Individualism-collectivism orientation and employee attitudes: a comparision of employees from India and Ireland

Abstract

Research on cross-cultural management has suggested that employee attitudes and values differ across cultures. This stream of research suggests that managerial practices that are successful in one culture may not be successful in another culture. Hofstede's (1980) study on cultural values suggests that Indians tend to be more collectivist, whereas the Irish tend to be more individualistic. However, both Ireland and India tended to be similar in terms of weak uncertainty avoidance. In this study, consistent with the suggestion that Irish are more individualistic and Indians are more collectivists, we hypothesized and found significantly higher levels of normative and affective communitment, and willingness to expend extra effort on the job for the Indian employees, compared with the Irish employees. Yet, contrary to our expectation, Irish employees reported greater intent to stay with the current organization than Indian employees.