July 2004, Volume 35, Number 4, Pages 284-305

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Article

The impact of societal cultural values and individual social beliefs on the perceived effectiveness of managerial influence strategies: a meso approach

Ping Ping Fu¹, Jeff Kennedy², Jasmine Tata³, Gary Yukl⁴, Michael Harris Bond¹, Tai-Kuang Peng⁵, Ekkirala S Srinivas⁶, Jon P Howell⁷, Leonel Prieto⁷, Paul Koopman⁸, Jaap J Boonstra⁸, Selda Pasa⁹, Marie-Francoise Lacassagne¹⁰, Hiro Higashide¹¹ and Adith Cheosakul¹²

¹Chinese University of Hong Kong, Singapore

²Nanyang Business School, Singapore

³Loyola University Chicago, USA

⁴State University at Albany, USA

⁵I-Shou University, Taiwan

⁶Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur, India

⁷New Mexico State University, USA

⁸Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands

⁹Bogazici University Istanbul, Turkey

¹⁰Lacassagne Université de Bourgogne, France

¹¹Waseda University, Japan

¹²Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Correspondence to: Dr J Tata, Loyola University Chicago, 820 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. Tel: +1 312 915 6543; E-mail Jtata@luc.edu

This paper reports the findings of a 12-nation study designed to test empirically the relationships between societal cultural values, individual social beliefs, and the perceived effectiveness of different influence strategies. The relationships between three types of broad influence strategy (persuasive, assertive, and relationship based) and four dimensions of individual beliefs (cynicism, fate control, reward for application, and religiosity) were examined. Three of Project GLOBE's cultural values (in-group collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and future orientation) were selected to investigate their direct effects on the rated effectiveness of influence strategies, and their possible interaction with dimensions of individual beliefs. Results showed that different dimensions of individual social beliefs predict the perceived effectiveness of the three types of influence strategy, and that cultural values can moderate the strength of the relationship between these dimensions of individual social beliefs and the perceived effectiveness of influence strategies.

Journal of International Business Studies (2004) 35, 284-305. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400090
Published online 24 June 2004

social beliefs; cultural values; influence strategies

Received: 13 May 2002; revised: 15 December 2003; accepted: 6 April 2004

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