comparative value priorities of chinese and new zealand

interrelationships of dimension means for the samples of
businesspeople for both New Zealand and Guangzhou City for
the SVS and LBDQXII dimensions.
THEORIES OF PERSONAL VALUES OF BUSINESSPEOPLE
(c) Dilbert by Scott Adams, United Features Syndicate.
There is a feedback system driving relationships amongst individual personality,
individual values in a culture, national and/or societal culture, and organisational
culture. In social science theorising, scholars have debated the effect of national culture
on management and organisational practices for decades. International management and
organisation literature propose the convergence hypothesis and the divergence
hypothesis. The convergence hypothesis implies that as nations develop, they embrace
work-related behaviour common to already industrialized countries (Ralston, Holt,
Terpstra and Yu, 1997: 182), concluding that organisations in countries will become
more alike and adopt universal practices about work and corporate culture as they
industrialise (Shenkar and Ronen, 1987; Child and Keiser, 1979). Thus, organizations
can alter the behaviour of people and overcome the effects of national culture (Von
Glinow, Drost and Teagarden, 2002). The divergence hypothesis argues that ‘‘national
culture, not industrialized practice, drives values, and that, even if the country becomes
industrialized, the values systems in the work force remain will largely unchanged’’
(Ralston et al., 1997: 183). Thus, ‘‘even if organizations located within different
societies do face similar contingencies and adopt similar models, deep-rooted cultural
forces will still re-assert themselves in the way people actually behave and relate to each
other’’ (Child and Keiser, 1979: 253). The divergence viewpoint argues that
organizations in different countries will vary, influenced by national culture. I adopt the
divergence viewpoint.
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