Contrasting styles in international management research

Abstract

This paper is concerned with methodology in cross‐cultural studies of management. It raises issues about sampling, and then moves on to deal with two problems that threaten to undermine the value of cross‐cultural research. One is the popularity of models which reduce culture to a handful of dimensions, and the other is the persistent use of single methods, rather than multi‐method approaches. These two points are illustrated with recent findings on power distance and time management. The research on power distance shows how a decomposition of the measure provides a more informative picture of power relations than the simple index, while the research on time management shows that different measures of time often tell quite different stories. The paper concludes by suggesting that what is needed in international research is not a simple picture of culture, but one that does justice to the inherent complexity of culture.

Citation

Collett, P. (1998), "Contrasting styles in international management research", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 13 No. 3/4, pp. 214-224. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683949810215020