Counterproductive Work Behavior
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Canadian samples placed high weights on task performance. Considering the significant variation
in the cultural, economic, social, and political contexts between China and Canada, the identified
similarities between Chinese and Canadian managers provide important insights for further
research on what constitutes generalizable knowledge of job performance.
Like Canadian managers, the Chinese managers who participated in Study 2 gave the
largest weights to task behaviors in performance evaluation. Convergence theorists would argue
that when it comes to performance certain work-related behaviors are necessary to perform a job
whether you are in one country or another. This might also suggest that the role the traditional
culture plays in the performance appraisal process is not as large as that of the social and
economic contexts in contemporary China. Having been reformed from a centralized and planned
economy to a decentralized and market-oriented economy within 20 years, the speed and
magnitude of the social changes that occurred in China are unprecedented. It is possible that the
increasingly competitive environment has fueled organizations and managers to pay much
attention to completion of tasks in order to survive and succeed. Future research is needed to
further explore how social and cultural contexts might jointly affect managerial conceptions of
job performance in China.
The cross-cultural psychology literature has well documented that Chinese tend to share
more collectivistic values whereas North Americans tend to hold more individualistic values
(Bond, 1992; Hofstede, 1991). We integrated this literature in developing Hypothesis 4, in which
we predicted that Chinese managers would endorse higher values on OCB than Canadian
managers. Nevertheless, the research that forms the foundation of our beliefs about the
differences between Chinese and North Americans on individualism and collectivism was
conducted years ago and prior to the major social, political, and economic changes that define