The impact of societal cultural values and individual social beliefs on the perceived effectiveness of managerial influence strategies: a meso approach

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a 12-nation study designed to test empirically the relationships between societal cultural values, individual social beliefs, and the perceived effectiveness of different influence strategies. The relationships between three types of broad influence strategy (persuasive, assertive, and relationship based) and four dimensions of individual beliefs (cynicism, fate control, reward for application, and religiosity) were examined. Three of Project GLOBE's cultural values (in-group collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and future orientation) were selected to investigate their direct effects on the rated effectiveness of influence strategies, and their possible interaction with dimensions of individual beliefs. Results showed that different dimensions of individual social beliefs predict the perceived effectiveness of the three types of influence strategy, and that cultural values can moderate the strength of the relationship between these dimensions of individual social beliefs and the perceived effectiveness of influence strategies.

Ethical preferences for influencing superiors: A 41-society study

“…Given supporting empirical evidence (Fu et al, 2004;Lu, Rose, & Blodgett, 1999), we propose that self-indulgent ethics should be perceived as more ethical in individualistic cultures than in collectivistic cultures.…”

“…Multilevel modeling has been identified as appropriate for investigations involving individual and societal level data (e.g., Fu et al, 2004;Hui, Au, & Fock, 2004;Parboteeah & Cullen, 2003). Hence we used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to test our hypotheses (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002).…”

“…For all 41 societies, organizationally beneficial behavior was viewed as more ethical than selfindulgent behavior, with destructive behavior being viewed as least ethical. These results suggest a relatively high degree of global convergence on the ethicality of the different types/levels of subordinate influence ethics (Egri et al, 2000;Fu et al, 2004;Kennedy et al, 2003;Ralston et al, 1994Ralston et al, , 2001). While we found this commonly agreed upon influence ethics hierarchy, we also found macrolevel and micro-level factors contributing significantly to our understanding of the ethicality of organizationally beneficial, self-indulgent and destructive subordinate influence ethics.…”

“…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).…”

Ranking International Business Institutions and Faculty Members Using Research Publication as the Measure

“…the maximum number of authors for any single article was 49 (Ralston et al 2009), followed by Waldman et al (2006), which had 41 authors. hofstede et al (2002) was co-authored by 17 authors, and Fu et al (2004) had 15 authors. For each article, we reviewed the names of contributing faculty members and their institutional affiliation(s).…”