National Culture and the Implementation of \"High-Stretch\" Performance Standards: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

This study explores how national culture affects employees` reaction to different modes of implementing high-stretch performance standards. An experiment was performed using Chinese and U.S. nationals to represent cultures that diverge on two relevant dimensions: power distance and individualism/collectivism. Consistent with culturally based expectations, Chinese nationals more readily accepted imposed high-stretch performance standards--relative to U.S. nationals--as manifested by the degree to which they performed up to those standards. Also, differences were found between Chinese and U.S. nationals` satisfaction with high-stretch performance standards under autocratic vs. consultative participation in the standard-development process. However, further analysis was unable to dismiss the possibility that this result, which was based on subjects` self-reports on Likert-scale questions, could have been an artifact of cross-national, response-set bias. Other findings indicated that national-culture effects arose in more complex ways than were originally conceived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]