A Comparative Study On The Differences Of Decision-Making Styles Between Chinese Managers In State-Owned Enterprises And American Multinationals-From A Cross-cultural Perspective

With the ever-growing globalization, intercultural communication has become unprecedentedly important and frequent. Managing a culturally diverse workforce requires managers to understand and value diversity in order to maximize the potential of the workforce. Managers not only need to be aware of cultural variables and their effects on behaviors in the workplace but also learn to appreciate cultural diversity and understand how to build constructive working relationships with people from different cultural backgrounds. Decision making is an important factor that deserves close attention in this global environment.Through a survey of 120 subjects of Chinese nationality, the present study investigates the relationship between cultural tendency and decision making styles. The surveyed subjects are divided into two groups as managers from Chinese State-Owned Enterprises and those in American multinationals. Decisions are also split into longer-term decisions and short-term decisions by nature.Based on an empirical and quantified study, this paper seeks to portrait the decision making patterns for two groups of subjects in the light of Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions, decision making theory, and decision classification proposed by Frank Heller. Three hypotheses are proposed based on the previous literature review and research.Data collected are analyzed through One-Way ANOVA, MANOVA with repeated measures to test the cultural tendency of the two groups and the correlation between cultural orientation and decision making styles. Separate computation is conducted for longer-term and short-term decisions respectively.The author's hypotheses are justified in this thesis. The managers in state-owned enterprises show different cultural tendency from the managers in American multinationals as predicted. With regard to decision making, relationship between cultural index and the selection of styles is significant, which is correspondent to the initial expectation. It means that culturally different subjects prefer dissimilar decision making patterns. In addition, through the analysis, the four styles are proved to be prominently differing from each other.