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RESEARCH NOTE

Are National Cultural Traits Applicable To

Senior Firm Managers?

Edmund R. Thompson and Florence T. T. Phua*Graduate School of Management, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, 1-1 Jumonjibaru, Beppu,

Oita 874 8577 Japan and *Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, 4007,

The Red Centre, 2052 NSW, Australia

Email: [email protected] [Thompson]; [email protected] [Phua]

Researchers have applied Hofstede’s categorization of national cultural traits not onlyin studies of ‘average’ employee samples, from which the categorization was originally

derived, but also to e ´ lite senior executives, and even to firms, on the assumptions thattop management teams (i) are culturally homogeneous with average employees and (ii)directly reflect cultural characteristics in strategic decision-making. Such assumptionsare questioned by research finding that country sub-populations are culturallyheterogeneous and that individuals’ cultural characteristics are moderated byorganizational and task contexts. Using the construct of collectivism/individualism,this study tests the applicability of Hofstede’s generic national cultural norms to seniorexecutives using Anglo-Saxon and Chinese samples. Results cast doubt on theapplicability of Hofstede’s classifications to senior manager populations and suggestseveral avenues for further research.

Introduction

That ‘companies are well advised to take nationalculture as a given’ has become a form of

conventional wisdom in international business

research (Newman and Nollen, 1996, p. 774).

The applicability of Hofstede’s (2001) categoriza-tion of countries along the broad cultural con-

structs of individualism/collectivism, masculinity/

femininity, power distance, and uncertainty avoid-

ance is, likewise, taken for granted in many

international business studies, although Hofstede’s

work has not been without trenchant critiques

(McSweeney, 2002). The categorization’s original

derivation from broad-spectrum employee samplespossibly justifies its generic application in research

relating to similar ‘average’ employee populations.

But whether or not it also justifies the frequent

application of the same generic cultural classifica-

tions to senior-manager populations and, by

extension, their strategic decisions, is less certain.

Such an application might be justifiable if generic

national cultural traits are ubiquitously homoge-

neous among all individuals within a country and,

furthermore, are then mirrored directly in man-agers’ decision-making. However, researchers have

found significant sub-population deviations from

aggregated national cultural ‘norms’ and alsosuggest that personal cultural traits in senior

managers are substantially modified by task and

organizational contexts. This research tests whether

or not senior managers from, respectively, Chinese

and Anglo-Saxon cultures – commonly categorized

as polar opposites in terms of individualism/

collectivism (Thomas and Au, 2002) – in fact

exhibit significantly different cultural character-

istics in a task-specific context.

Literature and general propositions

Hofstede’s cultural categorization was derived

using data from a famously large overall sample

of 72 215 employees of a single multinational

British Journal of Management, Vol. 16, 59–68 (2005)DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00430.x

r 2005 British Academy of Management



firm, IBM (Hofstede, 2001, p. 477). The sample

comprised a range of employees, from systems

engineers to office clerks. Some country head-

office and branch managers were also included,

but the vast majority of respondents were below

senior-manager level and appear to have been, in

the main, a spectrum of mid-ranking marketing,sales, technical and clerical personnel (Hofstede,

2001, p. 51, 258).1 As such, the sample represents a

fair approximation of one multinational firm’s

average employees, and the culture constructs

Hofstede derived from it could, therefore, beargued to be applicable to similar cross-sectional,

average firm-employee samples where the objects

of analysis approximate individuals conforming to

what he terms the ‘average tendency’ (Hofstede,

1991, p. 253). Numerous studies make the assump-

tion that Hofstede’s findings are indeed applic-

able outside of his old IBM sample in analysescovering role conflict and stress (Peterson et al .,

1995), feedback-seeking behaviour (Bailey, Chen

and Dou 1997), and other areas in which the

units of analysis are ‘average’ personnel.2

Still other studies assume Hofstede’s categor-

ization can legitimately be extrapolated to apply

beyond ‘average’ employee samples to senior

manager samples, too (Bigoness and Blakely,

1996; Parnell and Hatem, 1999). The ascription

of average employee characteristics to senior

managers rests on the assumption that national

cultural traits are ubiquitous and homogeneouswithin a given country and so, therefore, apply

equally to all sub-populations. This is an

assumption that Hofstede (2001) himself expli-

citly makes (p. 10), and culture’s consequences

broadly as he defined them have entered the

lexicon of business research parlance and as-

sumptions (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002). How-

ever, doubt is cast on the appropriateness of such

assumptions by several studies reporting sub-

populations deviating substantially from average

cultural stereotypes (Oyserman, Coon and Kem-

melmeier 2002; Schwartz, 1992). For example,Fiske (2002) has pointed out that even in Japan

and Korea, each standardly regarded as cultu-

rally homogeneous, analyses finding cultural

heterogeneity render within-country cultural gen-

eralizations implausible (Kim, Park and Suzuki,1990). Because not all ‘average’ employees attain

senior manager positions, and because senior

managers are widely regarded as possessing

specific abilities and predispositions that facilitate

their assent to e ´ lite executive jobs (Koch and

Cebula, 1994), the following general proposition

might be stated:

General Proposition 1: Senior managers

may constitute populations culturally dis-

tinct from average employee populations.

Some business researchers go one stage further

and ascribe national cultural categorizations not

to individuals as such, but to disembodied firm

strategy in studies where countries’ firms are

either (i) grouped into broad, usually opposing,

categories, such as collectivist versus individual-

ist, based on Hofstede’s country scores (Li, Lamand Qian, 2001) or (ii) are ascribed Hofstede’s

national cultural construct scores (Pan, 2002) or

coefficients derived from those scores (Kogut and

Singh, 1988). Such ascription of average employee

cultural traits to firm behaviour assumes that

senior-manager cultural characteristics are not

only identical to average employees’, but are also

directly reflected in the strategic decisions senior

managers make. Hofstede would seem to make

this assumption (Franke, Hofstede and Bond,

1991, p. 165). However, notwithstanding that

senior managers may constitute a cultural sub-population quite distinct from average employ-

ees, researchers suggest that individuals’ culturalcharacteristics manifest themselves in generic

cultural behaviour to varying degrees depending

on the organizational context and task specificity

(Triandis, 1994; Voronov and Singer, 2002).

Because senior firm managers are charged with

making decisions that optimize capital returns

and are constrained in this by both product and

1Hofstede does refer to a ‘manager’ category, but itappears this refers not so much to senior managers withsubstantive overall executive authority, such as mana-ging directors or chief executive officers, but to variousfunctional managers, including customer engineering

managers, clerical managers and so on, at levels wellbelow IBM’s top management team.2Hofstede himself appears obliquely and inadvertentlyto caution against this usage in his recent critique of ‘trivial replications’ of his work (2001, p. 464) where hesuggests that samples used to test his dimensions need tobe ‘similar in all respects’ to the ‘matched IBMsubsidiary populations’ he himself used three or moredecades ago (2003, p. 463). To be similar in all respects,such samples would need to come from a multinationalfirm very similar to IBM as it existed around 30 yearsago.

60 E. R. Thompson and F. T. T. Phua



capital market disciplines, the following general

proposition might be stated:

General Proposition 2: Even if manager

and average employee populations are cul-

turally homogeneous, the strategic decisions

managers make need not necessarily reflectthat culture but rather what the business

situation and task environment require.

Study and research hypotheses

To investigate these two general propositions,

Chinese and Anglo-Saxon senior managers of

construction-industry firms in Hong Kong were

compared in relation to Hofstede’s widely ac-

cepted national cultural distinction revolving

around the individualism–collectivism construct.This construct is particularly interesting for this

research not only because it underpins a largenumber of business and management organiza-

tion studies (e.g. Cox, Lobel and McLeod, 1991;

Gomez, Kirkman and Shapiro, 2000), but be-

cause its cross-national discriminant validity at a

senior-manager level has not been directly tested.

Indeed, in a comprehensive review of journal

articles published from 1980 to 1999 on the

individualism-collectivism construct, Oyserman,

Coon and Kemmelmeier (2002, p. 6 fn.1) found

that nearly all research used undergraduate studentsamples, and that many were experimentally-based

studies (e.g. Earley, 1994; Jung and Avolio, 1999),

thereby compromising generalizability of results to

senior managers in business contexts.

Hofstede (2001, p. 217) categorizes Hong Kong

as a collectivistic society and it has been used as

an example of such in several studies (Hui, 1988;

Lam, Schaubroeck and Aryee, 2002), with ‘the

Chinese in Hong Kong [falling] into a relatively

homogeneous collectivist group’ (Singelis et al .,

1999, p. 326), at least with student or average

employee samples. Conversely, Hofstede (2001,p. 217) categorizes North American, British and

Australian national cultures as individualistic,and these predominantly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ coun-

tries have been used as exemplars of such in

several studies (Earley, 1994; Kim, Park and

Suzuki, 1990). Hofstede (1991, p. 182) suggests

that national cultural characteristics are assimi-

lated on an individual basis early in life and

remain thereafter relatively immutable, so Anglo-

Saxon managers might be expected to retain their

home-country cultural traits despite years of

being in Hong Kong. Hence, in the context of

Hong Kong it might specifically be hypothesized

that:

H1: If national cultural traits are applic-able to senior managers in the same way

they are thought to be applicable to average

employees, ethnic-Chinese senior managers

will be more collectivistic than Anglo-Saxon

senior managers.

Studying one industry generally, and the con-

struction industry in Hong Kong specifically, is

advantageous for a number of reasons. Drawing

a sample from one industry has the merit of

reducing possible confounding effects associated

with idiosyncratic industry-related culture (Gor-don, 1991). While many construction firms in

Hong Kong naturally undertake projects outsidethe territory, the city itself constitutes a prime

market and, whether local Chinese or foreign

Anglo-Saxon firms, most work within the same

overall market and general business environment

contexts. The construction industry is also

heavily reliant on a complex, multi-organiza-

tional operational method in which various

project firms, including architects, engineers,

surveyors and contractors work together for the

duration of a particular project. The high task-interdependence of construction projects requires

all individuals, especially senior mangers, in

different firms to work closely in groups both

intra- and inter-organizationally. This has a

twofold benefit for this research. First, it means

that Chinese and Anglo-Saxon senior managers

often work not just in the same overall business

environment, but also often on the same projects,

thereby reducing still further possible sector or

market confounding effects. Second, it allows the

modifying effect of organization and task speci-

ficity on individual Chinese and Anglo-Saxonmanager behaviour to be investigated in a

broadly common setting.Wagner has suggested that a defining char-

acteristic of collectivism is cooperativeness, the

‘willful contribution of personal effort to the

completion of interdependent jobs’ (1995, p. 152).

High cooperative behaviour is widely taken in

business research to be a direct function of high

collectivism (Chatman and Barsade, 1995; Cox,

Are National Cultural Traits Applicable To Senior Firm Managers? 61



Lobel and McLeod, 1991). A further character-

istic of collectivists is their tendency to draw

sharp distinctions between the group or firm to

which they belong, their in-group, and other

firms, or out-groups. Conversely, individualists

tend to treat both in- and out-groups more

uniformly (Casimir and Keats, 1996; Chen, Pengand Saparito, 2002). Hence, if national cultural

traits are applicable to senior managers it might

specifically be hypothesized that:

H2: Chinese senior managers will exhibit

higher intra-firm (in-group) cooperation

than Anglo-Saxon senior managers.

H3: Chinese senior managers will exhibit

higher in-group identity than Anglo-Saxon

senior managers.

However, for complex, multi-organizational con-

struction projects to be successful, not just intra-

firm, but high inter-firm cooperation is necessary.

This requirement might reasonably be supposed

to moderate national cultural predispositions

regarding intra- and inter-firm cooperation.

However, if senior managers’ national cultural

characteristics are not modified by organiza-

tional/task-specific circumstances, it can be hy-

pothesized that:

H4: Chinese senior managers will exhibitlower inter-firm (out-group) cooperation

than Anglo-Saxon senior managers.

Method

Sample, procedure and response

Using trade association and chamber of com-

merce directories, a sample of 2005 senior

executives of both foreign and local firms in the

Hong Kong construction industry was drawn.

The sample was believed to represent all con-struction firms operating in Hong Kong forwhich contact details, including the name of the

most senior executive, were available. The survey

instrument was drafted to incorporate necessary

control, dependent and independent variables

based on measures reported in prior literature.

After pilot testing and adjustment, a first admin-

istration produced 228 responses from senior

managers with titles such as chief executive,

managing director, chairman, senior partner or

president. A second mailing to boost response

and to control for unit non-response bias

produced a further 170 responses, making a total

of 398, a 21.5% response, excluding 146 non-

deliverables. Forty-six percent of respondents

were between 41 and 50 years of age, 31% wereover 50; 298 were Hong Kong Chinese and 96

were Anglo-Saxon, mostly from Britain and

North America; 384 were male; 283 had at least

an undergraduate, and 112 postgraduate, de-

grees; average length of current-job tenure was12.78 years (SD58.04). To test for unit non-

response bias, Armstrong and Overton’s (1977)

time trend extrapolation procedure was used.

Comparison of first and second administration

respondents did not reveal any significant differ-

ences in sex (w250.11, 1 df, p50.74), education

(w25

3.49, 2 df, p5

0.17) or age (w25

1.38, 2 df,p50.50), indicating that responses could be

regarded as broadly representative of the sample.

Questionnaire development and measures

A draft instrument was pilot tested among 200

randomly selected senior managers from the

sample. Some of the 21 responses suggested the

number of items overall be reduced, and the levels

of both unit and item non-response indicated this

to be advisable. Consequently, disaffectingly long

scales were substituted where possible with short-er forms in a revised instrument subsequently sent

to the full sample.

Individualism–collectivism measure. Hofstede’s

(2001) scale is not appropriate for this study as

it is tailored to an average-employee sample and

hence contains bespoke items that are inapplic-

able to e ´ lite managers, such as ‘Have a good

working relationship with your manager’

(p. 256). The initially selected alternative, the

29-item scale developed by Triandis et al . (1988),

was revealed by the pilot test to be disaffectinglylong. Following previous studies measuringcollectivism (Eby and Dobbins, 1997; Gomez,

Kirkman and Shapiro, 2000), Wagner and

Moch’s (1986) 11-item scale was therefore

adapted for use. The factor analysis Wagner

and Moch (1986) report for the scale suggests

that, given their sample of 122, 3 of the 11 items

do not load significantly on the construct,

according to Hair et al .’s recommendations




(1998, p. 112). These three items were therefore

omitted, following the precedent of Triandis and

Gelfand (1998, p. 124). Items were scored on a

5-point interval measure, 1 being ‘strongly

disagree’, and 5 ‘strongly agree’, with higher

scores indicating higher collectivism. The Cron-

bach’s alpha for the 8-item scale was 0.67 for theAnglo-Saxons and 0.55 for the Chinese. Accord-

ingly, for analyses, items detracting from relia-

bility were progressively eliminated until 5 items

remained with acceptable Cronbach’s alphas for

both the Anglo-Saxon (0.76) and Chinese (0.72)samples. This procedure is consistent with

Gomez, Kirkman and Shapiro’s (2000, p. 1100)

study which reduced Wagner’s later (1995) scale

to five items, although they unfortunately do not

specify which five items. The alpha for the overall

sample was 0.74.

In-group identification measure. Tropp and

Wright’s (2001) measure of in-group identifica-

tion was used. This single-item, diagrammatical

measure uses seven pairs of circles, the varying

overlaps of which represent an individual’s level

of identification with a given in-group. While

single-item scales can be susceptible to validity

and reliability problems (Hinkin, 1995), the scale

has demonstrated discriminant and convergent

validity, plus stability using test-retest procedures

(Tropp and Wright, 2001).

Cooperation measures. Existing and commonly

used measures of cooperation were problematic for

this research as they involve manipulation of ex-

perimentally designed, off-puttingly verbose tasks

(Chatman and Barsade, 1995; Chatman and

Flynn, 2001; Cox, Lobel and McLeod, 1991; Seta,

Seta and Culver, 2000; Wagner, 1995). Accord-

ingly, the broad cooperative dimensions suggested

by Tjosvold (1988) of (i) information, ideas and

other resources exchange, (ii) assistance giving, (iii)

constructive problem/conflict discussion, and (iv)mutual support and encouragement were used toguide scale construction for intra- and inter-firm

cooperation. To minimize the response fatigue

especially prevalent among busy senior executives

and attendant response bias (Schmitt and Stults,

1985), two 6-item scales were developed for,

respectively, intra- and inter-firm cooperation.

For intra-firm (in-group) cooperation, respon-

dents were asked to score on a 5-point interval

measure (15 strongly disagree, 55 strongly

agree) the following questions: ‘Thinking gener-

ally about your own personal level of coopera-

tion when working on construction projects, to

what extent do you agree or disagree that you (i)

‘‘are keen to help colleagues from your own firm

achieve project goals’’, (ii) ‘‘collaborate withcolleagues from your own firm’’, (iii) ‘‘willfully

contribute useful ideas/opinions to colleagues

from your own firm’’, (iv) ‘‘actively assist collea-

gues from your own firm in solving difficult

problems’’, (v) ‘‘volunteer personal resources liketime and effort to your own colleagues’’, (vi) ‘‘are

cooperative with colleagues from your own

firm’’ ’. Internal scale reliability for Chinese

managers was 0.85, for Anglo-Saxons 0.88.

The scale for inter-firm (out-group) coopera-

tion was measured using the same set of items,

but in reference to other firms: ‘Thinkinggenerally about your own personal level of

cooperation when working on construction pro-

jects, to what extent do you agree or disagree that

you (i) ‘‘are keen to help colleagues from other

project firms achieve project goals’ ’’, and so on.

Internal scale reliability for Chinese managers

was 0.90, for Anglo-Saxons 0.92.

Control variables. To control for possibly con-

founding demographic effects, variables including

respondent’s sex, age, education, job tenure, aswell as national culture, were included. Exceptfor years of tenure, all were dummy coded: with

age coded 15441; education coded 15post-

graduate degree; national culture coded 15Chi-

nese.

Analysis

Descriptive statistics for respectively the full

sample, and the Chinese and Anglo-Saxon sub-

samples are shown in Table 1. Chinese culture isnegatively correlated with intra-and inter-firm

cooperation and collectivism, suggesting Chinesesenior managers are possibly less collectivistic

and less cooperative than Anglo-Saxon senior

managers.

To test hypothesized relationships while con-

trolling for age, sex, education and job tenure,

analysis of covariance was conducted. Tests of

consequently adjusted mean differences between




Table 1. Descriptive statistics, ANCOVA and inter-item correlations for full sample and Chinese and Anglo-Saxon senior managers

Full samplea Chinese managersa Anglo-Saxon managersa Inter-ite

Mean SD Mean SD Adjusted

meand

Mean SD Adjusted

meand

ANCOVA F

statisticeNational

culture

correlationsb

2 3 4 5

1 National

culture

0.74 0.44

2 Age 3.10 0.90 3.05 0.91 3.24 0.84 0.09 0.17 0.02 0.29*

3 Education 3.02 0.82 3.03 0.83 3.01 0.81 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.15

4 Sex 1.04 0.19 1.04 0.19 1.03 0.18 0.01 0.14* 0.03 0.15

5 Tenure 12.38 7.78 13.16 8.06 10.14 6.39 0.17** 0.59*** 0.08 0.02

6 In-groupidentification 5.43 1.29 5.36 1.31 5.39 5.61 1.20 5.52 3.54w

0.08 0.20** 0.01 0.15* 0.12*

7 Intra-firm

cooperation 4.28 0.51 4.21 0.51 4.28 4.49 0.44 4.30 0.29 0.24*** 0.19** 0.10 0.03 0.12

8 Inter-firm

cooperation 3.64 0.67 3.58 0.65 3.65 3.82 0.69 3.68 0.50 0.16** 0.08 0.09 0.04 0.01

9 Collectivism 3.50 0.70 3.37 0.67 3.49 3.87 0.68 3.52 0.59 0.31*** 0.04 0.03 0.03 0.01

Notes: (a) Scale :- 15strongly disagree, 25disagree, 35neutral, 45agree, 55strongly agree. Scale for in-group identification is measured

dummy coded with 15Chinese, 05Anglo-Saxon. (c) Pearson product moment correlations. Chinese senior managers coefficients below

above, diagonal. (d) ANCOVA adjusted means controlling for age, tenure, sex and education. (e) Tests adjusted mean differences (homoge

wise full sample n5354, Chinese senior managers n5292, Anglo-Saxon senior managers n592.wpo0.10; *po0.05; **po0.01; ***po0.001, two-tailed.



Chinese and Anglo-Saxon samples show none to

be significant for collectivism or cooperation

(Table 1). Chinese senior managers are not found

to be any more collectivist or cooperative on

either an intra- or inter-firm basis than Anglo-

Saxon senior managers. Furthermore, Chinese

senior managers show significantly (F5

3.54,po0.10) lower in-group identity (adjusted mean

5.39) than Anglo-Saxons (adjusted mean 5.52).

To investigate the negative correlation found

between Chinese culture and collectivism and

both intra- and inter-firm cooperation, logisticregression was undertaken using national culture

as the dependent variable (Table 2). Model 1

shows results when only the control variables are

entered. The full model (2) shows that both

collectivism (b5 0.99, po0.001) and intra-firm

cooperation (b5 0.76, po0.05), quite contrary

to general beliefs, negatively predict Chineseculture.

Discussion and conclusions

Results find no evidence of the differences that

might be expected if senior managers do in fact

conform to the national cultural ‘norms’ Hof-

stede derived from average employee samples.

Senior Chinese managers exhibit no significant

differences to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts in

terms of collectivism or cooperation, and evenmanifest significantly lower in-group identity

than Anglo-Saxons. Moreover, Chinese man-

agers, contrary to what Hofstede’s categoriza-

tions would lead us to expect, are associated

negatively with collectivism and intra-firm co-

operation.

That the hypothesized differences between

Anglo-Saxon and Chinese senior managers sug-

gested by what has become a conventional

cultural wisdom are not found is consistent with

the first general proposition of this paper: that

senior managers might well represent a culturallydistinct sub-population compared to the average

employee populations from which Hofstedederived his categorizations. Findings are also

consistent with our second general proposition:

that senior managers’ personal cultural charac-

teristics are moderated by their organizational

task environment. Given this, it would seem

particularly advantageous for management scho-

lars to reflect critically on the use of average

employee-derived indices of national culture

when categorizing disembodied firms and their

behaviour.

Limitations and further research

While the above conclusions are reasonable, they

need to be set against the limitations of the small

and restricted study on which they are based.

This research suffers the drawbacks of examining

just one industry in one location, and further

research in different industries and nationallocations might test cross-industry and cross-

national generalizability. The study also exam-

ined just one of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions.

Further research might reveal that other aspects

of national culture do in fact apply to senior

manager populations, or that certain aspects are

more mutable than others. This research also did

not compare average employee and senior

manager samples within the same national

cultures, so future studies might test if significant

differences do indeed exist between these two

populations. It might well be the case that somecountries are culturally homogeneous across sub-

populations, while others are not.Results may possibly be a function of the

research location. Hong Kong has been, and still

is, commonly used as an exemplar of a ‘Chinese’

culture, but scholars have suggested that its

population might have been substantially ‘An-

glo-Saxonized’ by its former British colonial

status and its integration with ‘Western’ econom-

Table 2. Logistic regression

Dependent variable: Chinese51, Anglo-Saxon50

Variables 1 2

Age 0.60 (0.16)*** 0.46 (0.18)*

Sex 0.20 (0.71) 0.12 (0.78)

Education 0.21 (0.29)

0.06 (0.31)Tenure 0.09 (0.02)*** 0.08 (0.02)***

Collectivism 0.99 (0.21)***

Intra-firm cooperation 0.76 (0.32)*

Inter-firm cooperation 0.11 (0.22)

In-group identification 0.12 (0.11)

Constant 20.01 (0.91)* 90.60 (10.79)***

–2 Log Likelihood 3790.31 3370.85

Cox & Snell R2 0.07 0.17

Nagelkerke R2 0.10 0.26

a Standard errors in parentheses.*po0.05; **po0.01; ***po0.001.




ic systems in a particularly dynamic manner

(Ralston et al ., 1993). Certainly, individual

collectivism has been argued to shift towards

greater individualism with economic develop-

ment and modernity (Triandis et al ., 1988).

Hence, further studies using samples in Mainland

China and other less Anglo-Saxonized, lesseconomically dynamic countries might produce

different results. If they did, Hofstede might be

proven correct, but only partially, because if

Hong Kong Chinese senior managers can change

from conforming to the categorization he placedthem in just three decades ago, then his assertion

of the relative immutability of national culture is

surely wrong (Hofstede, 2001, p. 11). It could

perhaps also be argued that Anglo-Saxon senior

managers have changed to be more collectivist; if

so, they have transformed their ostensibly im-

mutable national cultures remarkably rapidlygiven their average job tenure in Hong Kong of

around ten years. Should further research find

this to be the case, then the usefulness of

Hofstede’s categorizations is transient and likely

to diminish with time. Still further, it might be

that both Anglo-Saxon and Chinese managers

have moved either to a midpoint between their

respective Hofstede-identified generic national

cultures, or to an entirely new cultural norm

ubiquitous amongst all senior mangers and

conforming to no particular previously identified

cultural norm. Such a speculation would beconsistent with notions that globalization is

shrinking the world. A further alternative is that

these results may not conform to Hofstede’s

findings simply because they are drawn from data

supplied by senior managers other than from

IBM, the single multinational firm from which

Hofstede drew his data.

Conclusions

Notwithstanding the limitations of this small-

scale study and the clear need for considerablefurther research, its results, while not falsifying

Hofstede’s culture dimensions in relation tosenior firm managers, certainly do not support

them. Specifically, this would suggest that appro-

priate caution is required in viewing the copious

research that adopts uncritically Hofstede’s na-

tional culture categorizations and that also uses

either senior managers or firms rather than

average employees as units of analysis. More

generally, findings offer empirical support to the

case for critical examination of the veracity of

Hofstede’s national culture dimensions (McSwee-

ney, 2002). The results here suggest that Hof-

stede’s cultural dimensions do not apply to senior

managers. This begs the question for further

research of whether or not his categorizationstruly apply at all outside of the 1967–73 average

IBM employee population he used to develop his

national culture dimensions.

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Edmund R. Thompson got his PhD from the London School of Economics. His research focuses on

the causal interactions between international business competitiveness and international political

economy environments and institutions. He is a professor at the Graduate School of Management,

Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan. Previously he was a faculty member of the University of

Hong Kong School of Business, and before that taught at the National University of Singapore.

Florence T. T. Phua received her PhD degree in organizational behaviour and construction

management from the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include aspects of

organizational behaviour and the interdependent individual- and firm-level factors affecting the

dynamics of construction project outcomes. She is currently a lecturer in the Faculty of the Built

Environment at the University of New South Wales, Australia.


Are National Cultural Traits Applicable to Senior Firm Managers...

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