Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK ...... the individual masters his/her own destiny; and second, as the opposite of 'team.
Journal of Management Studies 38:8 December 2001 0022-2380
CROSS-CULTURAL ROLE EXPECTATIONS IN NINE EUROPEAN COUNTRY-UNITS OF A MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE* L L Y Stockholm School of Economics
The study analyses role expectations of 104 staff from nine European countryunits within a multinational enterprise (MNE). Questions were administered to a sample of staff to elicit data on managers’ and employees’ expectations about managerial and employee roles. Following a categorization of reports and statistical analyses within and between country-units (i.e. subsidiaries and headquarters offices), results offer substantial evidence of differential patterns of role expectations across country-units, suggesting influences of local cultures and other societal forces. Significant differences were also found between managers and employees independent of country-office for expectations about the managerial and employee roles. Implications for research and practice are presented and future research directions are suggested.
The internationalization of firms’ commerce and operations has increased more than ever before the mobility and interaction of people from multiple cultural backgrounds. Different national settings, working styles, cultural values and practices, expectations towards work and organizational roles, are some of the issues that firms operating in different national settings deal with daily. Units of study that have been used in social sciences to account for these crosscultural differences at work, have typically been: values (England, 1978; Hofstede, 1980; Schwartz, 1994), motivation (Alpander and Carter, 1995; Arnoff, 1970; Ronen, 1994), preferences (Zander, 1997), decisions (Heller and Wilpert, 1979), satisfaction (Simmonetti and Weitz, 1972) and goals (Lazarus and Barrett, 1971). Among the multiple cognitive and social mechanisms that account for organizational behaviour are the role expectations. The importance of expectations within the organizational life has been acknowledged in what concerns processes of influence and interactions of individuals and groups within organizations (Cooke and Rousseau, 1988; Fondas and Stewart, 1994; Hales and Tamangani, 1996; Smith
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and Peterson, 1988; Stogdill et al., 1956; Triandis, 1978). By examining interactions between managers and role-sets in their expectations and relationships it would be possible to understand the actual processes of influencing, communicating or motivating inside organizations (Fondas and Stewart, 1994). Even though it has been admitted that expectations would also be subject to variation across country-cultures (Child and Kieser, 1979; Lane, 1989) only a limited amount of empirical studies have focused on cross-cultural variances within firms operating internationally. The documenting of variances of role expectations across countries would contribute to prevent what has been referred to as one of the primary causes of failure in international ventures: the lack of understanding of the basic differences in human resource management in foreign environments (Desatnick and Bennett, 1977; Downling et al., 1994). The ignorance of what others expect from determined positions would incapacitate role occupants’ ability to predict how others might judge the adequacy of their actions, when choosing among alternative behaviours (Goslin, 1969) that employees expected. This deficient awareness about role-set expectations has been found in several studies to be a primary cause of disagreement, conflicts and disruption within organizations (Bass and Stogdill, 1990; Stogdill and Bass, 1981). What is more, if expectations towards certain organizational roles differ across cultures, it becomes imperative to collect empirical data about such variances in order to prevent failures when approaching workforce from diverse countries within firms. The documentation about what staffs are prone to expect from certain organizational roles would make it possible to estimate mismatches in reciprocal expectations and commitments between managers and employees across different country-cultures. Consequently, it would serve as a base for decision making about which management practices to encourage and which to discourage depending upon country setting and also to adjust training emphasis of local and expatriate managers. Overall, knowledge about variances in staff ’s expectations across countries have implications for policy-making of human resources in what concerns manager–employee relations, satisfaction, career development and other management practices. Thus, in order to gain additional insight on how role expectations vary across different country-cultures, this study examined sets of behavioural expectations towards organizational roles held by managerial and non-managerial staff within the same international firm. From this point, a group of questions is stated: Do expectations towards managerial and employee roles differ across countrycultures within the same international firm, notwithstanding common structural and functional organizational features? If so, what are the most expected behaviours for the managerial and employee roles at the nine country-units? What is the degree of consistency between the expectations of respondents about the managerial and employee roles? What is the degree of consistency between the expectations of respondents at headquarters offices (HQO) and the different country-subsidiaries (CSs)[1]? In order to approach these questions, some definitions, previous studies and hypotheses are presented below. © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
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Expectations According to sociological postulates, in order to regulate behaviour, every social form is constituted by rules organized in different levels of complexity. These rules range from general notions of correctness or incorrectness (i.e. values), to more specific codes of behaviour for specific situations (Parsons, 1939). Likewise, particular rules for specific positions would derive from common, culturally shaped and accepted conceptions about what behaviour is proper or improper for that position and also from more idiosyncratic constructions and imputations emanated from interpersonal interactions (Turner, 1988). When any of these rules is enacted by a role holder vis-à-vis other persons within a social system, these rules would become expectations for subsequent interactions, thereby constituting a role (Balkwell, 1991; Berger et al., 1989). Those that hold expectations on future interactions would constitute what has been called ‘role set’ (Merton, 1957) or ‘role senders’ (Katz and Khan, 1978). The role set would actively instigate and moderate behaviours elicited by role-holders, consigning messages about their expectations (‘sent role’). The result would be what has been termed role-behaviour, role-performance, role-playing, role-enactment or role-interpretation (Fondas and Stewart, 1994). According to Biddle (1979), expectations differ depending on the degree of their cultural consensus: from more collective or shared expectations to more individual ones. Any of these expectations would refer either to a single person (personal expectations) or to specific positions (positional expectations). At the same time, expectations can focus either on others’ positions (expectations for others) or on the own position (expectations for self ). Moreover, they can take the form of overt or covert prescriptions, assessments and descriptions about the behaviour of the role-holder. Altogether, expectations would delineate judgmental standards to assess the behaviour of occupants of specific positions or persons. Therefore, for the purpose of this study, role-expectations were understood as shared beliefs, held by relevant populations, about what behaviours the roleholders should and should not perform in determined positions (Lieberman, 1956). Besides, using the above terminology, the focus in this study was on the shared and overt positional expectations towards others and the own position held by managers and employees across different countries within the same organization. Among sociologists, anthropologists and social psychologists there is certain agreement what while people occupy positions in society their behaviour will be more determined by what is expected from that position than by their own personal characteristics (Biddle, 1979). Likewise, within the organizational field, empirical evidence indicates that organizational behaviour is not only driven by formal arrangements, but also by pressures for compliance emanated from roleset expectations. For instance, Pfeffer and Salancik (1975) tested the effect of expectations from subordinates, superiors and peers about certain managerial activities, and found that managers’ role-set expectations accounted for significant variances in their behaviour. Similarly, Triandis (1993), from a contingency model perspective, suggested that expectations about the appropriate roles determine the interpretation of situations and leaders’ behaviours. Further studies have revealed that the discordance or concordance between behavioural expectations and current perceived behaviour has direct repercussions on multiple organizational outcomes. For instance, Foa (1957), studying expectations of subordinates towards managers, found that matches between subordi© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
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nates’ expectations about managers’ behaviours (e.g. permissive or authoritarian) and the current attitudinal approach of managers, were directly related to prevalent satisfaction. Moreover, as early as 1954, Holden found positive relations between the fit of expectations about others’ behaviours within groups and the overall group productivity. Similarly, Triandis (1959) demonstrated a reverse association between the degree of discrepancy between expected and perceived managerial behaviours and the degree of liking of the manager. Still, Tsui’s (1984) study indicated that fits between what is expected and what is actually perceived by a role-set (i.e. subordinates) directly influence the judgement of effectiveness of role occupants (i.e. managers). Furthermore, according to the Symbolic Interactionism perspective (Mead, 1934), role-behaviours would be embedded in a complex network of reciprocal relations with other persons holding complementary statuses within organizations. Behaviours would be accommodated and re-accommodated to expectations, in a dynamic and perpetual process of mutual influence between the role-holders and role-set (Fondas and Stewart, 1994; Katz and Khan, 1978; Turner, 1962). Failures of any of the role-holders to comply with expectations would prevent others from performing their roles, conducing minimally to strains, and maximally to disruptions of the complete set of relations (Inkeles and Levison, 1969). This interactive character of manager–employee relations has been similarly emphasized by later approaches in the social exchange theory (Hollander, 1979) and the vertical dyad linkage theory (Danserau et al., 1975; Graen and Cashman, 1975; Graen and Scandura, 1987). A later comprehensive theoretical model that recognizes not only the effect of expectations on behaviours but also the effect of role-holders on role-set expectations is the ‘Expectation Enactment’ perspective (Fondas and Stewart, 1994). This model posits that role occupants (i.e. managers) not only enact expectations coming from a role-set (e.g. subordinates) but also that role occupants would deliberately influence and shape the role-set’s role expectations. Role-holders would not only passively recreate the role set’s expectations but would also actively create and mould their expectations. Finally, a perspective that also conceives role expectations as a reciprocal process operating from the employers towards the employees and from the employees towards the employers (Robinson et al., 1994) is the psychological contract perspective (Schein, 1980). This sort of contract is conceived as a set of unwritten expectations always present in the relation employees–managers (Argyris, 1960; Levinson, 1962; Rousseau, 1989, 1998; Schein, 1980). Unwritten expectations would either be manifested explicitly at the relationship level or they would be subjective individual convictions of reciprocal obligations. The first form of contract would be the consequence of certain degrees of social consensus regarding what constitutes role obligations, and the second form, a more idiosyncratic version of those expectations (Rousseau, 1989). Breaches in the mutual role expectations would cause disruptive responses in the dissatisfied position, with a decay in performance and turnover (on behalf of employees) or disciplinary actions and dismissals (on behalf of managers) (Rousseau, 1989; Robinson and Rousseau, 1994). Altogether, mutual unwritten expectations would be fundamental in the definition of the employee–manager relationship and a powerful antecedent of organizational behaviour (Makin et al., 1996; Rousseau, 1995; Schein, 1980). In this regard, the need to account for cross-cultural dynamics when approaching reciprocal © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
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expectations in the psychological contracts across countries has lately been emphasized (Sparrow, 1998). Likewise, it has been recognized that the understanding and management of expectations coming from a growing number of multicultural workforces is a major challenge for this century (Zander, 1999). Among the few empirical studies of cross-cultural expectations, the now classical international study of Haire et al. (1966), indirectly assessed expectations, as managers’ perceptions of the managerial role. The study was designed to gather cognitive reports from 3600 managers about the managerial role using the Osgood Semantic Differential Technique. In order to compare managers’ perceptions across countries, they were asked to rate 15 different concepts (related to managerial functions, hierarchical and occupational positions) using nine bipolar scales (importance, activity, difficulty, goodness, strength, etc). Following factor analysis, five factors were identified: prestige, scope, activity, firmness and difficulty. These five basic cognitive dimensions were assumed to underlie the 9 scales and 15 concepts. The study demonstrated differential patterns across 14 countries in the meanings associated with managerial behaviours. Specifically, countries ascribed different meanings to certain behaviours associated with ‘directing’ and ‘persuading’. In fact, managers from Germany and the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) reported remarkably less association between ‘directing’ and ‘persuading’ actions than did the Anglo-American, Latin-European and Asian countries. Besides, German and Scandinavian managers associated ‘directing’ with ‘co-operating’, ‘creating’ and ‘deciding’ to a larger extent than did the other countries. Besides, such actions (to co-operate, create and decide) were regarded as positive (‘a good thing’) across the 14 countries. Overall, the authors concluded that this differential meaning attached to actions was a notable evidence of the varying approaches towards staff management in the countries of study. Such features were attributed to cultural differences more than structural aspects of management. Later studies have also described expectations as explanatory variables for certain management practices. For instance, Cho (1992) suggested that expectations were an intermediate variable that would account for variances in leadership and management practices in diverse cultural settings. Likewise, from a cultural study, Ayman (1993) concluded that diversity would raise divergent expectations about traits and behaviours of individuals occupying positions of status. Besides, Hempel (1998) focused on HR policies and programmes in multinational settings, and recommended that benefit programmes should be tailored, among other things, to suit varying employee expectations across countries. Whilst the notion of role-expectations would be a robust framework to relate individual behaviour to broader social contexts (Stryker and Statham, 1985), scholars from the cross-cultural field have claimed the need to search for empirical evidence of highly probable variances of certain organizational roles and expectations across functions, organizations and cultural contexts (Peterson et al., 1995; Smith and Peterson, 1988). Despite that, a limited number of studies have been designed to directly assess variance in expectations towards employee and managerial roles in staff coming from different country-cultures. Besides, despite the early recognition of the interactive and reciprocal character of roles and the ample evidence about the relationship between hierarchical positions and conflicting role expectations within organizations (Katz and Kahn, 1966; Kahn et al., 1964; Lieberman, 1956; © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
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Newcomb, 1952), studies that have assessed expectations have focused on employees’ or managers’ perspectives, but not often on both at once. This fact has been recognized as a deficiency because of the lack of certainty about how close the consistency is between employees’ and managers’ views of those expectations (Smith and Peterson, 1988). Overall, to document variances in behavioural expectations towards both managerial and employee roles within organizations across cultures, would be relevant and justified by former empirical studies, theoretical models and diverse researchers’ perspectives, as mentioned above. Based on the framework and questions presented above, three research hypotheses arise. Since every society reinforces specific combinations of behavioural attributes for certain statuses (Linton, 1936) and role expectations are embedded and shaped within the immediate larger social context (Biddle, 1979; Parsons, 1939) two hypotheses were stated as follows: Hypothesis 1: Given different social and cultural country contexts, reports about expectations towards managerial roles will differ significantly across countrysubsidiaries (CSs). Hypothesis 2: Given different social and cultural country contexts, reports about expectations toward employee roles will differ significantly across CSs. Due to the ample empirical evidence that expectations are influenced by position or status within an organization (Katz and Kahn, 1966) and the relationship between different hierarchical positions and contrasting role expectations (Kahn et al., 1964; Lieberman, 1956; Newcomb, 1952), a third hypothesis was stated as follows: Hypothesis 3: Given different positions between respondents, the degree of consistency between managers’ and employees’ expectations towards managerial and employee roles will differ significantly across CSs. The last hypothesis is related to the degree of convergence between headquarters offices (HQO) and the CSs. If it is assumed that: (1) HQO is a source of control and influence on subsidiaries (Hedlund, 1981); (2) the relation between HQO and CSs is characterized by a selective use of mechanisms of control, influence and co-ordination (Hedlund, 1981; Martinez and Jarillo, 1991; Welge, 1981); and that (3) the use of one mechanism or other in a certain subsidiary is a function of the country of origin (Ferner, 1997), cultural distance (Baliga and Jaeger, 1984), environment uncertainty (Ghoshal and Nohria, 1989; Hedlund, 1981; Harzing, 1999) and strategic role of the subsidiary (Forsgren, 1990), it would be possible to presuppose that: Hypothesis 4: Given differential patterns of relationship and influence between HQO and CSs, the degree of consistency between HQO–CSs on reports of expectations towards the same organizational roles will differ across CSs. In order to answer the questions and test the hypotheses, four major objectives were defined for this study. © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
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(1) To compare the most frequent staff expectations towards managerial and employee roles across country-units. (2) To describe possible variances in expectations towards managerial and employee roles between country-units, comparing significant differences in the proportions of responses of role expectations. (3) To describe possible differences in expectations towards managerial and employee role according to CS and positions of respondents (i.e. manager and employee). (4) To contrast employees’ and managers’ expectations towards managerial and employee roles across CSs and examine the degree of consistency between staff from HQO and CSs concerning expectations on managerial and employee roles. In order to test these hypotheses, methodology, procedures, and results are presented below.
Part of the data collection was carried out together with another study about variances in management practices that has been described elsewhere (Liberman and Torbiörn, 2000). The company from which the sample was drawn is a successful private multinational firm within the communications and transport industry. The firm has Anglo-Saxon origins and is present in more than 200 countries with several thousands of employees; it is structured into four regions working under a common office, below named headquarters offices (HQO). The company was selected because of its international scope, and because its CSs presented similar organizational structure and performed the same activity and have the same products/services in the countries where they operate. These features would permit the highest possible equivalence and thus comparability across countries. Concerning policy and systems, the company was described as in the middle point on the continuum centralization–decentralization among multinational firms. However, a high consistency was observed in the reporting systems for consolidation purposes concerning financial and productive figures. Besides, the branch of the company was described as fast-growing and was marked by strong global competition. Regarding the sample, 12 managerial and non-managerial respondents were drawn from the Customer-Service, Sales and Marketing, Production/Operation, and Finance-Administration departments. Interviewees held the following managerial and non-managerial positions: commercial manager, operations manager, finance manager, customer-service manager, country manager, operations supervisor, customer-service agent, office clerk, front-line employees, sales representative and personnel executive. People interviewed at HQO were eight regional-level managers from finance, service, customer service, operations, commercial, human resources and service areas and the regional Chief Operative Officer. The inclusion of staff from a superordinate unit as HQO was justified by the need to assess degree of association between their expectations towards managerial and employee roles and the patterns of expectations reported across subsidiaries. The total sample consisted of 65 men (62 per cent) and 39 women (38 per cent); age, educational background and seniority were fairly equivalent for similar positions © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
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across CSs. Each interview took approximately 90 minutes; of the 104 interviews considered in this study, 100 were completely held in English or Spanish while four interviews were assisted by an external translator. All of the interviews were recorded and transcribed. Data about staff expectations were collected via two questions conceived to gather general expectations on managers’ and employees’ behaviour. The first examined expectations about managers’ roles (X-MR) and was formulated as follows: ‘How do you expect a manager to behave? . . . How should a manager be, according to you?’ The second question gathered information about expectations on employees’ roles (X-ER), being formulated as follows: ‘How do you expect an employee to behave? . . . How should an employee be, according to you?’. In order to semantically confirm the answers, when necessary, respondents were encouraged to explain their statements in terms of observable behaviour: ‘When/how do you notice/distinguish that attribute?’. If it was still not clear what the interviewee meant, the interviewer encouraged the respondent to give real examples of the alluded behaviours. However, most of the time questions were directly answered by enumerating general attributes and concepts directly related to observable behaviour. For the data analysis, role behavioural expectation was operationally defined as any statement reported by an interviewee implying behaviour, when asked about his/her beliefs concerning how somebody should behave when holding a specific role (i.e. manager or employee). Likewise, manager was defined as ‘any employee responsible for one or more employees’, hence no distinction between middle-level and senior-level managers was made within each country-office. On the other hand, an employee was defined as ‘any staff to whom no other employee reports in a hierarchical line’. With the purpose of accounting for every role expectation in different groups across countries, an instrument of response classification was designed. Firstly, responses to both questions were analysed separately by two psychologists. From that analysis, a total of 28 meaningful categories were deduced: 15 categories for responses dealing with expected managerial behaviour and 13 categories for those dealing with expected employee behaviour. Categories were defined as shown in table I and were pertinent both to the relationship manager–employee and taskoriented behaviours. Subsequently, the 28 categories were used to classify a total of 1444 statements about behavioural expectations made across the 104 interviews. Of the 1444 statements, 795 were related to managerial behaviour and 649 were about employee behaviour. Reliability In order to measure the stability of assessments across rates and thus control for personal bias in the analysis of the statements (halo effects, perceptual disagreement, severity of errors, stereotyping, etc.) (Kerlinger, 1986), an inter-rater reliability procedure was employed. This method was chosen because of its ample use within the social sciences to calculate reliability (Breitholtz et al., 1999; Rohner and Rohner, 1981; Sparrow and Gaston, 1996; Tinsley and Weiss, 1975). A psychologist (rater 1) was trained by the author (rater 2) in classifying the statements according to the categories that had been developed by him. Rater 2 developed an application to rate statements according to categories where only one statement at the time was displayed on the screen. After the statements were fed into a data © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
Table I. Description of the categories in the classification instrument and reliability index for each category (Cohen’s kappa) Category
Description
I. X-MR Expectation pertinent to the task (1) CustomerService minded, customer focused, satisfies customers’ needs, oriented acts according to what is best for customers (2) Directive Guides, commands, drives people, sets standards, decides, gives directives and sets strategy (3) Exemplary A model, is an example for the group, shows him/herself as the best and as perfect when performing tasks (4) Flexible Adaptable, adjusts management according to situations, willing to learn, informal, casual, relaxed, unofficial (5) Foreseer Prognosticates, sees a level ahead, plans and acts in advance (6) Positive Sure, certain, self-reliant, self-confident, direct (7) Professional Rational, realistic, based on facts, objective, executes the tasks and does the job, does not allow personal bias to alter decisions and actions (8) Expressive Gives information and warns, communicates with people, gives reasons and rationales Expectation pertinent to relationship (9) Accessible Capable of being reached, approachable, easy to speak with, open and available to employees (10) Charismatic Arouses enthusiasm in the group, influential, has magnetic charm or appeal, persuasive (11) Empathic Listens, concerned about people, understands staff ’s problems, puts him/herself in the position of employees (12) Integrity Adhered to ethics or moral, respectful, human, fair, trustworthy, correct honest, reliable (13) Reinforcing Encourages employees, recognizes, shows appreciation and rewards (14) Synergetic Willing to work with others, co-operative, promotes teamwork and collaboration Not classifiable Statements regarding managerial role expectations that were expressed only by one person II. X-ER Expectation pertinent to the task (1) Accountable Reliable, punctual, reaches time standards, responsible (2) Ambitious Wants to progress, decided to grow within the company, demonstrates strong desire for achievements in his/her tasks (3) Committed Hard working, industrious, enjoys the work, persistent, insistent (4) Proficient Competent, qualified, trained, skilled (5) CustomerService minded, customer focused, satisfies customers’ needs, oriented thinks and acts according to what is best for customers (6) Dynamic Has initiative and is proactive, awake, alert, enthusiastic, energetic, ‘candoness’ (7) Flexible Adaptable, change-oriented, inventive, willing to learn and change (8) Professional Does the job/business, task-oriented, solves problems Expectation pertinent to the relationship (9) Loyal Proud, identifies him/herself with the organization, devoted to the company (10) Deferent Obedient, accepts and follows instructions, decisions and requirements without questioning, deferential (11) Respectful Polite, gives a good image, uses proper words and shows good manners (12) Synergetic Involved, works in teams, ‘pulls together’, co-operative, helpful, friendly, integrated to the group Not classifiable Statements regarding employee role expectations that were expressed only by one person
Cohen’s kappa (p < 0.0001) 0.978 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000
1.000 1.000 0.643 0.803 1.000 0.864 1.000
1.000 1.000 1.000 0.750 1.000 1.000 0.819 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000
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base, each rater clicked separately in front of the category that best matched each statement. If one statement had been classified it was impossible to return and change the classification already made. The psychologist and the author are of different nationalities and rater 1 was blind to the country of origin and position of the respondents. Every statement of each group was given a random number and order. The first 30 statements were used to train rater 1 in how to classify statements. The inter-rater agreement between raters at this point was 79 per cent. Based on that result, and following a discussion between raters, some of the category definitions were rectified. Subsequently, the statements were randomized again and 50 additional statements were classified by both raters. This second time, the interrater agreement reached 86 per cent, a level that was considered adequate. This final version of category definitions was utilized in the classification of the whole material, with rater 1 classifying the whole material and rater 2 classifying a random selection of 25 per cent of the material. The final inter-rater agreement was 97.6 per cent; the kappa coefficients for each category are shown in table I.
In order to control for the fact that respondents who were able to speak in their mother tongue (respondents from the UK, Spain, expatriate managers and the managers from HQO) gave longer answers, that thereby would bias the results, a percent calculation was carried out. Thus, the distribution of statements across the categories totalled 100 for each respondent, irrespective of the number of statements. That way the statements received the same proportional weight. The variation in number of statements was large; the ranges between the countries were 59–95 for expected managerial behaviour and 51–106 for expected employee behaviour. Great Britain had the largest amount of statements for both questions, Sweden had the smallest amount of statements regarding managerial behaviour and France had the smallest amount of statements regarding employee behaviour. The Most Frequent Expectations Towards the Managerial Role (X-MR) In order to compare the relative preponderance of different X-MR the most frequent categories (30 per cent) were considered. Table II shows that Directive was among the most frequent categories in seven CSs, the Swedish and German CSs being the only CSs that did not have this category among the four most mentioned. Accessible is another category that was among the most frequently reported in seven CSs, and in this case the Spanish and Turkish CSs were the only CSs that did not mention this category among the most popular ones. It can also be seen that Professional was reported among the most frequent categories in five CSs, with France, Russia, Sweden and Turkey being the CSs that differed from the rest. Finally, Synergetic was reported among the four most common categories at the German, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish CSs. When comparing the most common X-MR in the different CSs, it is evident that three of the four most reported categories at the German and Swedish CSs were the same (Synergetic, Flexible and Accessible). Three of the most common categories were also shared between the Polish and Russian CSs (Accessible, Foreseer, © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001
Table II. Percent distribution (means and standard deviations) of statements regarding X-MR across country-subsidiaries and HQO Category
1.
3.
Exemplary
4.
Flexible
5.
Foreseer
6.
Positive
7.
Professional
8.
Expressive
9.
Accessible Charismatic
11.
Empathic
12.
Integrity
13.
Reinforcing
14.
Synergetic
15.
Not classifiable
Germany
Poland
0.00
2.58 (6.33) 5.08ab (10.40) 0.00
3.75 (8.82) 13.08abc (8.81) 0.75 (2.60) 0.00c
18.50bc (15.51) 2.83 (7.44) 5.33bc (7.08) 3.83a (9.92) 2.75ab (9.53) 7.83 (12.28) 14.83 (14.64) 13.67 (19.98) 4.58ab (7.90) 4.67 (7.24) 12.25 (12.44) 2.42a (6.11) 6.58c (9.92) 0.00
13.75ab (16.87) 0.00a 3.33ab (11.55) 11.42 (15.19) 7.33 (12.70) 10.42 (12.75) 0.00a 3.75 (7.06) 8.50 (13.01) 3.75ab (6.94) 27.67ab (26.52) 2.08 (4.91)
13.33b (9.40) 9.17ab (13.20) 10.25 (14.68) 9.25 (11.72) 14.17 (16.02) 2.83ab (5.24) 7.83 (10.95) 4.17 (6.28) 6.58ab (7.19) 4.75c (8.67) 0.00
Russia
Spain
Sweden
Turkey
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
13.08abc (15.51) 1.83 (6.35) 2.58bc (6.33) 16.33b (18.71) 12.83b (12.02) 9.92 (15.48) 1.17 (4.04) 11.08 (12.99) 0.00a
12.75abc (13.38) 3.50 (6.76) 4.83bc (9.11) 0.92a (3.18) 1.67ab (5.77) 12.92 (15.89) 7.00 (12.88) 8.00 (13.03) 8.33ab (9.37) 10.17 (18.90) 5.17 (11.79) 14.08b (11.39) 10.67bc (15.91) 0.00
0.00a
24.58c (21.23) 2.50 (5.90) 2.33bc (6.02) 7.50ab (11.88) 3.17ab (6.04) 3.42 (6.69) 9.00 (16.43) 6.08 (7.57) 0.67a (2.31) 9.92 (12.92) 3.75 (6.82) 14.50b (11.36) 11.25bc (17.60) 1.67 (5.77)
7.58 (10.81) 8.00 (12.64) 9.92ab (11.32) 3.58c (7.08) 1.83 (6.35)
Means with different superscripts differ significantly ( p < 0.05) according to the Tukey HSD test. The large standard deviations are a result of the transformation of raw scores into percentages.
9.00 18.25a (16.79) 3.25a (7.94) 0.00a 2.75 (9.53) 1.67 (5.77) 17.25 (16.83) 1.67ab (5.77) 6.67 (10.52) 7.00 (10.90) 3.92ab (7.42) 36.17a (21.68) 1.42 (4.91)
F
p
2.75 (7.78) 13.25abc (11.00) 0.00
1.22
9.75abc (9.47) 9.13ab (9.89) 1.00ab (2.83) 14.88 (19.14) 2.13 (6.01) 17.88 (14.43) 10.50b (12.39) 8.75 (12.90) 4.25 (7.87) 6.00ab (8.64) 0.00c
4.38
