Cross-Cultural Industrial and Organizational Psychology

TLDR

Sociocultural context shapes organizational phenomena, yet cross‑cultural I/O research has largely focused on leadership, motivation, and work values while neglecting staffing, performance management, and employee health and safety, and it suffers from theoretical limitations such as linearity assumptions and atheoretical approaches. The article critically evaluates the theory and scope of cross‑cultural I/O research, outlining its past and future directions. The author argues that staffing, performance management, and employee health and safety are more central, better linked to human potential and workplace conditions, and more capable of guiding practice across cultures than traditional topics.

Abstract

This article aims at critically evaluating the theory and scope of cross-cultural industrial and organizational (I/O) research, emphasizing its past and its future. In the theory section, the author discusses the ways sociocultural context influences organizational phenomena. Also discussed are issues such as the level of theory, assumption of linearity, unilateral effect of culture on organizations, conceptualization of culture, and atheoretical nature of research. In the second section, three areas of research, which are underrepresented in cross-cultural I/O literature, are discussed: staffing, performance management, and employee health and safety. It is argued that compared to traditional research topics of cross-cultural I/O psychology (e.g., leadership, motivation, work values, etc.), these topics are more central to the field, more related to improvement of human potential and conditions at work, and better able to guide practices in various cultural contexts.