Executive stereotyping between cultures: the British vs. German manager

Abstract

German and British managers who were attending professional training courses in management were required to rate managers from the other country as to how they perceived them. The profiles were significantly different, with British managers perceiving Germans as more industrious, meticulous, structured, workaholic, while simultaneously they were more guarded, humourless, arrogant, threatening and rejecting. The profiles were unaffected by level of management or age. Collapsing data and subjecting to a principal component factor analysis led to three major factors being extracted, the first two of which were bipolar dimensions ranging from rejecting to accepting, and lethargic to hardworking. Germans were perceived as much higher on the factors rejecting and hardworking. There were no differences between cultures in their perception of managers along the third factor, self‐sufficiency, the latter loaded on patriotism, self‐confidence and self‐sufficiency. Discusses the implications of these results within the framework of managerial stereotyping.

Citation

Cooper, C.L. and Kirkcaldy, B.D. (1995), "Executive stereotyping between cultures: the British vs. German manager", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 3-6. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683949510075146