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Lost In Translation: Organizational Behavior Constructs Across Cultures – Hope As An Example, Bill Provaznik

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

This paper examines the differences in the conception of the Positive Organizational Behavioral construct of hope between a strongly individualistic culture like the United States, and strongly collectivistic cultures like China, the Philippines and Vietnam. The differences are explained by the varying conceptualizations of autonomy, interconnectedness and self between the two cultures. The insight from this comparison should serve both to help accommodate cultural level differences among employees as well as offer a further step in the refinement of the application of individualist/collectivist interpretations to western based managerial and psychological models as well as practices.