گرایش فردگرایی ـ جمع گرایی و نگرش های کارکنان: مقایسه کارکنان بخش فن آوری پیشرفته در هند و ایرلند

In this study, we examined the effects of individualism–collectivism (I/C) orientations on organizational commitment (affective and normative), tenure intent, and willingness to expend effort among Indian and Irish employees. Results indicated that Indians exhibited higher willingness to expend effort, affective and normative commitments than the Irish employees. Irish employees, however, reported higher tenure intent than Indians. The self-reliance dimension of I/C predicted commitment and tenure intent in the hypothesized direction. The competitiveness dimension of I/C predicted tenure intent in the hypothesized direction but predicted commitments and effort opposite to the hypothesized direction. Supremacy of individual goals dimension of I/C predicted effort and solitary work preference dimension of I/C predicted effort and normative commitment in the expected directions. Implications are discussed.

Since Hofstede's (1980) work on national cultures, the role of individualistic versus collectivist values in influencing the work attitudes of employees has been studied extensively. While Hofstede, 1980 and Hofstede, 1984 proposed that individualism–collectivism (I/C) is a uni-dimensional, bipolar cultural value, subsequent studies (e.g., Parkes et al., 2001, Ramamoorthy and Flood, 2002 and Wagner, 1995) have treated I/C as a multi-dimensional individual difference variable and examined their effects on employee attitudes such as commitment, tenure intent, loyalty, pro-social behavior, etc. Consistent with the suggestions of Hofstede (1992) that management practices differ across cultures, several studies have examined the fit between I/C values of individual employees and their work values both cross-culturally (e.g., Parkes et al., 2001) and at the individual level (Ramamoorthy and Carroll, 1998). The work attitudes that I/C orientations seem to affect include team loyalty, pro-social behaviors, attitudes towards a variety of HRM practices such as performance appraisal, reward systems, staffing practices, cooperation, effort, commitment, and tenure intent (Clugston et al., 2000, Gomez-Mejia and Wellbourne, 1991, Moorman, 1991, Moorman and Blakely, 1995, Parkes et al., 2001, Ramamoorthy and Carroll, 1998, Ramamoorthy and Flood, 2002, Ramamoorthy et al., 2005, Sosik and Jung, 2001 and Wagner, 1995). Although cultural differences may exist across cultures, a few studies have suggested that global organizations may still be able to find a fit between employees and their managerial practices to the extent intra-cultural variations on I/C at the individual levels may exist (Parkes et al., 2001, Ramamoorthy and Carroll, 1998 and Ramamoorthy and Flood, 2002). These studies also show that the multi-dimensional nature of I/C may manifest itself in terms of relative emphases placed on competitiveness versus cooperativeness, focus on individual versus group, equity versus equality, and independence versus interdependence. In light of these suggestions, the goals of the present study are: (1) Do work attitudes differ between India and Ireland that may arise out of individualistic values of Irish and collectivist values of Indian employees as reported in prior research (Hofstede, 1980)? (2) Do intra-cultural variations on I/C orientations of employees predict their work attitudes? In doing so, we are hypothesizing and treating I/C as a multi-dimensional individual difference variable consistent with prior research (Kagitcibasi, 1994, Schwartz, 1994, Triandis, 1995 and Triandis et al., 1990). For this study, we chose the following work attitudes: affective commitment, normative commitment, willingness to expend extra effort on the job (extra effort) and intention to stay with the organization (tenure intent). Prior research shows that these attitudes are valued by organizations and may impact a variety of organizational outcomes such as absenteeism, turnover, teamwork and productivity. Our study should be of considerable interest to researchers and managers for the following reasons: First, organizational commitment, extra effort, and tenure intent have been shown to have desirable behavioral consequences, such as performance, employee retention, attendance and citizenship behaviors (e.g., Allen and Meyer, 1996, Clugston et al., 2000, Meyer and Allen, 1997 and Milkovich and Newman, 2005). Second, we examine the cultural influence at the national, as well as the individual level. Thus, the findings of this study may be of interest not only for global managers and cross-cultural researchers but for any organization, domestic or global in operations. Third, the comparison of cultural influences among Indian and Irish employees may be timely because both India and Ireland have liberalized their economies, have attracted a high volume of foreign direct investment particularly in the high-technology sector and have seen a change in the management practices as a result ( Budhwar and Khatri, 2001, Budhwar and Sparrow, 1997, Burnham, 2003 and O'Malley and Gorman, 2001). Ireland and India share certain similar characteristics such as a population growth of 1.40% and 1.16%, relatively younger workforce with median ages of 32 and 25, an emphasis on service sector with the service sector contributing 50.6% and 49% of the GDP, service sector employment of 50.6% and 63%, and a GDP growth rate of 6.9%, and 5.1%, respectively. Finally, the Indian national culture shows a relatively stronger emphasis on collectivism, whereas the Irish culture is more individualistic ( Berman et al., 1985 and Hofstede, 1980). In Hofstede's (1980) study, Ireland ranked in the twelfth place on individualism with an index of 70 and India ranked in the twenty-first place on individualism with an index of 48 with a higher rank indicating a higher level of individualism. Thus, our study may provide some insight into cross-cultural differences in the value systems and the resultant work attitudes. Our paper is organized into four sections. First, we briefly discuss the nature of individualism and collectivism, and hypothesize its relationship with various outcome variables, both at the cultural level and at the individual level. Specifically, we propose that collectivist Indians will report greater commitment to the organization, extra effort, and tenure intent. Further, we also propose that a higher level of individualism orientation will be negatively related to commitment, extra effort, and tenure intent. In the next section, we will discuss the methodology used to test these hypotheses. The third section presents the results of our study. Finally we will discuss the implications of our study and suggest directions for future research in this area.

In the present study, we found significant differences in employee attitudes across cultures. Further, we also found that intra-cultural variations on I/C predicted employee attitudes. However, our study is not without limitations. First, we used a cross-sectional survey design with the concomitant issues related to response bias and social desirability problems. Although we do not see this to be a major issue, future studies should possibly measure I/C and attitudes at different time periods to potentially eliminate response bias. Second, our sample is restricted to two cultures only. Lack of funding for the research and our contacts being on sabbatical leave in different cultures preempted us from extending the study to more cultures. Future studies should examine these issues with more diverse samples drawn from different countries. Third, we should also possibly look at the effects of other cultural dimensions such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity–femininity dimensions on work attitudes. Finally, although India and Ireland exhibited similar macro-economic characteristics, we cannot totally rule out the effects of these variables on the work attitudes. Thus, separating the effects of economic and cultural variables on work attitudes itself may be a worthwhile pursuit for researchers. Overall, the present study provides a useful starting point for a potential avenue for research in the cross-cultural arena.