How future managers view societal culture: A comparison across seven CEE countries

Abstract

The purpose of our exploratory study is to describe the characteristics of a sample of Central and East European students in business and engineering from their cultural assumption perspective. The cluster-distinctive cultural practices are: High Power Distance, In-group and Institutional Collectivism, low Humane and Future Orientation. Expectations (ideals) record significant differences for all cultural dimensions, with the highest ones concerning Power Distance (desire to decrease), Performance Orientation and Humane Orientation (desire to increase). Country of origin influences the students' perceptions to a greater extent than their expectations, letting us presume that some of the societal cultural dimensions in the investigated region might show a trend toward harmonisation. Ziel dieser explorativen Studie ist es, die Charakteristiken einer Stichprobe aus zentral-und osteuropäischen Studierenden der Wirtschafts-und Ingenieurwissenschaften in Hinblick auf ihre kulturgeprägten Annahmen zu untersuchen. Für diese Region als typisch wahrgenommene Praktiken beziehen sich auf folgende Gesellschaftskulturdimensionen: hohe Machtdistanz, hoher gruppenbezogener und institutioneller Kollektivismus, sowie niedrige Human-und Zukunftsorientierung. Studentische Erwartungshaltungen (Ideale) zeigen von den Praktiken signifikant abweichende Werte für alle Kulturdimensionen, am stärksten ausgeprägt hinsichtlich Machtdistanz (Wunsch nach Reduktion), sowie Leistungs-und Humanorientierung (Wunsch nach Zunahme). Die seitens der Studierenden wahrgenommenen Praktiken sind stärker herkunftslandgeprägt als deren eigene Erwartungshaltungen. Daraus folgern wir, dass die Kulturdimensionen innerhalb dieser Region einem Trend zur Harmonisierung unterliegen, zumindest teilweise.

Wanting it all: the challenges of managing young talent in transition economies

“…Overall, the highest mean values were reported for instrumental work values, followed by cognitive, social-altruistic and prestige. The above described values are consistent with cultural characteristics reported by Catana et al (2013) from the GLOBE student sample. When looking at career ambitions of business students, Čater et al (2013) found that business students are very interested in managerial careers (78.9 percent of Polish students and 49.5 percent of Slovenian) which hints high ambitions and expectations regarding their employer obligations in terms of career development.…”

“…Our results also suggest that students in all three countries do not only have high expectations of employers, but are also willing to give a lot to employers, with the UK students leading by expressing significantly higher levels of loyalty, performance and development as employee obligations. In this way our results confirm the conclusion by Catana et al (2013) that young East Europeans perceive today's world as unpredictable and largely money-driven, so they are ready to work hard and gain additional education to 78 BJM 12,1 achieve tangible results in their work. Our results thus run against popular stereotype that young are expecting a lot and focusing on what they will get from employers and not willing to give much in return.…”

“…More interesting is the fact that Slovenians score significantly higher on stability than the other two countries, while there is no difference between Poland and the UK. It seems that traditional life-long employment and low voluntary turnover rates in Slovenia (Svetlik and Ilič, 2004), along with the cultural characteristic of risk aversion ( Jazbec, 2007) and higher uncertainty avoidance (Catana et al, 2013), contribute to Slovenian students expecting to stay with organizations. But at the same time they are not willing to personally commit to the organization nor to protect the image of the organizationthe mean value for loyalty in Slovenia is significantly lower than in either Poland or the UK.…”

“…The GLOBE student project provides valuable insights into cultural characteristics of the young in the CEE region. Catana et al (2013) found that their cultural characteristics include high power distance, in-group and also institutional collectivism, but low humane and future orientation. Ideally, students would prefer lower power distance, but higher performance and humane orientations and in-group collectivism (related to importance of family).…”

Multinationals and the evolving contours of their human management practices in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

“…It should also be emphasized that the countries under study are culturally composed of several different blocs (Catana et al , 2013) and that the mechanisms of economic and political governance were not exactly the same under communism (Kornai, 1992). Although the European Transitional Economies (ETEs), as Zupan and Kase (2005) refer to the CEE countries (including Russia), do not form a completely homogeneous group with regard to their HRM contexts and practices, there are enough similarities to allow for a conceptual model of strategic HRM in the ETEs to be developed.…”