The Influence of Values on Management Practices

Abstract

That research on the management of public and private organizations has been dominated by the settings and assumptions of the United States is widely acknowledged. Yet little research is truly centered in nonWestern countries rather than mere application of Western concepts. This failure is particularly apparent in empirical theory testing. While there are numerous excellent discussions of the limitations of U.S. assumptions in other cultures (e.g., Arora, 1972; Hofstede, 1980a), there has heretofore been little empirical testing of genuinely nonWestern theories of management. However, when such research has been undertaken, it has been particularly fruitful. For example, Haire, Ghiselli, and Porter's (1966) research on cross-national differences in employees' work goals led to an important research stream in comparative management (Hofstede, 1980b; Ronen and Shenkar, 1985). Our understanding, particularly of public management, has been limited by a body of public sector management research that is particularly culture-specific. One example of this cultural specificity has been the debate over the differences between public and private organizations. Allison (1983) argued that government organizations are mean-