This paper reviews cross-cultural research in management control systems (MCS) appearing in English-language journals over the past 15 years. The objectives are to examine these studies for their convergence or otherwise with respect to the state of our understanding of cultural effects on MCS design, and to analyse their theoretical and methodological strengths and weaknesses to guide future research. The review identifies four major weaknesses seen to apply collectively to this research: (i) a failure to consider the totality of the cultural domain in theoretical exposition; (ii) a tendency to not consider explicitly the differential intensity of cultural norms and values across nations; (iii) a tendency to treat culture simplistically both in the form of its representation as a limited set of aggregate dimensions, and in the assumption of a uniformity and unidimensionality of those dimensions; and (iv) an excessive reliance on the value dimensional conceptualization of culture, which has produced a highly restricted conception and focus on culture, and placed critical limits on the extent of understanding derived from the research to date. ©

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/A/Accounting,%20Organizations%20and%20Society/Vol24.Issue56.July1999/215.pdf

Cross-cultural research in management control systems design: a review of the current state

This paper outlines a model of leadership attuned to the cultural specificities of the Overseas Chinese (OSC) context. The model is developed in a contrast ive mode to U.S. approaches to leadership which are depicted as being cultur ally bounded and non-transferable to the OSC situation. The model is extrapol ated from the persisting cultural values and traditions still prevalent in OSC organizations and management style. The concept of headship is heuristically adopted to demarcate the underlying orientation towards legitimized influen cing of followers by leaders and the structuring of relationships among the OSC. Chinese organizational 'heads' are seen to function on the basis of meet ing the mutually reinforcing dual requirements for legitimized order and com pliance achievement and the maintenance of social harmony. The cultural basis for meeting these requirements is examined in detail. The resulting 'leadership' orientation is depicted as 'paternalistic headship', the behavioural and attitu dinal e...

Harmony and Patriarchy: The Cultural Basis for 'Paternalistic Headship' Among the Overseas Chinese

Distinctive forms of business organization have become dominant and successful in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong over the past 40 years. These different business systems reflect historical patterns of authority, trust and loyalty in Japan, Korea and China. They also vary in their specialization, strategic prefer ences and patterns of inter-firm co-ordination because of significant differences in their institutional environments, especially the political and financial systems. Similar processes exist in western societies but distinctive business systems are not so sharply bounded between nation states and cultures in Europe and North America.

The Social Construction of Business Systems in East Asia

The economic success of different forms of business organization in East Asian countries emphasizes the variety of viable enterprise structures and suggests the need for a comparative analysis of how they develop and operate in different societal contexts. Major differences between East Asian business 'recipes' include the range of activities that are authoritatively coordinated, their patterns of development, the ways in which they are organized and controlled and the organization of inter enterprise relations. These differences suggest eight major dimensions on which dominant enterprise structures in different societies can be compared and how their development can be linked to major social institu tions.

Eastern Asian Enterprise Structures and the Comparative Analysis of Forms of Business Organization

Earlier reviews of the state of comparative management theory are considered and summarized and lead to the following conclusions: the literature suffers from an excess of simple empirical reportage; theoretical development is weak in the middle ground and at higher levels; there is a bias away from ethnographic work; perspectives tend to be narrow and partial. Some progress is visible as a result of the unifying work of Hofstede but its contribution also entails new avenues of enquiry about the determinants and consequences of culture. Some middle-range theory building is now occurring in specific fields such as expatriation, leadership, and HRM techniques, but it remains tentative. Dilemmas stemming from altern ative frameworks of meaning and complex causation pose severe epistemological challenges and require new approaches to comparison. The economics-based positivist paradigm is seriously inadequate for such challenges, but dangerously imperialist. A new, more theoretically sophisticated, approach is...

Dexter C Dunphy

Papers

The enterprise and management in East Asia