Andr Laurent (1983) carried out investigations in several countries into the attitudes of managers towards their organisation. A series of studies he made concerning national differences in concepts of management produced interesting results. Over a period of two years, questions were put to experienced international managers attending executive programmes at an international business school. The findings showed clear differences between countries with regard to the perception of organisations as political systems, authority systems, role-formalisation systems and hierarchical relationship systems.

The study was replicated among much younger and less experienced MBA students and in two multi- national companies, one being a US-based chemical firm with subsidiaries in France, Germany and Great Britain, and later in amended form to another multinational. The results from the replications were essentially the same as those from the first survey among executive programme participants. Although it might have been expected for those working in multinationals to have undergone some kind of homogenising effect in terms of managerial concepts, the results showed a surprising stability. Moreover, the results from the first multinational surveyed showed respondents' concepts to be even more entrenched.

Laurent's conclusion that the management process in the ten countries surveyed is as much culture- bound as their cooking is echoed in the results of the GLOBE project's survey among company employees working in their own society. The national culture remains dominant within the organisation. As Laurent explains, employees do not leave their national culture behind at the company entrance.

One of the questions which Laurent used in his surveys is given below. Respondents were asked to react to the following statement:

'It is important for a manager to have at hand precise answers to most of the questions that his subordinates may raise about their work.'

Questions

1. Using the percentages given in the above figure, how would you characterise the attitudes of Swedes, Germans and Japanese towards the role of the manager in an organisation?

2. How would you describe the research method Laurent used?

Transcribed Image Text:

Examine the results and answer the questions below Figure 1.1. Sweden Netherlands USA Denmark United Kingdom Switzerland Belgium Germany France Italy Indonesia China Japan 0 10 10 17 18 20 23 27 38 44 | 46 53 66 30 40 50 60 Percentage agreeing with statement 70 73 74 78 1 80 90