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Cross Cultural Management Research

Assumptions, Evidence, and Suggested Directions

University of Wisconsin Madison, USA, bgerhart{at}bus.wisc.edu

National culture is widely viewed as a constraint on management practice. However, that view is increasingly inconsistent with available empirical evidence. Building on earlier work, this article maps out the key assumptions that must be met for cross cultural management research that uses national culture (mean) scores, such as those available from Hofstede and the GLOBE project, to yield relevant and interpretable findings. It is found that these assumptions are either inconsistent with available empirical evidence or have not been adequately addressed empirically. For example, for national culture to act as a constraint on management, cultural differences within countries should be small relative to differences between countries. Evidence shows, however, that this is not the case. As a consequence of the lack of support for this and other assumptions, the article suggests that cross cultural management research needs to proceed differently in the future and provides specific recommendations in this regard.

Key Words: effect size • human resource management • national culture • organizational culture • strategy

International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, Vol. 8, No. 3, 259-274 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1470595808096669


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