The Impact of Cultural Differences upon Quality Management, IS, and Related Systems: An Examination of Differences and Consistencies in the U.S. and Mainland China

摘要

As globalization has become a reality, increasing attention is coming to focus upon cross cultural issues and their implications for the workplace. In this paper, our concern is with the extent to which cultural differences may affect the way in which organizations respond to changes in workplace technology, and we examine mainland China and the United States. Our examination involves considering whether there are differences in the perceptions of managers from the U.S. vs. mainland China in reporting their experiences with what we term QM Maturity, extent of use and effectiveness of IS, their organizations' cultures, and organizational outcomes. Moreover, we search for consistency as well. Systems theory suggests that changes in a key organizational system will impact other organizational systems, as well. Thus, in both the U.S. and China, as managers report that their organizations are becoming more QM Mature (i.e., that they have implemented QM in a higher-quality manner), we examine whether they will also report changes in related systems, such as IS and the organizational culture. We provide results from a sample of managers from China and the U.S. which give evidences of support for these ideas and we offer suggestions for future research.