Strategic Management Research: Designing and Conducting International Management Research Projects || Cost Benefits of Multinational Research on Organizations

Cost Benefits of Multinational Research on OrganizationsAuthor(s): Frank A. HellerSource: International Studies of Management & Organization, Vol. 18, No. 3, StrategicManagement Research: Designing and Conducting International Management Research Projects(Fall, 1988), pp. 5-18Published by: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40397099 .

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Int. Studies of Mgl. A. Org., Vol. XVÜI, No. 3, pp. 5-18 M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1988

Frank A. Heller (United Kingdom)

Cost Benefits of Multinational Research on Organizations

Organizational research is usually interested in regularities and irregularities and in causes and consequences. If one assumes that a given sample is fairly represen- tative of the universe of organizations in a country, one is often tempted to draw normative conclusions. For instance, one may discover that a new set of company law requirements imposed in year X do not seem to have produced a significant change of behavior in year X + 5. One may then be tempted to conclude that laws (of a certain kind) do not influence behavior (at least within a given time span), and therefore should not be imposed. Such a conclusion could be correct only for a limited set of circumstances and lead to false causal assumptions.

A comparative approach is indicated; and given the importance of international competition, the most appropriate comparison may be among different countries that vary in terms of dimensions relevant for an understanding of the phenomenon. In this particular example, the European Economic Community, which is trying to legislate for the purpose of achieving harmonious conditions and fair competition among member countries, may be interested in discovering under what circumstances its legal interventions will be effective. Multinational research could provide an answer.

It happens that a 12-country comparative study on the impact of industrial relations legislation on participative behavior was undertaken for the purpose I have just described. The 12 countries varied in the amount of formal and legisla- tive support, and it was possible to conclude that workshop participation was significantly affected by country differences in legislation [1,2]. This is one example among many, and will be used to illustrate the cost-benefit analysis.

Dr. Heller is Director, Center for Decision Making Studies, The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, Tavistock Center, Belsize Lane, London NW 3 5BA, England.

5



6 FRANK A. HELLER (UNITED KINGDOM)

Because a considerable amount of writing in this area uses the term culture rather than country, I shall question whether the use of this term adds to a scientific analysis of comparative studies [3]. One may be critical of the ubiqui- tous use of the term culture yet remain positive about the benefits achieved from multinational research.

My analysis is subjective; it is based on experience in 7 comparative studies covering 15 countries over a period of 20 years.1 The conclusions I shall draw from these studies have to be checked against a more systematic assessment, but may serve in the interim as a way of starting such an analysis.

Differences of approach

Comparative research can be undertaken in several different ways. The least costly method is for one researcher or group to devise a questionnaire, have it translated, and get it administered in different countries (see, for instance, [5,13]). I shall call this "cross-national" research to differentiate it from "multinational" research, which is designed, tested, carried out, and analyzed in a collaborative process among autonomous researchers in the different countries (for instance, [1 ,2, 1 1]). In multinational research, the funds are usually obtained by each country team, and the interpretation of results benefits from the close understanding the national research groups can bring to bear on their own data. The overall comparisons are discussed, and have to be agreed upon, by the multinational teams. Naturally, this process takes longer than what I have called cross-national research, but the results and conclusions are richer and more valid.

Between these two models there are several variations relating to who takes the initiative, who funds the research, and what leadership or coordinating style is used to carry out the work. The range of options and some of the problems relating to them have been described by Fourcade and Wilpert.2 For other varie- ties of approach, see Adler [14].

Some costs of multinational research

There are some obvious problems with cross-cultural or multinational research. It is said to be difficult to organize, expensive in time and travel, and- above all- studded with methodological pitfalls. To this list some people would add the increased possibility of friction among individuals from different cultural back- grounds or among national teams brought up in contrasting scientific-academic traditions.

This formidable list of caveats probably explains why so little multinational research has been carried out in some areas of social science. I have found in my own experience that there is certainly a cost to be paid for multinational research. It takes longer to launch, it creates additional problems of communications, and multinational meetings are expensive. Standardizing methodologies requires pa-



COST BENEFITS OF MULTINATIONAL RESEARCH 7

tience, some ingenuity, and perseverance. Even given these angelic qualities, it is unrealistic to expect the same degree of homogeneity as would be achieved by a single investigator working on his own or with a carefully trained assistant. However, even in a large-scale national project, with several senior collaborators plus associated field staff, quite similar problems of standardization can be encountered [15].

Moreover, it must be accepted that to date, little experimentation with multinational methodologies has taken place. Most of them are unadapted replications of conventional questionnaire and interview methods.3 The use of variations of group feedback analysis [17,18] has, I believe, taken a tentative, but useful, step toward the development of an adaptation to multi- and cross-national research requirements.

Benefits from cross-national research

With so many organizational, scientific, cost, and personal difficulties to contend with, what are the countervailing benefits? I believe there are at least five, and shall describe each without implying any hierarchy of importance.

In the first place, any increase in project cost due to meetings and the need for additional coordination is balanced by what can be described as the "multiplier effect" if a semiautonomous model of research is adopted. Under such a model, each participating country team raises all or most of the funds needed for its own work.4 This enables any given investment by a single country team to profit from the experience of the other teams and the more extended sample. In the case of the 12-country research mentioned earlier [1,2], it meant that for an investment of X amount of money, something like 1 lx additional research data became available. In terms of sample size, it meant that in our case, instead of having 1 1 organizations for the United Kingdom alone, we had 134.

Second, it is often possible to use a more complex, multicontingent research design. Instead of having investigated 1 1 organizations in 2 industrial sectors in 1 country, in the aforementioned multicountry study we had 134 organizations in 2 sectors in 12 countries, so that a country as well as a sector comparison became possible, yielding potentially valuable insights into the range of variability of the

phenomena under investigation. A sample of 134 also enabled us to subdivide organizations by size and skill-complexity, giving two additional dimensions, which the funds available to the British team alone could not have yielded. Furthermore, any single country result, even if well established, may be quite misleading in the wider world context. Bass [19] has pointed to this difficulty by arguing: "Often what we regard as the only way, turns out merely to be the American way" (P. 230).

A third aspect of multinational work is the relative ease with which genuine interdisciplinary advantages are capable of being achieved without the soul-




searching strain of deliberately introducing different disciplines as part of a

carefully prepared plan. I have found that planned interdisciplinary work has a

tendency to get bogged down in definitional territorial defensiveness, i.e. , skirm- ishes from prepared positions from which retreat is equivalent to defeat. In the examples with which I am familiar, multinational teams contain members whose training and professional allegiance come from a variety of disciplines, but nobody labels them, so that their different experience can be absorbed painlessly. This tends to happen naturally when multinational teams are assembled.

Fourth, there is the issue of values. Social science is inevitably influenced by sociopolitical considerations. Organizational research has often been accused of having a built-in managerial bias, and more sociologically oriented work is sometimes said to start from assumptions based on Marxism. Economists are deeply divided with regard to supply-side versus demand-side theories that happen to reflect the preferences of political parties. Although social science cannot be value neutral, it does not gain from consciously or unconsciously supporting very divisive value positions unless these are clearly specified and the results are subject to verification or reinterpretation. In practice, these safeguards are not always obtained. Heller [20] has reviewed a number of well-known studies based on strong value assumptions that were found to give misleading results.

Multinational research does not eliminate values; but, in my experience, it usually introduces a variety of positions from which a balanced interpretation can emerge, or alternative points of view are argued out so that the reader's attention is drawn to the contentious issues.5

Finally, some people maintain that collaboration and open trust develop more easily in work among international centers than among centers in a single country. A number of reasons for this have been advanced [22], However, even with free and open collaboration among different teams, we have found it useful to agree on a written social contract. Such a document requires colleagues to adhere to a minimum format of acknowledgments of the contribution in work and finance that everybody has made. It may also stipulate ownership of data, the conditions under which publication should take place, and safeguards for the use of material from other countries. When many teams collaborate, it is important that one does not preempt the rights of others by premature publication, and it may be reason- able to allow each country to make the initial interpretation of any among-country comparison. Once the material is published, the canons of academic freedom will, of course, prevail.

It would be wrong to champion any particular format of research. Circum- stances require different approaches. There can, however, be little doubt that circumstances in the latter part of the 20th century and beyond are likely to lead to many questions that require answers in a multinational context [23-25]. Given that this is so, the question of feasibility and cost for this kind of research becomes important.

In sum, experience suggests that most of the extra problems and costs associât-




ed with multinational research are fairly well balanced by countervailing benefits.

Problems associated with cultural comparisons

Cultural topics have often attracted literary writers such as Salvadore de Madar- iaga [26] or case-study-oriented social scientists such as David Granick [27,28] or Geoffrey Gorer [29,30]. Some cross-cultural comparisons have had sociopolitical motives [31]. Systematic multicultural research on organizations is of relatively recent origin. The topic attracted very little attention before 1960 [32], but a survey of the comparative research literature from 1962 to 1967 uncovered about 500 moderately relevant publications [33]. Most of the comparative work up to now has consisted of samples from two or three countries, and this may be insufficient for making broad generalizations about similarities or differences in cultures.

There are good reasons for the reluctance of researchers to enter this area of scientific inquiry. Apart from the obvious expense in time and money, there are profound and- some will argue- intractable methodological problems to be faced. Merritt [34] has described the dilemma graphically:

Scholars performing comparative analysis are frequently like the well-known

millipede who was asked one day how he was able to coordinate his many legs and feet so as to walk. The millipede responded,

* That's easy! ' ' But the more he

thought about how to answer the question, that is, the more he tried to conceptualize what came naturally to him, the more he became tongue-tied and, worse, foot-tied, with the consequence that he never walked any more after that. Comparative researchers, too, sometimes perform interesting and significant work but then, once having asked themselves whether this work is really com-

parative, and then generalizing their questions to ask, "What is comparative research, anyway?" spend the rest of their intellectual lives arguing about

epistemology and the philosophy of science. (P. 284)

Although a growing volume of literature has addressed itself to methodological and theoretical problems,6 these have not yet been solved [35-41].*

Comparative research that uses the term culture increases the methodological difficulties. The word culture was adapted in French from the Latin cultura, which is related to the Latin cultus (cult or worship). In ordinary language, the major meaning of the term is closely associated with socially elitist concepts such as refinement of mind, tastes, and manners based on superior education and

upbringing. It has also been identified with the intellectual side of civili-

*See also the Winter 1982-1983 (Vol. XII, No. 4) and Spring 1983 (Vol. XIII, No. 1-2) issues of this journal, under the guest-editorship of Nancy Adler, which deal with cross-cultural management . -Ed .




zation, particularly in its German spelling. In Europe before the Second World War, the term kultur was used extensively to support arguments on the social and racial superiority of some groups over others. Even today, culture is a term that the average man or woman tends to associate with elitism; and one has to remember that in the interwar years, the plethora of writings on " national character" had as its barely disguised motive the description of superior and inferior cultural traits [42].

It is worth mentioning these problems from the recent past to prepare us for the fact that they have not entirely disappeared in some current work. Social scientists have used "culture" in a bewildering array of meanings, starting with the anthropological definition of lyior [43] as "a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Sociologists have given the term a slightly narrower scope by concentrating on ideational, symbolic, and evaluative elements, that is to say, "ideas and beliefs, expressive symbols of value patterns" [44] . The purpose was to distinguish culture from society and social structure, but the concept is difficult to make operational. Psychologists often keep to the original layman's use of the term as an elitist category [45]. It can also be defined as subjective culture, i.e., a "group's way of perceiving its social environment" [35] . Curie [46] defines culture as ' 'a cluster of socially determined attitudes and behavior patterns grouped and elaborated round structurally defined roles and relationships." Although Curie did not intend it, this definition could be used to describe differences among larger geographic entities. To make matters even more difficult, the term culture has been used, as early as 1951 by Jaques [47], to describe the social climate of a single manufacturing unit and, more recently, by many other writers (see, for instance, Frost and co-workers [48]).

In comparative research on organizations, culture is rarely isolated as a defined category and separated from other variables as an integral part of the research design [49]. It is more usually treated as a residual entity and as an afterthought. This problem has been scathingly analyzed in a seminal article by Roberts [3], who reviewed 526 publications and found that only 54 percent based their arguments about culture on empirical data. She came to the conclusion that even when data were available, the conceptualization was usually descriptive or vague and ignored the impact of alternative factors such as technology or structure, which probably accounted for a larger percentage variation of the dependent variable.

Explanations for cross-country differences vary, and some authors are content to describe the existence of differences without offering reasons for them. I shall argue, however, that if significant country or societal differences emerge repeatedly in different studies, causal explanations should be sought in the form of measurable independent variables. Major candidates for such analysis are child-rearing practices, educational systems, sociostructural factors such as class and religious practices, economic factors, and legal-political sys-




terns (see, for instances, Ajiferuke and Boddewyn [50]).

Ambiguous findings

One of the earliest and largest cross-national studies of managerial attitudes assembled samples from 14 countries [5]. The authors grouped their results into four clusters: (I) Nordic European (Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden); (2) Latin European (Belgium, France, Italy, Spain); (3) Anglo-American (En- gland and USA); and (4) developing countries (Argentina, Chile, India); Japan did not fit into any of the clusters.

More recently, somewhat similar country clusters have emerged from research on a large, multinational, high-technology company (IBM) that, from time to time, conducts surveys on its employees in about 40 countries. Some of these results have been analyzed by Hof stede [51]. One of Hof stede 's measures, based on three questions,7 is called a Power Distance Index (PDI). He finds that this measure correlates with the Gross National Economic Product of the employee's country and with its geographic location. The countries that are closer to the equator have larger PDI scores than the more Nordic countries. The ranking of countries according to the PDI index can also be arranged into two broad clusters not very different from the Haire and co-workers' [5] clusters, described above. Hofstede's first group includes: Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland), Germanic countries (Austria, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands), and Anglo-American countries (New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom, Austra- lia, Canada, the United States). The second broad cluster is made up of Latin European and Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Turkey, and France).

In a book on comparative organization study, Lammers and Hickson [52] present a theoretical argument based on a division into two main country clusters and supported by evidence from a variety of studies, including Hofstede's. The authors define culture as the "pattern of norms and roles embedded in certain paramount values as professed by organization participants.

' ' This theory devises two culture cluster categories, dividing bureaucratic values into a Latin and an Anglo-Saxon type. The Latin bureaucracy is characterized by centralization, a large number of hierarchical levels, rigid stratification, high bureaucratic control, low power distribution, low morale, low cooperativeness, and a preference for routine rather than innovative decisions. The Anglo-Saxon bureaucracy is

pictured as having the reverse of these characteristics. Since the conclusions of Lammers and Hickson seem to fit a number of different research projects they review, they feel entitled to argue for the existence of broad culture clusters.

However, not all cross-national or multinational research reproduces these

findings. In earlier research, Hickson and associates [53], working with 70 manufacturing organizations in 3 countries, concluded that, irrespective of country, consistent relationships exist between variables of organization context (size,




dependence, technology) and measures of structure (formalization, specializa- tion, autonomy). These findings, they argue, support a culture-free hypothesis by demonstrating that many relationships are stable across societies.8

In an eight-country comparative study of managerial attitudes and decision- making behavior, Heller and Wilpert [10] find a variety of significant country differences, but no consistent cultural patterns. The eight countries include France, Spain, Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. A number of statistical methods were used to test for country effects. Neither the two Latin nor the Anglo-German countries displayed characteristic profiles on leadership style or on attitudes toward jobs, skills, environmental pressures, or job satisfaction. Nevertheless, interesting differences among countries were found on most of these variables- for instance, on the extent of centralized versus decentralized decision-making styles. However, contrary to the culture cluster thesis, both French and Swedish top managers used decentralized styles, whereas British and American managers used more centralized methods.

Similar nonculture cluster findings have been reported from a 12-country study on managerial objectives [54] and from a large, cross-national comparison of managerial values of over 2,500 respondents in 6 countries in which organizational context was an important predictor. There was a surprising similarity in the value systems of managers from such different countries as the United States, Japan, Korea, India, and Australia [13]. The Industrial Democracy in Europe 12- country comparative study [1,2] also failed to establish culture clusters, and the same is true of the recent 8-country research on the Meaning of Working [11].

It seems that it is too early to draw firm conclusions concerning the culture- free versus the culture-bound thesis, but this does not prevent us from obtaining theoretically, as well as empirically, interesting ideas from comparative research. A two-country study can be used to illustrate the importance of comparing organizational data in different locations. Gallie [55] examined Robert Blauner's thesis that automation creates a number of conditions that are more favorable to the worker than mass production industry. Joan Woodward [56] had also come to believe that automation leads to a high degree of social integration. However, some French Marxists have presented strong arguments in opposition to these conclusions.

Gallie [55] designed his study to compare two closely matched and highly automated companies, one in France and the other in England. He produced very convincing evidence that the Blauner and French Marxist theses could not be sustained on a generalistic basis. It seems that identical advanced automation technology is associated with high social integration in one country and low social integration in the other. Moreover, the value of this finding is independent of any cultural explanation.

Gallie concludes that the reason for the difference between the French and English workers in identical petrol refineries is due to the different pattern of




trade unionism and the different managerial systems in the two countries.9 As a consequence, it seems that Blauner's widely discussed thesis depends on circumstances that only comparative research can challenge, but culture need not be the best explanation.

A hypothesis about "culture" findings in organizational research

Although we have reviewed only a selection of cross- and multicountry projects, the diversity of the findings requires an explanation that future research in this area could test.

I should like to offer the suggestion that culture responses are at least partly a Junction of the format used for the stimulus question. Fairly broad general questions, not relating to specific, identifiable, current behavior, have tended to predominate in research studies that have found fairly clear culture differences. For instance, the Haire and co-workers' [5] research used deliberately broad questions, such as 'The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility and has relatively little ambition." Hofstede's [51] Power Distance Index consists of three questions, one of which asks subordinates whether "employees in general are afraid to disagree with superiors."

In contrast, questions in the Heller and Wilpert [10] research were very specific and concentrated on aspects of managers' day-to-day behavior. For example, managers were asked which of 5 alternative decision styles they used in coping with 12 different specific tasks. They were also asked to describe the skills needed for their own job within 12 specific alternative skill categories. The Bass and Eldridge [54] research on objectives also used carefully described situations referring to choices between specified tasks. Each participant was asked to consider himself to be a member of a management team in a firm that had shown a profit. He was then required to decide whether or not to spend $225,000 to eliminate a safety hazard, or some other problem.

It would seem possible that the difference between research projects that

produce culture clusters and those that do not is due to the type of question used. More general and broad questions may elicit responses that are anchored in something analogous to a group's collective unconscious or to its members' early upbringing and family-imbibed values. When the stimulus question refers to identifiable and specific situations familiar to the respondent, the answers will tend to be descriptive ofthat situation and will attract fewer free-floating, group- determined values and preferences.

It is possible, however, to think of specific situations that are deeply anchored in culturally determined values- for instance, religious practices, or even some of the rituals in modern bureaucratic organizations. Future research should therefore look into the format of the questions asked as well as the capacity of a

given situation to involve cultural values. Such an approach would induce re-




searchers to predefine what they mean by "culture" and why they expect to get similar responses from certain groups of countries. Furthermore, once a ' 'cultural" variable is identified, it may be preferable to use a term that describes this particular factor. For instance, if bureaucracy in some countries is characterized by centralization, low power distribution, little coopérât iveness, and high control, then an expression such as centralization-control would describe the phenomenon as well as, or better than, the expression Latin bureaucratic culture. This would avoid evoking the elitist and racially discriminatory image of the term culture or Kultur to which I referred earlier. The more specific descriptive labeling would also make it easier to integrate later findings to the effect that size or other contingencies predict

' 'centralization-control' ' in bureaucratic organizations, even in non-Latin countries.

Utility or perfection?

It is not difficult to criticize cross-national or multinational research, and it is the function of academics to look carefully at the weaknesses of each study. At the same time, a measure of realism is required. This is a relatively new area of work that has not yet developed validated theories or even widely acceptable models to explain the interaction among clearly identified critical factors. Independent and dependent variables can be separated by hypotheses, but, in most cases, causal conclusions are not appropriate. Many of these problems are, of course, shared by other disciplines, including biology and medicine. There are many diseases that can be diagnosed, but not cured; and there are others that seem to yield successfully to treatment although the reasons for this are not known.

In an analysis of five large cross-national studies, Roberts and Boyacigiller [41] argue that cross-national research is usually inferior to single-country studies. They give two reasons. First, the independent variable is said to be difficult to conceptualize and measure because the external organizational variables are either undefined or amorphous. Second, they argue that when researchers attempt to investigate settings in which there are different values and heritages, the research teams themselves also differ from one another on these dimensions (P. 426).

The external-variable problem can be exaggerated. In the Industrial Democra- cy in Europe study [1,2], the external variable was a fairly easily objectified measure of legal structures to support industrial relations practices. In a more recent three-country study, the external variable was metapower, i.e., the influence of external agents at a company's head office on intra-organizational decision processes [17]. Metapower is no more and no less subjective than other organizational variables customarily used in single-country studies.

The second Roberts and Boyacigiller criticism is very similar to the points I made earlier about the need to keep a check on unverifiable value prejudgments. Contrary to their theoretical argument, I showed that the multivalue position of




mixed country teams is in practice a help rather than a hindrance in achieving balanced judgments and verifiable results. Later, the above authors put forward eight criteria for achieving good cross-national research. 10 Most of these requirements are equally difficult to reach in single-country comparative studies, for instance, looking at the differential effect of size or technology on organizational effectiveness. Their most interesting demand is for more attention to be paid to time as a variable in organization research. This is a much-neglected factor, but is not peculiar to multinational research [57]. It is to a large extent due to the difficulty of obtaining funding for longitudinal studies and to the fact that academic promotion procedures put a heavy premium on cross-sectional research that can yield quick, though all too frequently superficial, results.

Multinational research is often undertaken because of a need to contribute data to the formation of policy. It must therefore be relevant rather than "pure," according to the traditional requirements of the physical sciences. Laboratory- type studies will yield few policy-relevant results, and the temptation to use few variables in a closed-system framework rather than an adequately complex set within an open-system longitudinal model must be forgone.

A balance must be struck, not only between costs and benefits but also between relevance and methodological sophistication. Critics of multinational studies still put too little emphasis on the quality of the data and the need to move beyond the questionnaire to obtain ethnographic insight into the processes under investigation. Cross-sectionally collected questionnaire data can be obtained cheaply, but their benefit to policy formation in organization research is very limited.

Conclusion

Today nobody doubts that individual countries cannot isolate themselves from the economic and social conditions that prevail in the world. Similarly, as we move toward the 21st century, fewer and fewer manufacturing and service organizations can afford to be encapsulated in their thinking or action by national considerations or past custom and practice: they have to assess themselves internation- ally in terms of other organizations with which they compete.

I have no doubt that, against this background, cross-national comparative research will be in great demand and will have to develop a number of relevant methodologies to satisfy its own needs, without being constrained by yesterday's canons of academic purity or financial cost.

Notes

1. Heller and Porter [4]; Haire, Ghiselli, and Porter [5]; Heller [6,7]; Industrial

Democracy in Europe Research Group (IDE) [8]; P. J. D. Drenth, P. L. Koopman, V.

Rus, M. Odar, F. A. Heller, and A. Brown (1979) "Participative Decision Making in

Organizations: A Three Country Comparative Study." Mimeographed. London: Tavis- tock Institute of Human Relations; V. Rus, F. A. Heller, and P. Drenth (1978) "Contin-




gency Power in Long Term Decision Making." Paper presented at World Congress of Sociology, Uppsala, Sweden, August; Heller and Wilpert [9]; Heller and Wilpert [10]; IDE [1,2]; MOW [11]; Heller et al. [12].

2. J.-M. Fourcade and B. Wilpert (1977) " Group Dynamics and Management Prob-

lems of an International Interdisciplinary Research Team." Mimeographed. Berlin: Inter- national Institute of Management.

3. The well-designed cross- and multinational research using questionnaires has adopted careful checks on the quality of translation and its cultural and linguistic adaptation [16].

4. In addition, overhead and "international coordinating expenses" may have to be funded.

5 . The reader will find evidence for this in the final chapter of two large multinational research studies: Tannenbaum et al. [21] and MOW [11].

6. T. Schweitzer (1975) "Data Quality and Data Quality Control in Cross-cultural Studies." Paper presented at the International Institute of Management (West Berlin) Conference on "Problems of Cross Cultural Comparative Research," 28-30 November.

7. The three questions relate to: (7) greater or less perceived fear of disagreeing with superiors; (2) subordinates' perception of their boss's decision-making behavior; and (3) subordinates' dependence or counterdependence needs.

8. However, since the three countries in this research were North American, British, and Canadian, the lack of differences could be attributed to the absence of Latin or Asian countries.

9. There are, of course, people who would be prepared to argue that these two explanations are "cultural." We are back to the issue of defining culture and avoiding putting this label on any findings that show country differences (rather than on a previously agreed variable).

10. As I indicated at the beginning of this paper, what I call cross-national research carried out without benefit of semi-autonomous multinational teams yields less insightful results than multinational research.

References

1. Industrial Democracy in Europe Research Group (IDE) (1981) Industrial De- mocracy in Europe. London: Oxford University Press.

2. Industrial Democracy in Europe Research Group (IDE) (1981) European Indus- trial Relations. London: Oxford University Press.

3. Roberts, K. (1970) "On Looking at an Elephant: An Evaluation of Cross-cultural Research Related to Organizations." Psychological Bulletin, 74, 327-50.

4. Heller, F. A., and Porter, L. W. (1966) "Perceptions of Managerial Needs and Skills in Two National Samples." Occupational Psychology, 40, 1-13. Reproduced in T. D. Weinshall (Ed.) (1977) Culture and Management. Harmonds worth: Penguin Books. Pp. 323-40.

5. Haire, M., Ghiselli, E., and Porter, L. (1966) Managerial Thinking. New York: Wiley.

6. Heller, F. A. (1971) Managerial Decision Making: A Study of Leadership Styles and Power Sharing among Senior Managers. London: Tavistock Publications.

7. Heller, F. A. (1976) "The Decision Process: An Analysis of Power Sharing at Senior Organizational Levels." In R. Dubin (Ed.), Handbook of Work, Organization and Society. Chicago: Rand McNally. Pp. 687-745.

8. Industrial Democracy in Europe Research Group (IDE) (1976) "Industrial De- mocracy in Europe." Social Science Information, 15, 177-203.

9. Heller, F. A., and Wilpert, B. (1979) "Managerial Decision Making: An Inter- national Comparison." In G. W. England, A. R. Negandhi, and B. Wilpert (Eds.),




Functioning Organizations in Cross Cultural Perspective. Kent, OH: Kent State Uni- versity Press.

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11. Meaning of Working International Research Group (MOW) (1987) The Mean- ing of Working. London: Academic Press.

12. Heller, F. A., Drenth, P., Koopman, P., and Rus, V. (1988) Decisions in Orga- nizations: A Three Country Study. London: Sage.

13. England, G. (1975) The Manager and His Values: An International Perspective from the USA, Japan, Korea, India, and Australia. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

14. Adler, N. J. (1983) "Cross-cultural Management: Issues to be Faced." Inter- national Studies of Management & Organization, 73(1-2), 7-45.

15. Vallier, J. (Ed.) (1972) Comparative Methods in Sociology. Berkeley, CA: Uni- versity of California Press.

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