Response Styles in a Cross-Cultural Managerial Study

Abstract

Summary An examination was made of the response sets of a total of 1647 expatriate and local managers from nine countries who were respondents to a study of stereotyping undertaken in American, British, and Japanese firms in Singapore, and in Japanese firms in Britain, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. The data consisted of responses to semantic differential items. There were marked differences between various nationalities in terms of their tendency to use extreme responses and midpoint responses. Moreover, age and education were shown to have an effect in certain instances.