Article Review-how Collectivism affect management(International Management) - Essay Example

Article Summary 2008 Article Summary Linn Van Dyne, Don Vandewalle, Tatiana Kostova, Michael E. Latham and L. L. Cummings, 2000, “Collectivism, propensity to trust and self-esteem as predictors of organizational citizenship in a non-work setting”, Journal of Organizational Behavior Journal of Organizational Behavior 21, pp. 3-23. The study by Van Dyne and colleagues explored the relationship between organizational citizenship (OC) and two hypothesized antecedents, namely collectivism and propensity to trust.

Although this relationship has been already discovered in several investigations, the authors went further that simply confirming the hypothesis. Firstly, the majority of existing inquiries studied the issue within formal organizational setting while Van Dyne and colleagues examined organizational citizenship of residents in a housing cooperative setting where roles were not influenced by traditional employee-employer work relationships. Secondly, the study not only looked at the mere relationship between collectivism and propensity to trust and OC, but also explored the process that links the antecedents to OC.

Van Dyne identified one mediator (Organization-based self-esteem) and one moderator (organizational tenure) to provide insight into the process that links these antecedents with organizational citizenship.The study involved almost 1500 participants, was conducted in two stages with 6 months between them. During the first stage the authors measured collectivism, propensity to trust, organization-based self-esteem, and the control variables using specific questionnaires. The second stage was dedicated to measuring the dependent variable, organizational citizenship.

The results largely supported Van Dyne’s hypotheses and demonstrated that in non-formal organizational setting individual differences between participants (collectivism and propensity to trust) have substantial influence on OC. In particular, the authors discovered that after accounting for the effects of the main control variables including national citizenship, cooperative, and in-role behavior, both hypothesized antecedents positively correlated with subsequent OCB measured six months later.

Besides, the role of organizational-based self-esteem (OBSE) as valid mediator of the effects of collectivism and propensity to trust on OC was confirmed, while organizational tenure moderated the relationship between the propensity to trust and self-esteem. Interestingly, tenure was not found to moderate the relationship between collectivism and OBSE. Usefulness analysis carried out afterwards, confirmed these results, but also shown that the effects of collectivism on OC were somewhat stronger than those of propensity to trust.

The authors believe that that might be due slightly greater strength of collectivism that has more fundamental nature than the second antecedents. The study has several limitations the main of which are self-reporting bias (the respondents measured themselves on OC scale), non-representativeness (the study was conducted in a specific setting), and common source bias. Therefore, other studies are needed to either confirm or disprove the author’s hypothesis and further examining various aspects of OC in different economic sectors and cultural settings.

ImplicationsPractical implications of the study are really essential. Firstly, given the fact that non-work organizations are on the upward trend, importance and relevance of the findings can hardly be overemphasized. For example, they may be helpful in selecting those individuals with strong collectivist attitudes and propensity to trust others to occupy such positions where cooperation and helping play the most critical role. The mediating role of OBSE can be effective in bringing individuals closer to OC.

Although the authors question the assumption that their findings can be generalized to traditional organizational cultures (actually, they address it as a limitation of the study), the truth may be that in formal organizations with their traditional employer-employee system (reward, promotion, etc) positive relationship between the studied antecedents of OC may be even stronger. If this is the case, the study provides managers with a valuable framework to strengthen organizational culture via reinforcing the role of employees as organizational citizens.

And finally, the findings may be of great help in international organizations that involve people from different cultural backgrounds characterized by different levels of collectivism/individualism. Effectiveness of organization’s functioning will only increase if each member is assigned to the position that suits his collectivist/individualist background best.