Abstract
Cross-cultural management researchers haveobserved that when presented with similarethical dilemmas and problems, managers raisedin different cultural environments exhibitdivergence in their perceptions,interpretations, and eventual solutions. Whydoes this happen? Our framework attempts tointegrate theoretical concepts from theinternational management and organizationalbehavior literature to explain variances inmanagerial information search patterns andattribution processing arising due to nationalcultural differences.
Based on the work of Trompenaars,Hampden-Turner, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, wepropose that managers belong to one of twotypes of national cultures. The firstemphasizes Universalism, Specificity, andDominance over nature (USD) while the secondassigns importance to Particularism,Diffuseness, and Subjugation (PDS). When facedwith a situation/dilemma, which may have anethical component, USD and PDS managers differwhen it comes to:
The weighting, importance and amount of emphasis placed on the three types of information (Consistency, Consensus, and Distinctiveness) used to make attributions.
A tendency to focus heavily on those information types, or alternately, to search for external environmental factors.
Thus, the above process guides the manager's attribution process to assign causality of an event to either the primary actor(s) involved OR to factors in the external environment.
Managers in different cultures may examine asituation, and through the attribution process,arrive at completely different conclusionsregarding whether an action is unethical, orwhether ethics even have a role. Our frameworkwill enable managers to understand the impactof cultural differences in dealing with ethicalsituations involving multiple cultures.
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Gopalan, S., Thomson, N. National Cultures, Information Search Behaviors and the Attribution Process of Cross-National Managers: A Conceptual Framework. Teaching Business Ethics 7, 313–328 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025029421972
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025029421972