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Nyambegera et al.: The impact of cultural value orientations 651
left-hand side of items shown in Table 4. These recognize competence and performance
leading to the success of the organization. Again, rewarding on merit rather than age
and seniority is a practice which can go down well with younger employees who may
feel that their hard work will benet them. Furthermore, practices which may lead to the
organizations success regardless of an individuals culture orientation, may be seen in
a good light, as they will ensure the organizations survival and assure continued
employment. Again, this might be the accepted best practice in most rms, especially
in the unstable environments found in developing countries.
The fourth factor contains items that reect HR empowerment in the workplace.
There is a slight tendency for employees to prefer that the company design jobs to
maintain and retain good people regardless of the cost, as this gives them a sense of job
security in that they cannot be swapped around or declared redundant with the objective
of reducing costs. The Kenyan sample tends slightly to prefer policies to the left of
items in Table 4, i.e. policies that empower them through performance evaluations and
minimizing layers of management, allowing easier and faster contact with seniors.
Rewarding qualications and skills is also preferred as it motivates employees on merit.
Such a practice assures highly educated and hard-working younger employees the
power to progress. This observation could be attributed to the present composition of
the Kenyan labour market of young and educated people, reected in our sample.
Correlation of cultural value orientations with HRM preferences
The correlation results in Table 5 are taken against a more conservative signicance
level of p , 0.01 to minimize the possibility of type 1 error (Hays, 1988). Activity
thinking stands out as having the strongest relationship with HR involvement. Overall,
HR involvement is associated with three out of the eight cultural scales, as can be seen
from Table 5. Predictability of rewards correlates with activity: doing, activity:
thinking, relationship: individual and relationships: hierarchical value orientations.
Human resource empowerment correlates negatively with human nature: good or evil,
relational: hierarchical and relation to nature: subjugation. The results also indicate,
rather intriguingly, that preferences for performance vs loyalty-related HRM practices
have no association with cultural values.
Multiple regression analysis
Table 6 shows the results of the combined effects and overall relationship of the eight
cultural scales on HRM preferences.
After controlling for age, gender and ethnic group,
2
some signicant changes in R
2
and B effect are observed in step two of multiple regression analysis. When taking all
cultural values together in multivariate analyses, many of the relationships suggested by
zero-order correlation become non-signicant, but some relationships remain signicant
(p , .05). Overall, cultural values account for 19 per cent of an individuals score for
HR involvement, and there is a statistically signicant relationship to activity:
thinking. Cultural values account for 14 per cent of the variance in predictable HRM
rewards and there are statistically signicant relationships with activity: doing,
relational: individual and relational: hierarchical. Cultural values account for 9 per cent
of the variance in human resource empowerment, and there is a signicant negative
association with relational: hierarchical. Performance vs loyalty-related HRM practices
again come out as value free, as no cultural value orientation was signicantly related
to this item. However, demographic factors might explain much of this simple values
652 The International Journal of Human Resource Management
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654 The International Journal of Human Resource Management
HRM preferences link. It can be seen, for example, that ethnic group has an important
relationship with HRM preferences.
Discussion
One task was to nd out whether cultural value orientations impact on individual
employee HRM preferences and, if so, to what extent. We would argue that values
orientations are deep pre-existing structures developed in early socialization, whereas
the preferences for specic HR policies (attitudes) develop at a later stage in life. In this
context it is reasonable to infer that values predict HR preferences, though we accept
that correlations cannot conclusively prove this. The hypothesis that cultural value
orientations inuence individual HRM preferences was supported. However, not all
HRM policies and practice preferences are inuenced by cultural value orientations.
From the four factors that emerged, human resource involvement/participation,
predictability of rewards, and human resource empowerment were related to cultural
values, while performance vs loyalty-related HRM practices came out as values free.
The study shows that, overall, HRM preferences reect a cultural interpretation, as there
were signicant associations between cultural values and three HRM factors. This
nding indicates that HRM models with an Anglo-Saxon base are not adaptable to
international research. Presuming the value orientations of people in developing
countries without delineating the cultural and physical domain is inappropriate. The
activity thinking sub-category value orientation had the highest inuence on preferences
for HR involvement. For example, earlier writings recommend detachment of
employees in developing countries from the decision-formulation and decision-making
process (e.g. Jaeger, 1990). However, the results of this research indicate that it can t
well with the employees preference if she/he is involved or participates in the decisions
that touch on her/his welfare. This is in line with Negandhis (1975) nding that
workers in developing countries, too, desire quality employment by, among other
things, being given participative leadership and involvement in decision making within
their organization.
The argument in the developing economy HRM literature to date has been that
developing countries socialization makes people passive and reactive to tasks (Jaeger,
1990). The results here showed that in general Kenyans would like to think through
issues (Activity: Thinking) before acting. They view work as central to their existence
(Activity: Doing), a value that, again, correlates with HR involvement. Relation to
nature mastery also demonstrated a signicant zero-order correlation with human
resource involvement/participation, which is a reection of their high scores on activity
thinking and activity doing. A mastery-oriented people, such as those studied in this
sample, would prefer to be involved in issues that affect them as they may not believe
in external forces acting for them. This result is perhaps a reection of the increasing
number of young people in Kenyan organizations, and certainly in our sample.
Furthermore, their involvement could lead to management making more informed
decisions.
Three value orientations had a signicant relationship to preference for predictability
of rewards both at the zero-order level and in the multiple regression analysis, namely:
Activity: Doing; Relational: Hierarchical and Relational: Individual. In a society like
Kenya, a kind of individualism is evident whereby the one who is employed is seen as
the cream of a group/family and he/she should be the one to provide. This calls for
improvement of the individual in order to meet such obligations. If one is looked upon
as the sole provider, there is no doubt that one would prefer predictable rewards.
Nyambegera et al.: The impact of cultural value orientations 655
Trompenaars (1993) points out that, in some societies, individualism and collectivism
are complementary, whereby the collectivist culture sees the group as its end and
improvements to individual capacities as a means to that end. Again, as pointed out
earlier, Sinha and Tripathi (1994) argue that it is possible to nd both collectivist and
individualistic cultures depending on context, a result reported in this sample. Lane et
al. (1997) indicate that among the characteristics of hierarchical societies is the
denition of relationships as group oriented, which might explain this values
association with predictable rewards. Predictable rewards and incentives are preferred
in this sample as they can assure the employee of a future, given the obligations in a
collective society like Kenya, where responsibility to kith and kin are very real. Group
rewards are not preferred as it may not be easy to predict when group effort is going to
bear fruit. Individually one is able to set targets and exert enough personal effort to
meet them. People who are high on activity doing have their focus on work, they do not
spend time in unnecessary leisure and would like to be sure of the benets that accrue
from hard work, especially given the uncertain environment in developing countries.
Relational: Hierarchical was negatively related to policies that depicted human
resource empowerment. In addition, there was a signicant negative zero-order
correlation with human nature good or evil and relation to nature subjugation. Given
earlier results showing a preference for empowerment, the negative association
indicates that the sample resents centralized arrangements to some extent, especially if
those in authority manage by fear. In such circumstances, employees prefer to be
empowered probably to help reduce the fear created by those in authority. The negative
association between human nature good or evil at the zero-order level shows that
employees believe that some superiors are not honest, hence the quest for empower-
ment. Moreover, the negative signicant relationship between relation to nature
subjugation and HR empowerment at the zero-order level indicates that Kenyans non-
dependency on the supernatural or some other external force leads them to seek
empowerment to enable them change situations that affect them.
There is a tendency towards the mid-point in the relational hierarchical sub-category
and human nature good or evil. The results show that hierarchical relations are accepted
but not appreciated totally. The main reason would be that many in authority have mis-
used those positions, mostly by stafng the organization with relatives, people from the
same ethnic group or those who are politically expedient, to the extent that those who
do not have such an opportunity tend to resent those in authority. Kamoche (1992) notes
that ethnicity in the workplace might manifest itself in various forms, including: straight
favouritism in recruitment and promotion or in the search for ethnic homogeneity, as
observed by Blunt (1980). Further, this being a collective society, practices of
favouritism are on ethnic and kinship lines, indulged in as a way of discharging
obligation to kith and kin. It was apparent from this study that some organizations
employed a very high proportion of particular ethnic groups, especially if the top
managers belonged to a specic ethnic group. This could point to why the present
generation of Kenyans in this sample want to be empowered to question some practices
without fear of intimidation.
There is agreement that most people are a mixture of good and evil. The reason we
can attribute the negative relationship between this value orientation and empowerment
is that, since not all people are good, even managers can misuse their authority for
selsh ends. Employees prefer to participate in the evaluation process, as managers
alone can use the exercise to intimidate some employees. Tall organization structures
are not preferred because the higher the structure the more likely you are to meet evil
managers who are able to pass blame to others. Furthermore, managers can use the tall
656 The International Journal of Human Resource Management
structure to frustrate subordinates. Rewards considering qualications and skills are
more quantiable, hence not easily abused by evil-minded superiors. This could be the
reason for the non-signicant relationship between HR empowerment and human nature
good or evil, when relational hierarchical is controlled in multiple regression
analysis.
The only factor which came out as values free is preference for performance-related
HRM practices. Overall, there is individual variation among respondents. Consequently,
we cannot claim to give a full explanation of why some HRM policies and practices are
culture common and others are culture specic, other than a linkage to demographic and
internal labour market factors or accepted best practice. These ndings answer our
second research question, i.e. which cultural value orientations inuence HRM policy
and practice and to what extent. We have been able to support empirically the aphorism
in the international management literature that some practices are culture specic while
others are culture common. This last point is slightly problematic, given the association
we have observed with ethnic group. Three of the four HR factors have a clear cultural
values root. HR involvement preferences are related to activity thinking values.
Predictability of rewards is related to high activity doing values. Empowerment HR is
related to low relationships hierarchical values. However, one of the factors
preferences for performance vs loyalty-based HRM was intriguingly a values-free
judgement by individuals. Ethnic factors played a role here. It is important to note that
there were no signicant differences in values between the ethnic groups. It was
membership of certain ethnic groups that was associated with the desire for more
loyalty-based HRM systems presumably because in such situations the elite of the
organization also reects the same ethnic membership and so loyalty is seen to be a
relevant performance criterion. Ethnicity outweighs the set of generic cultural values
examined in this study when questions about the philosophical focus of the HRM
system (and its judgement about the basis of performance i.e. individual competence
or loyalty) come into play. This interaction between ethnicity and cultural values as an
explanation of HRM in a developing country context is a nding that should inform the
design of future studies carried out in this area.
Limitations of the present study
Studies employing only self-report measures face the problem of shared method
variance due to the reliance on a single method of data collection leading to
contamination across the measures. However, self-report measures are the only means
of assessing both individual cultural values and HRM policy preferences. In order to
address this problem the main parts of the questionnaire were differentiated. By using
different response formats in different sections of the questionnaire cross-
contamination was minimized (Schmitt, 1994). To ascertain the level of independence
of the measures, the total dataset across cultural values and HRM preferences was
subjected to a principal components analysis with varimax rotation, revealing the
measures were independent, as no cultural value orientation items loaded on HRM
preference items and vice versa. Further, since individual responses to the ques-
tionnaires were anonymous, method bias due to social desirability is minimized
(Oppenheim, 1992).
Conclusion
HRM is not an exogenous phenomenon, as national culture, structure, and other
contingent factors affect it (Hofstede, 1993; Chandler, 1962; Hickson et al., 1974). The
Nyambegera et al.: The impact of cultural value orientations 657
ability for an organization to reduce the mist between employee preference and actual
practice has a signicant impact upon perceptions of need satisfaction among
employees. The consequences of a major mist may take any of a number of forms of
organizational malaise, such as widespread alienation (Blunt, 1982), high labour
turnover, absenteeism, or damage to company property (Blunt and Popoola, 1985).
Minimization of the gap between employee preferences and actual practice could lead
to high levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Sparrow and Wu,
1998). This study shows one way in which such preferences could be predicted from
cultural values. Such inuence can be linked to management policy and practice and
ndings related to some desirable outcome like job involvement or organizational
commitment. More meaningful cultural values emerge when using pure cultural value
orientation scales, rather than the Hofstede-type bipolar dimensions. Further, we have
argued that concentrating on the structure of items within work-related preference
measures across national samples is not sufcient. At the individual level, this research
examined relationships between cultural value orientations and HRM policy and
practice preferences in Kenyan organizations. This is a step towards helping
international managers adjust HRM policies to match employee expectations. We have
shown that culture (via its proxy of value orientations) can be studied separately from
other national elements. When this is done we are able to see which value orientations
are held by Kenyans and which of these value orientations impact on HRM policy and
practice and to what extent. Here, HRM preferences reected a cultural interpretation
leading to the conclusion that adapting American models with US-based values to
developing economies is not appropriate. It is important for the international manager
to know which value orientations are held by a people of a particular country or region
and to what extent those value orientations inuence work preferences. Then the
international manager operating in a particular country will know how to realign
management policy practice with preference.
This empirical examination of the Kenyan work preferences raises a number of issues
for future research. First, a better, understanding of HRM policy preferences can be
gained by examining employees cultural values. Second, the ndings show that, to
develop the area of comparative HRM, it is necessary to understand HRM from an
African context. This calls for more studies in other African countries especially, Sub-
Saharan Africa. Third, the ndings question the applicability of US models of HRM
like the Harvard model to international research in general, and developing countries in
particular as the HRM preferences were predicted by cultural values. This suggests an
agenda for future research in developing countries, in that it is important to determine
the likely consequences of mis-match between HRM policies, preferences and cultural
values.
Notes
1 Research assistants were given prior training covering the items in the questionnaire and on
how to respond to possible questions from respondents. They all had some research
experiences.
2 Ethnic group was coded and analysed as a dummy variable.
Appendix 1
In this paper, we assume the factor structure for the value orientations scale presented
by Maznevski and DiStefano (1995). This is because of the larger size and wider
geographical range of their sample, which would ensure greater variance among the
658 The International Journal of Human Resource Management
items. Within one country, it is more likely that there will be a restriction of range in
the items, which will affect the inter-item correlations and hence the factor structure of
the items for that country. Bearing these limitations of within-country analyses in mind,
we nevertheless conducted some analyses to help establish the construct validity of the
value orientations questionnaire within this Kenyan sample.
It was not possible to conduct exploratory or conrmatory factor analyses on the
entire scale: given seventy-nine items in the value orientations scale and a sample of
less than 300, the ratio of respondents to variables is , 4. This ratio is then not suitable
for multivariate analyses (Tabachnik and Fiddel, 1983). Therefore, we conducted
exploratory principal components analyses (PCAs) on each set of items within a given
domain (activity, human nature, human relationships, relationships to nature). For these
analyses, we chose PCA with oblique rotation (OBLIMIN) rather than conrmatory
factor analysis (CFA) because we were initially unsure whether the items would
conform to theoretical expectations, given the problems outlined above on restriction of
range. PCA is then useful here for two reasons (Hurley et al., 1997). First, unlike CFA,
PCA is able to uncover non-hypothezised cross-loadings. Second, the provision of
eigenvalues in PCA provides direct diagnostic information on the number of factors
underlying the data. Therefore, PCA provides a number of diagnostics to allow us both:
to examine any discrepancies between the structure of the items in this sample and the
structure reported by Maznevski and DiStefano, (1995); and to change the composition
of the scales if discrepancies were too great. Further, CFA using single item indicators
can be problematic (Kelloway, 1995), especially given single-item indicators are likely
to have small but non-zero loadings on other factors, which could bias t indices in
CFA (Hurley et al., 1997). Oblique rotation was chosen as we expected the factors to
correlate.
In each case, scree plots indicated the expected number of factors underlying the
items in each domain (i.e., three factors for activity, human relationships and
relationships to nature, two factors for human nature). We considered an item to load on
a factor if it had both its highest loading on that factor and the loading exceeded .30. In
each of the domains, for both pattern and structure matrices, over 90 per cent of the
items loadings were consistent with the factor structure reported by (Maznevski and
DiStefano, 1995). Full details of these analyses are available from the authors.
After these exploratory analyses, as an additional check on the structure of the data,
we constructed thirty-two parcels, or two- or three-item indicators scales for each of
the eleven scales. These multiple item indicators are less problematic for CFA
(Kelloway, 1995), especially as shared variance among the items comprising the parcel
is more likely to reect a single latent variable accurately. Each scale had three
indicators associated with it, except human nature changeable, which had two scales,
comprising two items and three items respectively. These multiple item indicators were
then used in a CFA to check the indicators conformed to the expected eleven-factor
structure. A model was specied in which each indicator loaded on its hypothezised
factor, and factors were allowed to correlate. Factor variances were set to 1, to identify
the model. CFA was conducted on the covariance matrix using the EQS programme
(Bentler, 1993). Maximum likelihood estimation was used, with robust statistics
because of non-normality in the data. The eleven-factor model indicated acceptable t
(robust Comparative Fit Index
5
0.91). Each indicator loaded on its hypothesised factor
in the expected direction (p , .00001).
We then chose to adopt the scales as described by Maznevski and DiStefano (1995)
for two reasons. First, the convergence between this sample and the expected pattern of
loadings, especially when taken in context of likely range restriction in Kenya. Second,
Nyambegera et al.: The impact of cultural value orientations 659
by using the original scales, it is then easier to make comparisons between this study
and others.
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