Which of the following is an implication of high degree of managerial mobility in societies that emphasize individualism?

Abstract

Prior research has examined age, gender, experience, and voluntariness as the main moderators of beliefs on technology acceptance. This paper extends this line of research beyond these demographic and situational variables. Motivated by research that suggests that behavioral models do not universally hold across cultures, the paper identifies espoused national cultural values as an important set of individual difference moderators in technology acceptance. Building on research in psychological anthropology and cultural psychology that assesses cultural traits by personality tests at the individual level of analysis, we argue that individuals espouse national cultural values to differing degrees. These espoused national cultural values of masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance are incorporated into an extended model of technology acceptance as moderators. We conducted two studies to test our model. Results indicated that, as hypothesized, social norms are stronger determinants of intended behavior for individuals who espouse feminine and high uncertainty avoidance cultural values. Contrary to expectations, espoused masculinity/femininity values did not moderate the relationship between perceived usefulness and behavioral intention but, as expected, did moderate the relationship between perceived ease of use and behavioral intention.

Journal Information

The editorial objective of the MIS Quarterly is the enhancement and communication of knowledge concerning the development of IT-based services, the management of IT resources, and the use, impact, and economics of IT with managerial, organizational, and societal implications. Professional issues affecting the IS field as a whole are also in the purview of the journal.

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Social structure

A society's "social structure" refers to its basic social organization. Although there are many different aspects of social structure, two main dimensions stand out as being of particular importance when explaining differences among cultures. The first is the degree to which the basic unit of social organization is the individual, as op­posed to the group. Western societies tend to emphasize the primacy of the individ­ual, while groups tend to figure much larger in many other societies. The second di­mension is the degree to which a society is stratified into classes or castes. Some societies are characterized by a high degree of social stratification and relatively low mobility between strata (e.g., Indian and to a lesser extent British), while other soci­eties are characterized by a low degree of social stratification and high mobility be­tween strata (e.g., American).

Individuals and Groups

A group is an association of two or more individuals who have a shared sense of identity and who interact with each other in structured ways on the basis of a common set of expectations about each other's behavior.8 Human social life is group life. Individu­als are involved in families, work groups, social groups, recreational groups, and so on. However, while groups are found in all societies, societies differ according to the degree to which the group is viewed as the primary means of social organization.9 In some societies individual attributes and achievements are viewed as being more im­portant than group membership, while in other societies just the reverse is true.

The individual

In Chapter 2 we discussed individualism as a political philosophy. However, individ­ualism is more than just an abstract political philosophy. In many Western societies the individual is the basic building block of social organization. This is reflected not just in the political and economic organization of society, but also in the way in which people perceive themselves and relate to each other in social and business set­tings. In the value systems of many Western societies, for example, individual achievement is emphasized. The social standing of an individual is not so much a function of whom they work for, as of their individual performance in whatever work-setting they choose for themselves.

The emphasis placed on individual performance in many Western societies has both beneficial and harmful aspects. For example, the United States voices an admiration of "rugged individualism" and entrepreneurship.

One of the benefits of this is the high level of entrepreneurial activity in the United States and other Western societies. New products and new ways of doing business have repeatedly been created in the United States by entrepreneurial individuals (e.g., personal computers, photocopiers, computer software, biotechnology, supermarkets, and discount retail stores). One can argue that the dynamism of the U.S. economy owes much to the philosophy of individualism.

On the other hand, the philosophy of individualism also finds expression in a high degree of managerial mobility between companies, and this is not always good. While moving from company to company may be good for individual managers, who are trying to build impressive resumes, it is not necessarily a good thing for many American companies. The lack of loyalty and commitment to an individual com­pany, and the tendency to move when a better offer comes along, can result in the creation of managers that have good general skills but lack the in-depth knowledge, experience, and network of interpersonal contacts that come from years of working within the same company. Company-specific experience, knowledge, and personal contacts are probably all good things, since they may increase the ability of a man­ager to perform his or her job effectively. A manager may draw on past experience, knowledge, and a network of contacts to find solutions to current problems. It fol­lows that American companies may suffer if their managers lack these things.

Moreover, the emphasis on individualism may make it difficult to build teams within an organization to perform collective tasks. If individuals are always compet­ing with each other, it may prove difficult for them to cooperate. A recent study of U.S. competitiveness by MIT concluded that U.S. firms are hurt in the global econ­omy by a failure to achieve cooperation both within a company (e.g., between func­tions; between management and labor) and between companies (e.g., between a firm and its suppliers). Given the emphasis placed on individualism in the American value system, perhaps this failure is not surprising.10

Put another way, the emphasis on individualism in the United States, while helping to create a dynamic entrepre­neurial economy, may raise the costs of doing business due to its adverse impact on managerial mobility and cooperation.

There is one positive aspect of high managerial mobility. Moving from firm to firm exposes executives to different ways of doing business. The ability to compare different business practices helps U.S. executives to identify how good practices and techniques developed in one firm might be profitably applied to other firms.

The group

In contrast to the Western emphasis on the individual, in many other societies the group is the primary unit of social organization. In Japan, for example, the social sta­tus of an individual is determined as much by the standing of the group to which he or she belongs as by his or her individual performance.11 In traditional Japanese soci­ety the group was the family or village to which an individual belonged. Today the group has frequently come to be associated with the work team or business organiza­tion to which an individual belongs. In a now classic study of Japanese society, Nakane has noted how this expresses itself in everyday life:

When a Japanese faces the outside (confronts another person) and affixes some position to himself socially he is inclined to give precedence to institution over kind of occupation. Rather than saying, "I am a typesetter" or "I am a filing clerk," he is likely to say, "I am from B Publishing Group" or "I belong to S company."12

Nakane goes on to observe that the primacy of the group to which an individual belongs often evolves into a deeply emotional attachment in which identification with the group becomes all important in one's life.

Put another way, one of the cen­tral values of Japanese culture is the importance attached to group membership. This may have beneficial implications for business firms.

Strong identification with the group is said to pressure for mutual self-help and collective action. If the worth of an individual is linked to the achievements of the group (e.g., firm), as Nakane maintains is the case in Japan, this creates a strong in­centive for individual members of the group to work together for the common good. In other words, the lack of cooperation that the MIT study found in many American firms may not be a problem in Japanese firms. Some argue that the competitive ad­vantage of Japanese enterprises in the global economy is based partly on their ability to achieve close cooperation between individuals within a company and between companies. Among other things, this finds expression in the widespread diffusion of self-managing work teams within Japanese organizations, the close cooperation be­tween different functions within Japanese companies (e.g., between manufacturing, marketing, and RckD), and the cooperation between a company and its suppliers on issues such as design, quality control, and inventory reduction.13 In all these cases, cooperation is driven by the need to improve the performance of the group (i.e., the business firm) to which individuals belong.

The primacy of the value of group identification in cultures such as Japan can also dis­courage managers and workers from moving from company to company. This is the case in Japan where lifetime employment in a particular company is the norm in cettain sec­tors of the economy (estimates suggest between 20 and 40 percent of all Japanese em­ployees have formal or informal lifetime employment guarantees). One result of the life­time employment system is that managers and workers build up knowledge, experience, and a network of interpersonal business contacts. All these can help managers perform their jobs more effectively and assist them in achieving cooperation with others.

However, the primacy of the group is not always beneficial. Just as U.S. society is characterized by much dynamism and entrepreneurship, reflecting the primacy of values associated with individualism, there are those who argue that Japanese society is characterized by a corresponding lack of dynamism and entrepreneurship.

Although it is not clear how this will play itself out in the long run, it is possible that the United States will continue to create more new industries than Japan. Put another way, for cultural reasons the United States may continue to be more successful than Japan at pioneering radically new products and new ways of doing business.

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Which of the following is the best example of high uncertainty avoidance culture?

Which of the following is a possible downside of emphasizing the primacy of group identification over individualism?

Which of the following is a characteristic of high uncertainty avoidance cultures?

Which statement about culture is true multinational enterprises can be engines of cultural change?