The Influence of Culture on Role Conceptions and Role Behavior in Organisations

La main-d’oeuvre de nombreux pays industrialises se diversifie de plus en plus. Les organisations de ces pays emploient des salaries relevant de diverses cultures et subcultures. Par suite, les modeles du comportement organisationnel qui supposent que les salaries partagent une culture unique et relativement homogene ne sont plus pertinents. Nous presentons donc une version modifee du modele originel du role (Katz & Kahn, 1966, 1978). Notre modele des Effets de la Culture sur le Comportement de Role (ECORB) reconnait explicitement l’impact que les aquis culturels diversifies de ceux qui proposent et de ceux qui assument les roles ont sur les expectations de roles, les roles proposes, les intentions comportementales et le comportement de role. L’un des principes de base de ce modele, c’est que les variable culturelles et subculturelles affectent les scripts professionnels qu’un salarie a la volonte et la capacite de mettre en œuvre. En outre, comme les salaries de cultures et subcultures differentes agissent souvent en fonction de scripts divergents, maints problemes peuvent apparaitre (par exemple, les tenants du role peuvent adopter une conduite incompatible avec les attentes de l’environnement). On analyse les retombees de notre modele ECORB sur la theorie, la recherche et la pratique. The workforces of many industrialised nations are becoming increasingly more diverse. Organisations in these nations employ workers from a variety of cultures and subcultures. As a result, models of organisational behavior that assume that workers share a single, relatively homogeneous culture are no longer appropriate. In view of this, we offer a modified version of Katz and Kahn's (1966, 1978) seminal model of role-taking. Our model of the Effects of Culture on Role Behavior (ECORB) explicitly recognises the effects that variations in the cultural backgrounds of role senders and role incumbents have on role expectations, sent roles, behavioral intentions, and role behavior. A basic premise of the same model is that cultural and subcultural variables affect the work-related scripts that a worker is willing and able to use. Moreover, because workers from different cultures or subcultures often operate on the basis of different scripts, a number of problems may arise (e.g. role incumbents may behave in ways that are inconsistent with the expectations of role senders). We offer implications of our ECORB model for theory, research, and practice.