Cross-cultural organizational psychology

Abstract

The chapter presents an overview of the cross-cultural organizational psychology literature with three specific aims: to provide future research direction based on a historical projection of the development of the field; to summarize the state-of-the-art literature in substansive areas, including recruitment and selection, nature of jobs, criteria for performance, work motivation, job attitudes, teamwork, leadership, conflict and negotiation; and to discuss challenges faced by cross-cultural researchers (e.g., level of analysis, interaction between cultural and organizational contingencies). Our review indicates that individualism-collectivism attracts the most research attention and accounts for substantial variation in organizational behavior across cultures. Our review also points out that the impact of cultural values on organizational phenomena vary depending on organizational and task-related contingencies. The need is identified to expand the cross-cultural industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology literature to include more research on cross-cultural interactions and culture-specific enactments of organizational behavior.