The influence of culture on role conceptions and role behavior in organisations

The workforces of many industrialised nations are becoming increasingly more diverse. Organisations in these nations employ workers from a variety of cultures and subcultures. As a result, models of organisational behavior that assume that workers share a single, relatively homogeneous culture are no longer appropriate. In view of this, we offer a modified version of Katz and Kahn's (1966, 1978) seminal model of role-taking. Our model of the Effects of Culture on Role Behavior (ECORB) explicitly recognises the effects that variations in the cultural backgrounds of role senders and role incumbents have on role expectations, sent roles, behavioral intentions, and role behavior. A basic premise of the same model is that cultural and subcultural variables affect the work-related scripts that a worker is willing and able to use. Moreover, because workers from different cultures or subcultures often operate on the basis of different scripts, a number of problems may arise (e.g. role incumbents may behave in ways that are inconsistent with the expectations of role senders). We offer implications of our ECORB model for theory, research, and practice.