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This article reviews the areas of comparative and cross-cultural management and discusses the impact of cultural diversity on international organizational behavior. With the growing shift of business from the Atlantic to the Pacific Basin, East-West cultural differences are becoming increasingly significant. Research in developmental psychology, sociology, and anthropology shows that there are major differences among the cognitive processes of people from different cultures. In the era of the global corporation, cultural diversity has to be recognized, understood, and appropriately used in organizations. It is suggested that cross-cultural management would greatly benefitfrom comparative studies considering the impact of the cognitive aspects of culture on managerial practice.

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Earlier reviews of the state of comparative management theory are considered and summarized and lead to the following conclusions: the literature suffers from an excess of simple empirical reportage; theoretical development is weak in the middle ground and at higher levels; there is a bias away from ethnographic work; perspectives tend to be narrow and partial. Some progress is visible as a result of the unifying work of Hofstede but its contribution also entails new avenues of enquiry about the determinants and consequences of culture. Some middle-range theory building is now occurring in specific fields such as expatriation, leadership, and HRM techniques, but it remains tentative. Dilemmas stemming from altern ative frameworks of meaning and complex causation pose severe epistemological challenges and require new approaches to comparison. The economics-based positivist paradigm is seriously inadequate for such challenges, but dangerously imperialist. A new, more theoretically sophisticated, approach is advocated and outlined as a route for progress.

BY lntrodw fion MODELS used in the cross-cultural study of organizations, and of managerial styles and processes, have tended to ignore the aspect of culture which is covered by the term 'cognition'. Schollhammer's survey of approaches to comparative management indicated a tendency for research to have concentrated on socio-economic variables, or on managerial attitudes.' Weinshall's recently edited collection of works on the linkage of culture and management, for all its strengths, contains no reference to cognition.2 Robert's survey of cross-cultural management research indicated the relevance of work on meanings, communication, and perception, but did not refer to any work dealing with cognition per Je.3 In the psychological literature dealing with cognition, the problem of cultural modification of the cognitive processes has still not been dealt with adequately and Cole and Scribner have noted thatAs yet there is no general theory or conceptual framework in psychology that would generate specific hypotheses about how culturally patterned experiences influence the development of cognitive processes in the individual?At the same time, there is general agreement about the importance of the subjective environment for influencing organizational behaviour and on the need for the analysis of organizations eventually to come to terms with its subject matter at the individual level of analysis. Silverman> in arguing that the special role of the sociologist is to understand the subjective logic of social situations, has pointed to five issues of continuing importance for research in comparative management, namely:

This study of managerial ideology focuses on the question of legitimacy and attempts to reconstruct the way in which the role of the chief executive is perceived in the context of Overseas Chinese economic cultures. The location of the study is Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore and those studied were 72 chief executives in Chinese business organizations. Three determinants of present-day beliefs are traced to the socio-historical legacy of China, and these are identified as paternalism personalism and a defensiveness derived from insecurity. The workings of their influence are traced via perceptions of the self. of relationships, of organization, and of society at large, to explain how executives rationalize their behaviour and their roles.