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Studies of Management & Organization
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Int. Studies ofMgt. & Org., Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 48-63
M.E.Sharpe, Inc., 1994
Robert P. Wright
Expatriate management
Management by expatriates is not a new idea. In ancient times, the
leaders of large empires made use of this practice of managing distant
regions long before the appearance of multinational business corporations. It is justified to ask why this historical pattern of managing
foreign operations is still widely practiced in modern multinational
corporations (MNCs). This is sometimes explained in terms of functional needs of control, coordination, and know-how transfer. Obviously, there are also some firmly rooted ethnocentric attitudes and
beliefs concerning the advantage of using expatriate business managers
(EXBMs) instead of locals (Torbirn, 1982, 1992). However, the effectiveness of using EXBMs is contingent upon how their management
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States and concluded that the low morale among HCNs was the re
Zeira and Banai (1981, 1985), and Lee and Larwood (1983).
the late 1940s (Kerr et al., 1974; Stogdill and Coons, 1951). Furtherm
Theory, one of the most respected leadership theories (House, 1971; Hou
and Mitchell, 1974) and is also related to the Expectancy Theory of mot
tion (Vroom, 1964). Hence, the topic of this study, supportive mana
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strong cultural identity (Bond and King, 1985). The value structure
among the Hong Kong Chinese is due to several factors: the colonial
rule, the Chinese immigrants who came on their own initiative, modernization, and separation from mainland China. The ethos of the Hong
Kong Chinese is a blend of components with diverse sources: Chinese
tradition, Western modernizing influences, and local developments.
Furthermore, due to the colonial government's limited conception of
its role, the Hong Kong people enjoy considerable social, economic,
and cultural freedom (Lau and Kuan, 1988; Leung, 1990; Turner,
Fosh, and Ng, 1991).
Confucianism was the official state ideology in China for two thousand years, until it was officially abolished at the beginning of this
century. This belief system provided the Chinese with great cultural
resilience and stability, and it continues to influence Chinese people
everywhere (Tan, 1986). Confucian cultural values comprise a considerable amount of authoritarianism, and the Chinese generally display a
(Bond, 1991; Bond and Hwang, 1986; Hofstede and Bond, 1988;
Yang, 1986).
Chinese management practices
The influence of Chinese culture on management practices is so significant that a Chinese managerial system is distinctly identifiable. It has
been observed that, despite the growth in size and complexity of modern industrial firms, Chinese business organizations commonly display
a conservative and security-centered approach to internal management
(Limlingan, 1986). The hierarchical structure of interpersonal relation-
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after the family head who manages his household. It has been observ
Silin, 1976).
Supportive managerial behavior, the topic of investigation here,
could be seen to have many dimensions or facets such as mutual confi-
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dence between the boss and his subordinates, the boss taking a personal interest in his subordinates, friendliness of the boss, information
sharing with subordinates, consultation of subordinates, giving recognition to subordinates' achievements, and mental and physical job assistance. Many of these facets seem to contradict Confucian cultural
values in general and Chinese leadership styles in particular. A Chinese boss does not have to show his confidence in his subordinates;
rather, it is the other way around. Chinese bosses are usually not overly
friendly towards their subordinates and not easily approachable. Information is not commonly shared with subordinates and Chinese bosses
are not expected to, and hence generally do not consult with their
subordinates prior to a decision. Since the Chinese boss is the supreme
figurehead for the collective effort of his subordinates, individual
achievements are rarely singled out for separate, individual recognition. However, the personal interest and job-assistance facets of supportive managerial behavior would be more closely connected to the
Chinese paternalistic leadership style.
Given the authoritarian and hierarchical tenets of traditional Chinese
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managers the two largest groups, as could have been expected since
both those nationalities form large expatriate business communities in
Hong Kong. Asian expatriate bosses only make up 18 percent of the
sample, with Japanese managers the largest group.
The instrument included seventeen items to measure supportive
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Sample background
Variables Frequency Percent Mean S.D.
Age
28.3
2.8
Gender
Female
Male
180 57.3
134
42.7
Position
Japanese
Other
Asian
20
36
6.5
11.6
feel
your
Personal
superior
interest
is
is e
How
has
in
measu
pany
in
general
(alpha
EB
0.82;
LB
0.77).
One
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item
sures how well the superior is perceived to assist the subordinate in the job with both mental and physical help (alpha EB =
A paired-samples i-test was used to test our hypothesis and the results
show that the means of the two distributions are different (p = 0.039) that is, the mean of the perceived supportive behavior of the expatriate
bosses is greater than that of the local bosses, confirming our stated
hypothesis that expatriate bosses in Hong Kong are perceived as more
supportive by their subordinates than local bosses. The difference was
further tested with respect to the background variables: age, gender,
position, length of exposure, and nationality of the expatriate boss;
and the seven facets of supportive managerial behavior: confidence,
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0.3090**
interest
Friendliness
n.s.
0.2138***
0.2046*
Recognition 0.3709****
Job
assistance
n.s.
not
higher
of
tion
ing
n.s.
significant;
for
the
<
the local bo
subordinate
confidence,
info
managers consistently
with regard to these t
perceived
local
bosses
The
duration
difference
in
of
expos
terms
of
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Table 3
boss (LB).
2 Young: 24-29 years; old: 30-50 years.
n.s. = not significant; * p < 0.10; ** p < 0.05; *** p < 0.01 ; **** p
Discussion
While our findings seem to confirm the hypothesis that expatriate bosses
in Hong Kong are perceived as more supportive than local bosses by the
subordinates, this needs to be qualified by the fact that our sample may
have an overrcpresentation of female subordinates. This has an important
bearing because our findings also indicate that female subordinates overwhelmingly found their expatriate bosses more supportive than did male
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and feelings to subordinates (Redding and Wong, 1986). Consequently, it is not as easy to realize that your boss has confidence in you
than vice versa. Finally, the significant difference in consultation be-
parts and hence spend less time consulting with their subordinates
(Bond, 1991, p. 79).
Regarding the background variables, Table 3 shows that gender is
the absolute dominating variable in the case of perceived difference in
overall supportive behavior as well as for each of the seven facets. The
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nates have the opposite view. This is a clear-cut case of gender prefe
Hong Kong Chinese male executives expressed the belief that wome
are not open-minded, that they personally avoid arguing with wome
and that they hesitate to criticize women (Arnold and Lee, 199
There is no legislation that makes gender discrimination illegal
local bosses and women expatriate bosses. However, this gender pre
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score local bosses higher on the last two of these three facets. One
reason for the differences between the junior and the senior groups
could be that junior managers probably have less frequent interactions
with top managers than senior managers. On the effect of the national-
ity of the expatriate bosses, subordinates who have had Asian expatri-
and the expatriate boss. Our findings also show that age has little
impact on subordinates' perception of the supportive behavior of expatriate and local bosses. However, this should be seen in the context of
the narrow age distribution of our respondents as shown in Table 1.
Conclusion
Our tentative conclusion is that there is overall support for our hypoth-
esis that expatriate bosses in Hong Kong are perceived as more supportive than local bosses by their subordinates. However, this needs to
be further investigated with respect to a possible gender bias since our
study shows an extremely strong support for the hypothesis in the case
of female middle managers. Furthermore, there is a distinct possibility
that the meaning of the concept of supportive managerial behavior is
culture-bound. This connects to the controversy in cross-cultural psychology regarding ernie versus etic perspectives, where the former
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