Meikuan Huang

Counting the days until the next big event: Academy of Management Meeting 2010 in Montreal. During August 6th-10th I’ll be attending the biggest event in management as well as presenting the paper Škerlavaj, M., Su, C. & Huang, M.: Effects of National Culture in Organizational Learning Culture: A Multilevel Study in 7 Countries. Below is the abstract:

The goal of this study is to theorize and empirically test a multilevel model of organizational learning culture in a context of four national cultural dimensions: power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance. Based on established conceptual foundations of organizational learning culture (OLC), defined as a set of organizational norms and values that support systematic, in-depth approaches aimed at achieving higher-level organizational learning, this study seeks to examine the cross-level interactions between national culture dimensions and two key organizational learning processes: the impact of information acquisition on information interpretation, and behavioral and cognitive changes as a result of information interpretation. Data were collected from 1333 companies in 7 countries with different national cultures, and analyzed by hierarchical linear modeling techniques. The results showed that while national cultural dimensions had no significant influence on the relationship between information acquisition and information interpretation at the organizational level, each of the four cultural dimensions moderated the effects of information interpretation on organizational behavioral and cognitive changes in different directions. This study contributes to current literature by demonstrating the theoretical and empirical viability in using a multilevel approach to understand how organizational learning culture develops in the context of national cultural dimensions.