledges that culture affects different levels of human existence.
At its deepest level, culture contributes toward shaping basic human values as well
as being shaped by those same values. These values influence people’s styles of
engaging with others, shape how people evaluate the importance of or meaning of
events, and the kinds of seemingly automated emotions and cognitions in response
to different events. At the meso level, beliefs guide understandings of relationships
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104 7 Conclusions
between entities, including people teams, groups, and organizations. Finally, at a

more surface level culture drives norms for behaviors and thus it guides how people
engage in work.
Culture may be operationalized as values, as beliefs, as behaviors, but ultimately
it is the harmonized internal and/or external manifestations of these values, beliefs,
and behaviors that create the culture of a group, and the extent to which they are
shared that determines the strength of that culture. Note, however, that there is
never complete agreement around values, norms or behaviors; cultures are not
homogenous and their boundaries are permeable.
While it is easy to conceptualize culture as a group-level phenomenon, based on
the fact that culture represents shared cognitions, beliefs, values, and behaviors to
some extent, the boundaries of the group that a particular culture refers to are
important to consider carefully. At the social group level, that means careful
thought about the degree to which these shared understandings and norms exist. For
example, if one is examining behavioral norms within a social group, using political
and government boundaries as the delineators between groups may make sense. To
some extent, legislation and enforcement of behaviors both establish and reflect
social norms. An individual in the Netherlands, for example, lives in a society
where the prescribed behaviors differ from the types and numbers of behaviors to
which an individual in China adapts. Different societal cultures accept different
behaviors and the resulting legislation and enforcement of that legislation both
reflects and reinforces expectations around how strictly each society feels certain
behaviors should be controlled. In such a case, using geopolitical boundaries to
establish the cultural groups being compared would make sense. In a different
project, the cultural focus may be on values, in which case using individuals with
different religious beliefs, such as Hindus, Muslims, and Christians in the same
geopolitical state of India may make sense. And yet another study may compare a
single organization’s culture in different countries or examine different organiza-
tional cultures within a single country, or even departmental/unit level cultures
within a single organization. In other words, as researchers and as consumers of
research around culture, it is important to give careful consideration to the
assumptions about the cultural “groups” being examined or compared in order to
have meaningful comparisons and conclusions.
As with the boundaries of culture, the “fault lines” that divide one culture from
another must be carefully attended to, and in research, a thoughtful decision about
which fault lines are the important ones to the issue being studied is critical. For
example, in Canada the difference between Francophone and Anglophone sub-
cultures may, in some situations, be the most salient fault line, requiring researchers
to engage with cultural differences at that level. The GLOBE project did this, for
example, when they used both Francophone and Anglophone respondents in
Canada and Swahili and English respondents in South Africa in their project (House
et al. 2001). Likewise, occupational culture fault lines within organizations may be
what is most salient. For example, within a pharmaceutical company, it would make
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7 Conclusions 105
sense to examine tactical laboratory research in an R&D department, but not cre-
ativity, which may be more salient in marketing.
Similarly, with businesses becoming increasingly global, supply/purchase rela-
tionships existing across national boundaries, and increasing diversity in the
workplace, the overlapping of various layers of culture makes a critical evaluation
and explication of the levels of analysis and the specific antecedents and/or con-
sequences of culture at those levels important to determine and explicitly
acknowledge. Employees who grew up in different societal contexts yet who work
in the same organizational context represent an example of where societal and
organizational cultures are potential confounds.
As critical as culture is to so many aspects of organizations and work, it is also
important to pay attention to when culture matters and when it may not matter.
When tasks are so prescribed and processes are so rigid that little to no variation can
be accepted, culture may have little impact on how an employee carries out those
duties. When work is scarce, employees may be willing to go outside their own
cultural norms of interaction and work in an organizational culture that does not
“fit” simply in order to earn a livelihood. Some organizations may have a prestige
factor that attracts regardless of cultural “fit.” Kwantes et al. (2004) for example,
found that employees of a multinational organization in Hong Kong indicated that
they felt that had to change the way that they normally thought and behaved when
they went to work, yet reported high levels of satisfaction with their organization.
Culture is a pervasive, but often subtle, influence on individuals’ attitudes and
behaviors. It is therefore important to go beyond examining culture as merely a
main effect on organizations and work. Frequently it is the interaction between
culture and other variables that offer the best explanation for how and why culture
impacts a given outcome rather than a direct effect. The match or fit between
various levels of cultures also serve as antecedents for employee outcomes. For
example, Glazer et al. (2004), in a five-country study, suggested that the extent to
which nurses’ locus of control match their country’s reinforcement of internal or
external locus of control might explain, in part, nurses’ job stress. However, there is
little literature that looks at the fit between national culture and individual, or
national culture and organizational culture. Studies on person–organization fit (e.g.,
Kristof 1996; Kristof-Brown et al. 2005), without including culture, are much more
prevalent. For example, in a study predicting actual turnover among Belgian
nursing recruits, Vandenberghe (1999) demonstrated that the fit between nursing
recruits’ personal values and their hospital’s values predicted retention in nurses’
early career. Furthermore, a match between the organizational culture in which an
employee believes s/he functions best and the actual organization’s culture posi-
tively relates to job satisfaction and negatively relates to stress over and above any
direct effects of organizational culture alone (Arbour et al. 2014), and there is some
evidence that the strength of the effect of fit may vary across national contexts
(Kwantes et al. 2007).
Culture, Organization, and Work therefore invites authors and readers alike to
take a broad view of culture, its many levels, its interactions, its antecedents, and its
consequences. The various issues in this series will focus on aspects of culture that
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106 7 Conclusions
are both wide in scope and specific. They will focus on antecedents, consequences,
and concomitants of culture. Each issue will provide a stand-alone examination of
culture-related phenomenon, but the overarching theme of culture, and its role in
organizations and in work will serve as a reminder of the centrality of cultural
values, norms, and beliefs in the life of employees.
References
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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN PSYCHOLOGY

CULTURE, ORGANIZATIONS, AND WORK

Culture, Organizations, and Work

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13335

ISSN 2192-8363 ISSN 2192-8371 (electronic)

© The Author(s) 2017

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

We thank Michael Harris Bond, Thomas Mitchell, Malgorzata W. Kozusznik, and

3.11 A Micro View of Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

6 Cross-Cultural Competence and Cultural Intelligence

© The Author(s) 2017 1

Fig. 1.1 A model of the

The organization represents a meso-level construct and the immediate context in

In psychology, researchers attempt to discover both universal (etic) and

Anthropology, employing a phenomenological approach to studying culture,

Not surprisingly, business disciplines focus on culture mainly at the organizational

organization’s creation changes when there are major changes to environmental

Anderson, J. (2010). Understanding cultural geography. New York, NY: Routledge.

© The Author(s) 2017 13

whole package is referred to as cultural syndromes; Triandis 1996). In other words,

3.1 A Macro View of Culture

provide a comprehensive review of different ways in which culture is quantiﬁed as

3.2 Approaching Culture

may be explained against a comprehensive understanding of a social system’s

3.3 Creating Frameworks to Study Culture: The

increased. More speciﬁcally, Taiwanese team members refrained from being

3.4 Etic Versus Emic

Conceptualization and operationalization of culture is essential to understanding the

3.5 Methodological and Measurement Challenges

focused on self-promotion and selﬁshness. A career woman would unlikely choose

3.6 Identifying Cultural Signatures: Surface Probes

3.7 Geographical Context as Culture

3.8 Societal Cultures

Drawing from the anthropological and sociological approach, some research

3.9 Diverse/Heterogeneous Cultures

3.10 Characterizing Culture: Cultural Values and Beliefs

3.10.1 Culture as Values

Table 3.1 Cultural elements that characterize cultures

Table 3.1 (continued)

3.10.2 Culture as Beliefs

3.10.3 Culture as Values and Beliefs

3.10.4 Other Cultural Characteristics

3.11 A Micro View of Culture

from an interdependent, “we,” or an independent, “I,” perspective. Both studies

Today, researchers are addressing naïve psychology from a more mature

procedural knowledge that is cued in context” (Oyserman and Sorensen 2009,

3.12 Culture as Presented Through Social Relationships

Culture’s influence on social interactions may be best characterized in Fiske’s (1992)

When engaging in strategic understanding of a new culture, therefore, factors

3.13 Summary: Operationalizing Culture for This Brief

For this monograph, culture is viewed as multifaceted and multidimensional

Berry, J. W. (1989). Imposed etics—emics—derived etics: The operationalization of a compelling

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. Hillsdale, NJ: Erbaum.

© The Author(s) 2017 45

Social institutionalism provides a particularly interesting approach to under-

Neoinstitutional researchers have suggested that this perspective may help

4.1 Voluntary Versus Involuntary Membership

Whether a person is part of a culture on a voluntary or an involuntary basis has real

4.2 Organizational Cultures