Using the percentages given in the above figure, how would you characterize the attitudes of Swedes, Germans and Japanese towards the role of the manager in an organization? The role of the manager André Laurent (1983) carried out investigations into the attitudes of managers in several countries towards their organization. A series of studies he made concerning national differences in concepts of management produced interesting results. Over a period of two years, questions were put to experienced international managers attending executive programmes at an international business school. The findings showed clear differences between countries with regard to the perception of organizations as political systems, authority systems, role-formalization systems and hierarchical relationship systems.

The study was replicated among much younger and less experienced MBA students and, in two multinational companies, one being a US-based chemical firm with subsidiaries in France, Germany and Great Britain, and later in amended form to another multinational. The results from the replications were essentially the same as those from the first survey among executive programme participants. Although it might have been expected for those working in multinationals to have undergone some kind of homogenizing effect in terms of managerial concepts, the results showed a surprising stability. Moreover, the results from the first multinational surveyed showed respondents’ concepts to be even more entrenched.