For most humans, work is the most important activity in their lives. We know that work behaviour differs across cultures and that both national culture and organizational characteristics are important for increasing (or stifling) performance at work. Yet, we don’t know much about the relative importance and how national culture and organizational practices interact with each other. The main objective of the project is to explore the relationship between national culture, organizational practices for understanding attitudes and work behaviours of employees. In order to achieve this we are studying organizations (currently over 7,500 employees in 17 countries) across all continents and analyse the effects with a multi-level framework. One of our major innovations was to focus on descriptive norms in studying influences of culture. Our work has resulted in a number of highly cited theoretical and measurement articles (see below). Our most recent study has received the Best Paper Award with International Implications Award by the Academy of Management in 2016  and we were also a finalist for the Carolyn Dexter Award in 2016 .

This project is led by Dr Ronald Fischer at Victoria University.

We have developed and validated a number of instruments. Newly developed instruments can be found in the instrument section of this website.

Theoretical and Methods Articles

Fischer, R. (2009). Where is culture in cross-cultural research? An outline of a multi-level research process for measuring culture as a shared meaning system. International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, 9, 25-49.

Fischer, R., Ferreira, M. C., Assmar, E. M. L., Redford, P., & Harb, C. (2005). Organizational behaviour across cultures: Theoretical and methodological issues for developing multi-level frameworks involving culture. International Journal for Cross-Cultural Management, 5, 27-48.

Fischer, R. (2006). Congruence and Functions of Personal and Cultural Values: Do My Values Reflect My Culture’s Values? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1419-1431.

Fischer, R., Ferreira, M.C., Assmar, E., Redford, P., Harb, C., Glazer, S., Cheng, B. S., Jiang, D.Y., Wong, C., Kumar, N., Kärtner, J., Hofer, J. & Achoui, M. (2009). Individualism-collectivism as descriptive norms: Development of a subjective norm approach to culture measurement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40, 187-213.

Fischer, R., & Poortinga, Y. (2012). Are cultural values the same as the values of individuals? An examina­tion of similarities in personal, social and cultural value structures. International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, 12, 157-170. doi: 10.1177/1470595812439867

Fischer, R. (2012). Intersubjective culture:  Indeed intersubjective or yet another form of subjective assessment? Swiss Journal of Psychology (Special Issue:  Personality and Culture), 71, 13-20. Doi:10.1024/1421-0185/a000067

Measurement Articles (including instrument development and validation)

Fischer, R., Ferreira, M.C., Assmar, E., Redford, P., Harb, C., Glazer, S., Cheng, B. S., Jiang, D.Y., Wong, C., Kumar, N., Kärtner, J., Hofer, J. & Achoui, M. (2009). Individualism-collectivism as descriptive norms: Development of a subjective norm approach to culture measurement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40, 187-213.

Fischer, R., Ferreira, M. C., Assmar, E., Baris, G., Berboroglu, G., Dalyan, F., Wong, C.C., Hassan, A., Hanke, K., Boer, D. (2014). Organizational practices across cultures: An exploration in six cultural contexts. International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, 14, 105-125. DOI: 10.1177/1470595813510644

Fischer, R., Ferreira, M.C., Jiang, D.Y., Chen, B.S., Achoui, M., Wong, C.C., Baris, G., Mendoza, S., van Meurs, N., Achmadi, D., Hassan, A., Berberoglu, G., Harb, C., Darwish, D.D. & Assmar, E.M.L. (2011). Are Perceptions of Organizational Justice Universal? An Exploration Of Measurement Invariance Across Thirteen Cultures. Social Justice Research, 24, 297-313. Doi: 10.1007/s11211-011-0142-7

Abubakar, A. & Fischer, R. (2012). The Factor Structure of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire in a Literate Kenyan Population. Stress and Health, 28(3), 248-254. doi: 10.1002/smi.1420.