role in a host country (i.e., an expatriate manager), cultural similarities and ... domain of leadership has been proposed by several prominent researchers.
CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON OF LEADERSHIP PROTOTYPES
Charlotte R. Gerstner* David V. Day Pennsylvania State University
Despite the recognized importance of leadership in organizational contexts, relatively few studies have examined the concept of leadership in various cultures. To better understand cross-cultural leadership, this study compares leadership prototypes across several countries using an attribute-rating task. Subjects (N = 142) from eight countries rated a list of 59 attributes according to how well each lit their prototype of a business leader. Results indicate significant differences among the ratings provided by subjects from different countries of traits identified as high, medium, and low in prototypicality. Subsequent multidimensional scaling aggregated across trait ratings yielded a three-dimensional configuration of countries. The relative distances between countries are discussed with respect to Hofstede’s (1980) dimensions of national culture. Potential implications for selection and training of expatriate managers are discussed.
As more American companies expand beyond national borders, the universality of commonly accepted organizational principles is emerging as an area of both theoretical and practical interest. Given that most international assignments involve a managerial role in a host country (i.e., an expatriate manager), cultural similarities and differences in the area of leadership are of particular concern. The idea of cross-cultural diversity in the general domain of leadership has been proposed by several prominent researchers (e.g., Bass, 1990; Haire, Ghiselli, & Porter, 1966; Hofstede, 1976, 1980). One important approach to leadership in a cross-cultural context concerns the role of followers’ perceptual processes in identifying leaders (e.g., O’Connell, Lord, & O’Connell, 1991). Lord and Maher (1991) have argued that leadership perceptions are an important consideration because one must first be perceived as a leader to be allowed the necessary * Address all correspondence Building,
Pennsylvania
to: Charlotte R. Gerstner, Department of Psychology, State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802-3104.
Leadership Quarterly, 5(2), 121-134. Copyright @ 1994 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 1048-9843
429 Bruce V. Moore
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discretion and influence to perform effectively. Consistent with this argument, Shaw (1990) noted that it is critical for an expatriate manager to be perceived as a leader in a host country to gain the requisite power and respect to be effective. Similarly, Hofstede (1993) stated that “managers derive their raison d’etre from the people managed: culturally, they are the followers of the people they lead, and their effectiveness depends on the latter” (p. 93). Clearly, subordinates’ perceptions of the leader can have a substantial impact on the outcomes of the leadership process. To better understand the interplay between perceptions and leadership, a general overview of the leadership perception literature-and categorization theory in particular-is presented as a framework for understanding the potential contribution of our research to cross-cultural management. Leadership Perceptions
Research by Lord and his colleagues (e.g., Lord, De Vader, & Alliger, 1986; Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984; Lord, Foti, & Phillips, 1982; Lord & Maher, 1990, 1991) has highlighted the central role of followers’ perceptual processes in identifying leaders. Perceiving someone as a leader is hypothesized to involve a catego~zation process in which a target person is matched against an abstract prototype stored in memory. The process of leader perception is consistent with prominent research on person perception in adopting a prototype-based perspective of categorization (e.g., Cantor & Mischel, 1979). According to categorization theory, a prototype is defined as a collection of characteristic traits or attributes. Furthermore, category boundaries are not clear and distinct; instead, they are somewhat ambiguous and overIapping, resulting in the term “fuzzy set” to describe most categories (Cantor & Mischel, p. 9). This implies that category members can vary in degree of prototypicality, allowing for ambiguous borderline cases. Within this prototype-based approach to categorization, a three-level vertical hierarchy for classifying objects as well as persons has been proposed (Cantor & Mischel, 1979; Rosch, 1978). At the most inclusive level are the superordinate categories whose members share few common attributes. The next level consists of middle-level or basic categories that are less inclusive, but richer in detail. Finally, the lowest, subordinate categories contain the most specific information. However, the nature of subordinate categories is less well-known than the others, possibly reflecting individual differences in experience (Lord et al., 1982). Cantor and Mischel argue that basic-level categories tend to be used in person perception because they strike the best balance between distinct, non-overlapping superordinate categories and rich, vivid subordinate categories. Subsequent research has shown that, as expected, people tend to use basic level categories to organize perceptions (e.g., Cantor, French, Smith, & Mezzich, 1980; Jackson & Dutton, 1988). Consistent with the hierarchical structure proposed by categorization theory, the general category of leader/nonleader is thought to constitute the superordinate or most inclusive level (Lord et al., 1984). At the basic level are thought to be different types of leaders (e.g., business, education, finance, labor, mass media, military, minority, political, religious, and sports). Finally, specific exemplars or more fine-gained distinctions (e.g., liberal versus conservative) may be found at the subordinate level.
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Given the lack of knowledge pertaining to the subordinate level and the optimal characteristics of the basic level, Lord’s research has focused on superordinate and basiclevel leadership categories. Results have supported the general proposition that observers use catego~zation processes when forming leadership perceptions (e.g., Cronshaw & Lord, 1987; Lord et al., 1984; Phillips, 1984). In particular, findings are consistent with the proposition that observers match someone against an abstract cognitive prototype, consisting of the most characteristic leader attributes. The better the fit between a perceived individual and a prototype stored in memory, the more likely that he or she will be seen as a leader. One of the difficulties with this process in a cross-cultural context is that perception is not solely an innate, physiological function of sensory systems. Instead, it is a subjective process reflecting the self, including its cultural background (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Hofstede (1976) has proposed, for example, that the more similar two people are in terms of nationality, the more likely they are to perceive their social environment similarly. It follows that the more specific process of perceiving someone as a leader may also be greatly influenced by culture. One potential source of variance across cultures in terms of leadership perceptions is the content of preexisting leader prototypes (Shaw, 1990). The most characteristic traits of a leader in one culture may be very different from prototypical traits in another culture. Therefore, the leader prototype stored in the memories of host-country subordinates may be inconsistent with that of an expatriate manager. In other words, the leader and subordinate may not share similar “mental maps” (Everett & Stening, 1987, p. 446) with respect to leadership. Consequently, subordinates may not readily perceive the expatriate to be a leader; however, a manager might be unaware of this mismatch. Although research has yet to empirically substantiate this notion of distinctive prototypes, Lord et al. (1986) suggest that prototypes are fairly consistent within a culture, which implies that they may also vary considerably across cultures. In his argument for the relevance of cognitive categorization in the context of cross-cultural management, Shaw (1990) suggests that much of the extant comparative management research can be interpreted as showing culturally influenced differences in leader prototypes. Drawing from contemporary research on leader perceptions, our study attempts to identify and explain cultural differences in leader prototypes by comparing Americans to international samples. Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
Because leadership is a cultural phenomenon inextricably linked to the values and customs of a group of people, we do not expect differences in leader prototypes to be completely random. Rather, they should be linked to dimensions of national culture. A taxonomy for understanding these dimensions of national culture with respect to organizations has been formulated by Hofstede (1980, 1993). Based on extensive crosscultural management research, he has proposed five dimensions (Individualism/ Collectivism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity/ Femininity, and Long-Term Orientation) on which countries tend to cluster with respect to leadership, motivation, and organization. Each of these dimensions represents a continuum for
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positioning individual countries. Individualism refers to the tendency for people to work alone and distance themselves from the larger social group to which they belong, with the opposite of this being collectivism. Power Distance is conceptualized in terms of the way people deal with inequalities among themselves, or the way in which people in authority are treated. Uncertainty Avoidance refers to a culture’s tolerance of ambiguity. Masculinity refers to the extent that masculine values such as assertiveness, success, and competition are valued over more feminine values such as service, solidarity, and care for the weak. The fifth dimension, Long-Term Orientation has recently been added (Hofstede, 1993) to explain the emphasis that a particular culture places on the future versus the present and past. It is important to note that some researchers (see Ralston, Gustafson, Elsass, Cheung, & Terpstra, 1992) have criticized Hofstede’s approach as being cultur~ly biased because the survey instrument from which these dimensions were derived was based exclusively on Western values. This is a valid criticism; however, it is impossible to conceive of a “culture-free” taxonomy. Any approach to understanding and explaining cultural differences will necessarily be constrained by the cultural orientation of its proponents. We decided to adopt Hofstede’s taxonomy as a tool for framing our results for two reasons: (1) the taxonomy is one of the most prominent and widely accepted frameworks for investigating cultural differences in cross~ultural management; and (2) there is no other cultural taxonomy supported by empirical data from such a large number of different countries to which our results could be compared. Our research explores the relative differences in leader prototypes of subjects from seven countries as compared to an American comparison group. Trait prototypicality ratings were collected from subjects for the category of business leader and were used to test whether leader prototypes differ reliably across cultures. We then employed multidimension~ scaling techniques to identify countries that are (dis~similar in terms of their business leader prototype. As discussed earlier, basic-level categories are most frequently used in prototype-based categorization studies because of the balance between inclusiveness and specificity found at this level (Cantor & Mischel, 1979; Mervis & Rosch, 1981). For that reason as well as its relevance to organizational contexts, we used the basic-level category of business leader. METHOD Subjeds Subjects consisted of international (n = 107) and American (n = 35) students enrolled in graduate programs at a large southeastern university. These students represented a diverse collection of academic and cultural backgrounds. The international sample consisted of students from China (n = IS), France (n = 221,Germany (n = 161,Honduras (n = 15), India (n = 1X), Japan (n = lo), and Taiwan (n = 11). Of the total sample, 61 were female and 81 were male. The average age of participants was 26.6 years (s.d. = 6.04). For the international students, the average time spent living in the United States at the time of the study was 2.5 years (xd. = 2.15). All subjects participated on a voluntary basis. International students were contacted through their respective student organizations; U.S. students were contacted through their graduate departments.
Cross-culturalLeadership
125 Procedure
Subjects were presented with a questionnaire consisting of a list of 59 attributes relevant to leadership (see Appendix) that were identified in a previous study with an American sample (Lord et al., 1984).’ For each attribute, subjects were asked to assign a prototypicality rating for a business leader based on a five-point scale from “fits my image [of a business leader] very well” (I), to “does not frt my image [of a business leader] at all” (5). Demographic information regarding age, sex, nationality, and field of study was also collected. Analyses The key analyses were repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs), with country (France, Germany, Honduras, India, Taiwan, China, Japan, and the United States) as a between-subjects variable, and traits (sets of high, medium, and low prototy~icality adjectives, identified from Lord et al., 1984) as a within-subjects variable. Because we hypothesized that subjects from different countries would differentially rate the prototypicality of the various traits, we expected to find significant country x trait within-subjects interactions. As a qualitative follow-up analysis to the ANOVAs, subjects’ ratings were aggregated within countries and average prototypicality ratings for each of the 59 attributes were calculated. A Euclidean dissimilarity coefficient matrix was computed and subsequently used in a multidimension~ scaling (MIX) program. We should note that the practice of scaling countries according to specific variables of interest is fairly common in the organizational literature and has been applied in several areas of comparative management, including: work attitudes (Ronen & Shenkar, 1985); espoused values (Hofstede, 1976); and attitudes regarding management practices, cognitive descriptions of the managerial role, and managerial motivations and satisfactions (Haire et al., 1966). RESULTS AND
DISCUSSION
Based on leader prototypicality ratings from the Lord et al. (1984) study, three groups of traits were identified: high prototypicality (n = 9), medium prototypicality (n = lo), and low prototypicality (n = 10). High prototypicality items were defined as those falling at least one standard deviation above the mean for the sample of 59 traits used by Lord et al. (viz., dedicated, goal-oriented, charismatic, informed, decisive, responsible, determined, intelligent, and organized); low prototypicality items were defined by those items falling at least one standard deviation below the mean (viz., patriotic, strict, conservative, manipulative, tough, athletic, unemotional, strong, minority, and dishonest); and medium prototypic~ity items were defined by the 10 items falling closest to the mean (viz., industrious, humanitarian, caring, persistent, likable, well-groomed, healthy, well-dressed, forceful, and strong convictions). ANOVA Results
Due to the possibility of differences between men and women in their leader prototypes (Lord & Maher, 1991), we conducted initial analyses with gender as a
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Table 1 Most Prototypical Traits by Country Prototypicality Trait
M
sL>
1.682
0.945 1.171 0.902 1.007 0.831
France (n = 22) Determined Open Minded Informed Intelligent Verbal Skills
1.682 1.714 I.714 1.762 Germany
Intelligent Determined Decisive Dedicated Goal-oriented
(n = 16) I.375 1.375 1.500 1.563 I .563
Honduras Determined Industrious Responsible Goal-oriented Honest
0.500 0.500 0.894 0.629 0.629
(n = 1.5) 1.333 1.333
1.333 1.400 1.400
0.488 0.617 0.724 0.507 0.632
India (n = 18) Industrious Competitive Determined Goal-oriented Dedicated
1.389 1.389 I .389 1.444 1.500 Taiwan
Responsible Intelligent T~stwo~hy Goal-oriented Decisive
0.502 0.502 0.698 0.511 0.514
(n = 11) 1.091 I.273 1.273 1.273 1.364
0.302 0.467 0.647 0.647 0.505
China (n = 15) Intelligent Goal-oriented Decisive Open Minded Courageous
I.200 1.333 I.400 1.400 1.429 Japan
Responsible Educated Trustworthy Intelligent Disciplined
0.414 0.488 0.737 0.828 0.514
(n = 10) 1.500 1.600 1.600 1.700
1.800
0.707 0.699 0.843 0.949 0.789
(continues
127
Cross-cultural Leadership Table 1 (Continued) Prototypicality M
SD
1.486 1.514 1.571 1.771 1.800
0.853 1.011 0.698 0.877 0.868
Trait USA (n = 35) Determined Goal-oriented Verbal Skills Industrious Persistent
Overall (n = 142) Determined Goal-oriented Intelligent Responsible Decisive Note:
1.520 1.555 1.605 1.622 1.781
0.769 0.805 0.824 0.876 0.867
Lower mean ratings indicate higher business leader prototypicality.
between-subjects variable. Results indicated no significant main effects, or significant within-subjects interactions. Therefore, gender was dropped from subsequent analyses to provide maximum statistical power. Of the possible main effects for the focal analyses, the between-subjects effect of country was significant only for predicting the ratings for the medium prototypicality traits (F= 2.90, p < .Ol); however, the within-subjects main effect for traits was significant for those identified as high prototypicality (F = 18.25, p < .OOl), medium prototypicality (F= 7.97, p < .OOl), and low prototypicality (F = 28.90, p < .OOl). These results indicate little difference across countries in the overall trait ratings but consistent and statistically significant differences within subjects on the ratings given to individual traits. The main question posed by the present study was whether there were reliable differences across countries in the ratings provided for particular traits. To answer this question, we found significant interactions between country and trait ratings for high (F = 1.57, p < .Ol), medium (F = 1.56, p < .Ol), and low (F = 2.21, p < .OOl) prototypicality trait sets,. Based on these significant interactions, it can be concluded that business leader prototypes (i.e., the traits seen as most characteristic of business leaders) vary systematically as a function of the particular country. To further illustrate the content of each prototype, Table 1 presents a breakdown of the five most prototypical traits by country. The ratings presented in Table 1 indicate that no trait was rated in the top five in terms of prototypicality across all eight countries; however, the trait of goal-oriented was seen as very prototypical for business leaders in six countries (France and Japan were the exceptions). Subgrouping the countries based on a Western/Eastern orientation resulted in the identification of certain consistent traits within subgroups. In the Western subgroup (i.e., France, Germany, Honduras, India,’ and the United States), the trait of determined was prototypical for every country, whereas for the Eastern subgroup (i.e., Taiwan, China, and Japan), the trait of intelligent was seen as highly prototypical in every country.
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Unfortunately, comparable cross-cultural data exist only for the Japanese prototype (O’Connell et al., 1991). Two of the five traits identified by our Japanese sample as most prototypical (responsible and educated) were included among the traits generated by O’Connell et al.% Japanese sample as prototypical of business leaders. Another trait rated as highly prototypical by our Japanese sample (intelligent) was mentioned by their Japanese sample, but not for the context of business leader. It is also interesting to note that the trait rated by our Japanese sample as most prototypical of business leaders (responsible) was among the five traits (out of a total of 35) generated by the O’Connell et al. sample with the highest family resemblance scores (i.e., representative of leaders across seven different contexts). Although this content analysis of trait ratings provides some preliminary information regarding the content of business leader prototypes for different cultures, an important caveat is in order. The main purpose of our study was to compare the trait ratings for business leaders generated by an international sample to those generated by a U.S. sample. Thus, our goal was to assess the relative dzfferences in prototypes when compared to a U.S. sample, not to establish business leader prototypes for each of these countries. Although the content of the various prototypes may be interesting and informative, it should not be interpreted as the veridical representation for an entire culture because of the relatively small, and possibly unrepresentative, samples. Furthermore, it is important to recognize the diversity of individual differences within a culture before attempting to make cross-cultural generalizations (Maruyama, 1992). MDS Results To better understand the similarities and differences across countries in terms of business leader prototypes, we engaged in a multidimensional scaling (MDS) of countries based on ratings for all 59 traits. The goal was to provide a three-dimensional plot of the eight countries to estimate those that were most and least proximal, which has implications for cross-cultural leadership. We chose to use three dimensions in an MDS analysis because that is the most number of dimensions that can be plotted in a single figure and because of the relatively small number of stimuli (i.e., countries) in the analysis, which precluded the use of more than three dimensions. We first averaged prototypicality ratings within countries for each of the 59 traits, and used the resulting country by trait matrix to compute a Euclidean distance proximity matrix. This proximity matrix scaled each country relative to every other country in terms of their similarity across all traits and was entered into an MDS program, yielding a three-dimensional configuration of countries (stress = 0.129; R2 = .918). The three-dimensional configuration provided a noticeably better fit than a two-dimensional solution (stress = 0.199, R2 = .873). The stimulus coordinates for the three dimensions are presented in Table 2 and plotted in Figure 1. Based on the stimulus coordinates reported by Hofstede ( 1980)3 for France, Germany, India, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States on each of the four original dimensions of national culture (viz., Individualism, Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity, and Power Distance), Spearman rank-order correlations were computed to compare his rank ordering of countries with their respective orderings on each of our three dimensions. The results of these correlations (see Table 3) demonstrated strong relationships between
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Table 2 MDS Stimulus Coordinates by Country Dimension 1
Country France Germany
0.6420 0.8461 -1.6922 -0.7250
Honduras India Taiwan China
-1.1863 -1.2157 1.2774
Japan United States Note:
2
2.0537
3
0.5319 0.5737 0.4412
-0.4960 -1.0934
0.7269 -1.1261
0.6489 -0.8264
-0.1592 -1.6734
-0.5476 0.7245
0.6850
0.4669
1.1232
Based on Hofstede’s (1980) cultural taxonomy, dimension I wasinterpreted as Power Distance;dimension 2 as UncertainzyAvoidance; and dimension 3 as Individualism/Cokcrivism.
3 USA
2 JAPAN
POWER
1
FRANCE
DISTANCE INDIA
0
HONDURAS
-1
CHINA
I
1 \
7
TAIWAN
0 \
UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE
-1 \
-2
Figure 1.
-2
INDIVIDUALISM
Plot of Countries According to Leadership Prototypes
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Table 3 Rank-Order Correlations of Countries Dimension
Hofsstede Dimension Power Distance Individualism Masculinity Uncertainty Avoidance Notes:
1 o.s1* -0.35 -0.64 -0.58
2
3
-0.53 -0.06 0.41 1.oo**
-0.53 0.76* -0.24 0.06
Spearman correlations reported for the dimensional rankings of our countries relative to the rankings for the same countries reported by Hofstede (1980). * p < .os. **p..o..
Hofstede’s dimensions of Power Distance and our dimension #l (r = .81, p < .05), Uncertainty Avoidance and our dimension #2 (r = 1.0, p < .OOl), and Individualism/ Collectivism and our dimension #3 (r = .76, p < .05). This provides empirical support for our assertion that Hofstede’s taxonomy can be considered as a useful tool for understanding cultural differences in leadership perceptions.
CONCLUSIONS
AND IMPLICATIONS
Our results indicate that there are reliable differences in the leadership perceptions of members from the various countries we sampled. Specifically, those traits considered to be most (as well as moderately and least) characteristic of business leaders varied by culture. We believe that these results have implications for cross-cultural management. As noted by Lord and Maher (1991), one must first be perceived as a leader to go beyond a formal role in influencing others. It is unlikely that followers will allow someone not perceived as a leader to exercise the necessary influence to perform effectively. Therefore, the influential increment that many have argued is at the core of leadership (Katz & Kahn, 1978) can be directly traced to social perceptions. An understanding of these perceptual differences appears to be the first step managers could take in adjusting their behavior to better fit the leadership prototype of followers in a host country. In addition, this heightened awareness of cultural differences would facilitate managers’ understanding of subordinates’ responses. Ultimately, a greater number of expatriate managers might succeed in their respective leadership roles. The results of previous research indicate a need for greater efforts on the part of American companies to formally assist their managers working in different cultures. Tung (1982, 1988) reported that organizations outside of the United States tend to have more extensive cultural awareness and training programs, as well as better-developed support systems during and after the international assignment. These programs were attributed with helping alleviate much of the stress associated with expatriates’ adjustment in a new assignment and contributing to the noted higher percentage of success among foreign expatriates. Although past research has demonstrated a strong cultural component to performance in expatriate assignments (Black & Mendenhall, 1990), it appears that many
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American multinational firms have neglected the role of cultural adjustment in their selection and training procedures for expatriate managers, choosing instead to emphasize technical competence (Black, Mendenhall, & Oddou, 1991). The amount of training necessary to ensure effective relations between the expatriate manager and host-country subordinates depends at least somewhat on the magnitude of differences between cultures. For this reason, ordering countries on different dimensions provides a useful tool for assessing the distance between two cultures. Accordingly, the type and amount of information on differences in leadership expectations to include in expatriate training will vary as a function of the proximity of the two countries in question. Although differences in leadership perceptions may sometimes reflect conventional wisdom, this may not always be the case. For example, our results (see Figure 1) indicate that the U.S. business leader prototype may be more similar to the Japanese than to the Honduran prototype. This finding was unexpected given the many noted differences between the American and Japanese cultures. Identifying and elaborating on differences (and similarities) in leader prototypes is an issue deserving of future research. Limitations and Future Directions Given the recent emergence of leadership categorization research coupled with the challenges inherent in cross-cultural research, it is diflicult to draw firm conclusions solely on the present study. Our modest sample size and the absence of cultural validation for the measurement instrument limit the generalizability of results. In particular, the noted similarity between the prototypes of certain countries (e.g., United States and Japan) in Figure 1 may be partially due to our use of an English-language trait-rating instrument. However, the foremost purpose of our research was to show that differences can exist across countries in how leaders are perceived. Our results demonstrated this. Furthermore, because our sample of international students had been in the United States an average of 2.5 years, our results may be conservative estimates of true differences in leadership perceptions. By illustrating these preliminary differences between countries in terms of leadership perceptions, we hope to encourage more extensive and rigorous cross-cultural research aimed at identifying the essence of leadership perceptions, both between and within countries. Another potential limitation includes the use of a multidimensional scaling procedure to provide an overall picture of the proximity of various countries in terms of leadership perceptions. This is a qualitative analysis technique that relies on subjective interpretation. We incorporated three of Hofstede’s (1980) dimensions of cultural differences to help interpret these findings; correlational results indicated that these dimensions matched very well with our results. Hofstede notes, however, that his dimensions are merely “tools for analysis that may or may not clarify a situation”(1993, p. 89). In other words, these dimensions are taxonomic constructs that do not actually exist. Nonetheless, it is encouraging to note that a general taxonomy of cultural dimensions was useful in interpreting leadership perceptions among countries, and that it may continue to serve as a meaningful framework for future research of this kind. Finally, our research is limited to the perceptual aspects of leadership and is grounded in a trait-based theory of leadership (e.g., Lord et al., 1982, 1984, 1986). Although we
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believe perceptions to be especially relevant for studying cultural differences, we also acknowledge that the investigation of more behaviorally oriented theories of leadership across cultures would enhance our understanding of cultural variation in leadership. By exposing these initial differences in leadership across cultures, we hope that the present study will encourage organizational researchers to consider culture as an important facet in the study of leadership in general as well as to directly address the issue of cultural variation in leadership. We believe that a better understanding of the cultural aspects of leadership will help address the noted difficulties currently associated with expatriate ~signments. Ultimately, this knowledge will enhance existing theories of leadership, making them more comprehensive and universal. APPENDIX leader Attributes Used in Present Study
Intelligent Honest Outgoing Understanding Verbal Skills Aggressive Determined Industrious Caring Decisive Dedicated Educated Well-Dressed Authoritarian Dishonest Fair Informed Open Minded Strict Strong Character
Unemotional Athletic Believable Charismatic Competitive Conservative Concerned Cooperative Demanding Directing Flexible Goal-O~ented Good Administrator Humanitarian Insightful Interested Likable Persuasive Strong Convictions Unselfish
Wants Peace Persistent Manipulative Courageous Disciplined Forceful Generous Healthy Kind Loyal Minority Organized Outspoken Patriotic Responsible Trustworthy Tough Strong Well-Groomed
Acknowledgments: The authors wish to thank Mary Smalley for her assistance with survey preparation and data collection, and Dirk Steiner for his guidance on the initial analyses.
NOTES 1. Because the traits reflected on the survey were initially generated from a U.S. sample, it is possible that prototypical traits exist in some cultures that were not included in our instrument (cf. O’Connell et al., 1991).However, a primary purpose of our study was to compare cultures
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against an American referent group using statistical techniques (i.e., ANOVA and MDS). As such, a common stimulus set was necessary across countries. 2. Other researchers (e.g., Haire et al., 1966; Hofstede, 1980) have also noted that India tends to cluster more with Western (especially South American) countries than Eastern countries with regard to attitudes and values. 3. We compared our rankings to Hofstede’s (1980) ordering as opposed to his (1993) data for two reasons: (1) more of our sampled countries were represented in the 1980 data, and (2) many of his 1993 scores were estimated.
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Lord, R.G., & Maher, K.J. (1991). ~udersh~p and informutio~ processing: ~nkjngperceptions and~erformance. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman. Markus, H.R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation, Psychological Review, 98, 224-253. Maruyama, M. (1992). Changing dimensions in international business. ne Executive, 6(3), 8896.
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