MANAGERS ’ NATIONAL CULTURE AND ITS IMPACT ON RESPONSE STYLES IN A GLOBAL MULTINATIONAL COMPANY by

Corporations spend tens of millions of dollars each year to conduct organizational surveys and report the results. It is imperative that survey results provide clear, actionable results to organizational leaders for an employee survey program to be effective. To the extent that survey results are impacted by response style biases, organizations cannot be certain their actions address real issues. The following research examines the impact of managers ’ national culture on the response styles of their employees. Power distance is a construct that reflects how different cultures address inequality. In this study, power distance scores for managers are hypothesized to be predictive of employee response style behavior such that power distance is positively associated with greater extreme responding and lower acquiescence. Additionally, individualism/collectivism scores for managers are hypothesized to be predictive of employee response style behavior such that individualism is positively associated with greater extreme responding and negatively associated with acquiescence. Overall, results did not support the key hypotheses of the study. While employees from high power distance countries did display higher levels of extreme responding than employee