Research On Differing Attitudes Towards Interim Management As An Employment Form Among Different Cultures

Interim management is a modern form of hiring top level executives for a temporary time frame.It enables organizations of all kinds to secure over qualified managers who can provide specific skills and qualities to help the organization get through a transition period.It creates a more flexible and versatile management system that can add value on many levels of the organization.As an employment form it has gained a lot of popularity in Western Europe and in the US.In China it has however not had a big breakthrough yet.There seem to be certain reluctance among Chinese managers to both take up employment as interim managers themselves and to hire interim managers for their organizations.This observation gave birth to the idea that Chinese managers may have a more negative attitude toward this type of temporary employment form which as rooted in certain cultural values and beliefs.Based on this idea the title of this dissertation was created;Research on Differing Attitudes towards Interim Management as an Employment Form between Different Cultures.The purpose of this study is to identify which,if any,cultural traits are important for forming attitudes towards interim management as an employment form,if these have a positive or negative impact on a managers actual attitude towards the employment form,and ultimately if these attitudes differ between cultures.To be able to answer these questions I looked to previous research on interim management and on cultural differences.The work of Geert Hofstede was an important contributor to the cultural part.Interim management is however a topic that has not been explored in great detail within the academic world so far and first hand data collection was needed to broaden my knowledge about this topic.To solve this issue a mixed method of research was applied where a quantitative study was first carried out,relying on qualitative interviews with four individuals that can be described as“Industry experts”.This in turn laid a foundation on which to build the quantitative study.The quantitative study relied on a Likert-scale survey to measure attitudes towards interim management and cultural belonging of the respondents.The results of this survey was analyzed using various statistical tools which in turn created a foundation for drawing certain conclusion to answer the research questions and the hypothesis used to structure this paper.The sources used both for the qualitative research and the quantitative research in this dissertation was obtained through the help of an Interim Management agency where I conducted a six month internship before and during the writing of this paper.The research helped me define interim management as an employment form;assignments on a limited time frame with an overhanging uncertainty to both the employer and the employee.It revealed certain personal traits that can be considered favorable among interim managers;flexibility,open mindedness,strong leadership skills and ability to deal with risk.It went on to look at how cultural traits impact attitude towards interim management as an employment form.This resulted in the following findings:“Chinese managers”have more a more negative attitude towards interim management than what“Western managers”have;measuring this attitude on a scale from-2 to 12 where a low score constitute negative attitudes and a high score positive attitudes,the first group had a mean of3.626 while the second group had a mean of 8.157.It established that individualistic managers have more positive attitudes towards interim management as an employment form than what collectivistic managers have.A Spearman's Rho analysis on these two variables resulted in r_s=0.491.It found that managers with high uncertainty avoidance have more negative attitudes towards interim management than what managers with low uncertainty avoidance have.A Spearman's Rho analysis of these two variables resulted in r_s=-0.524.It also concluded that long-term oriented managers have more negative attitudes towards interim management than what short-term oriented managers have.A Spearman's Rho analysis resulted in r_s=-0.493.Ultimately it also found that there is a correlation between a manager's cultural origin and his or hers attitude towards interim management as an employment form.A series of student-t tests were performed as a quality check on whether differences in personality traits among managers could be attributed to culture or if other factors came in to play.Having confirmed this,a regression analysis was performed to measure the correlation between the different cultural aspects and the manager's attitude towards interim management as an employment form.Even though this analysis resulted in a rather low R-square,a statistical significant P-value was found which led me to conclude that there is a correlation between cultural traits,which could to some extent be used to represent a manager's cultural origin,and his or hers attitude towards interim management as an employment form.The dissertation concluded that culture has a certain impact on a manager's attitude towards interim management as an employment form,but that other factors also come into play.Familiarity with the employment form is another factor that potentially has a big impact on forming such attitudes.This research has helped filled a gap in the literature on interim management and has cast some light on how culture can be part of affecting professional managers attitude towards certain employment forms.It has laid a foundation for other researcher to build on and has uncovered some points of interest for organizations or individuals engaged in interim management should be aware of.