Humanism and Instrumentalism in Management Ethics Across Seven Countries

Abstract

The current research project set out to identify similarities and differences in values held by managers in the U.S., Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Poland, Russia, and Australia. Specifically, this was done using the humanism and instrumentalism construct where the former indicates that people in organisations have an end value in themselves and the latter indicates that people are seen primarily as a means to an end. The humanism scale indicated cultural differences as predicted by ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ cultures. The instrumental scale proved more problematic to interpret, providing only confirmation of the classic Japanese profile which features in the management literature.