Perceived effectiveness of influence tactics in the united states and china

Abstract

A cross-cultural study was conducted with managers from the United States and China to investigate differences in influence behavior. Managers rated the effectiveness of different influence tactics for several representative situations. Significant differences were found between American and Chinese managers in a large, multinational company with facilities in both countries. The results were replicated for a second sample consisting of several organizations in each country. Rational persuasion and exchange were rated as more effective by American managers than by Chinese managers. Coalition tactics, upward appeals, and gifts were rated more effective by Chinese managers than by American managers. The influence tactics accurately predicted nationality for 94% of the respondents.

Ethical preferences for influencing superiors: A 41-society study

“…The Cronbachs for the individual societies are presented in Table 2. These scale reliabilities are comparable to those obtained in other cross-cultural studies of influence tactics (Fu & Yukl, 2000;Ralston, Terpstra, Cunniff, & Gustafson, 1995). Participants' scores for the three influence dimension scales were calculated by averaging the relevant items.…”

“…However, previous crosscultural research findings have been mixed. Some research has shown that managers' rated effectiveness of relationship-oriented subordinate influence tactics is higher in collectivistic cultures (Fu et al, 2004;Fu & Yukl, 2000), whereas other research has shown that ''soft,'' relationship-oriented subordinate influences are more acceptable in individualistic cultures (Kennedy, Fu, & Yukl, 2003;Ralston, Vollmer, Srinvasan, Nicholson, Tang, & Wan, 2001). Further, while unethical behavior and corruption are relatively less prevalent in individualistic cultures, the underlying explanation may be that political institutions in these countries have implemented more highly developed systems of formal laws needed to guard against highly individualistic actions that harm societal and organizational interests (Davis & Ruhe, 2003).…”

A Study of Anglo Expatriate Managers’ Learning, Knowledge Acquisition, and Adjustment in Multinational Companies in China

“…Interests in studying management in non-Anglo cultures has increased rapidly in recent decades (Dorfman, Javidan, Hanges, Dastmalchian, & House, 2012) and the most common research approach has been to explain cross-cultural differences in terms of differences in cultural values. Cultural values are likely to be internalised by managers who grow up in a particular culture and these values will influence their behaviour in ways that may not be conscious (Fu & Yukl, 2000). Cultural norms specify acceptable forms of behaviour and may be formalised as social laws limiting the use of power.…”

The Research on Upward Influence Tactics in Organization under the Chinese Cultural Background

“…Based on collecting and summarizing relevant literature of the existing influence strategy and upward influence tactics, referencing the research questionnaire established and confirmed with better effect, analyzing the dimension and topic of these influence tactics, and combining with Chinese * Corresponding author culture which focus on organization relationship as well as heavy human feelings characteristics, this article mainly according to Sun [8] compiled by scale, Fu [9] compiled by the scale and Ralston compiled by SUI scale, selects 32 items of the above literatures to form the questionnaire about the structure of the upward influence tactics in this paper.…”