National Culture and the Implementation of High‐Stretch Performance Standards: An Exploratory Study

This study explores how national culture affects employees' reaction to different modes of implementing high‐stretch performance standards. An experiment was performed using Chinese and U.S. nationals to represent cultures that diverge on two relevant dimensions: power distance and individualism/collectivism. Consistent with culturally based expectations, Chinese nationals more readily accepted imposed high‐stretch performance standards—relative to U.S. nationals—as manifested by the degree to which they performed up to those standards. Also, differences were found between Chinese and U.S. nationals' satisfaction with high‐stretch performance standards under autocratic vs. consultative participation in the standard‐development process. However, further analysis was unable to dismiss the possibility that this result, which was based on subjects' self‐reports on Likert‐scale questions, could have been an artifact of cross‐national, response‐set bias. Other findings indicated that national‐culture effects arose in more complex ways than were originally conceived.