Business development across countries and cultures

Abstract

Background: There is an accumulating scientific literature on research concerning the concepts, elements, consequences and management of job stress. Stressful demands undergo cognitive appraisal, which then require certain coping strategies that either alter the stressor or make a person adapt to it, resulting in various outcomes (burnout or well being, etc). However, internal resources (e.g., personality) and external resources (e.g., social support) also influence these elements and the outcomes of stress. A major role of managers is decision making (DM), and research has shown that stress influences DM in a complicated manner. Studies found that stress makes people focus more on global issues rather than on details, and leads to “premature closure” (narrowing one’s focus on a few solutions, while disregarding others). However, it is possible that the effects of stress on DM depend on certain personality or other individual difference variables. This lecture will present the combined effects of stress and hemispheric preference (HP) on job DM. During stress, people may shift from a left hemisphere (LH) focus to a more right hemisphere (RH) focus. People naturally differ in their reliance on their hemispheres, with some being more LH oriented while others being more RH oriented. The LH may mediate mainly analytic, detailed and serial thought processes, while the RH may mainly mediate more intuitive, global and parallel thought processes. These could have important implications for DM, particularly during stress. We thus hypothesized that stress and HP interact in relation to DM, and this was tested in a few studies. Methods & Results: Results of 4 studies are reported here. In studies 1 and 2, we administered to business students hypothetical job scenarios, which demanded various solutions. In Study 1, low and high stress was embedded in the scenarios (by time and work pressure), and in Study 2, stress was externally manipulated (by an unsolvable word search task). In both studies, we used a valid hemispheric preference (HP) test, and students needed to rate their level of analytic DM in each scenario. Indeed, we found evidence for a Stress x HP interaction in relation to analytic DM. In Study 1, only LH students evidenced a reduction in analytic DM due to stress, while RH students did 3rd Annual EuroMed Conference of the EuroMed Academy of Business 1369 Business Developments Across Countries And Cultures ISBN: 978-9963-634-83-5 not. In Study 2, only after the stress, but not before it, did LH students use lower levels of analytic DM than RH students. In Study 3, we administered to actual managers from 3 countries (Israel, France and Italy) questionnaires assessing perceived stress, HP and DM. Controlling for nationality and sex, we found a Stress x HP interaction in relation to DM thoroughness: Only in RH managers, was stress significantly inversely related to DM thoroughness, but not among LH managers. Finally, in Study 4, we tested the effects of stress and HP on forecasting economic growth in business students. In figures that depicted a global increase with a local drop in sales, LH and RH students did not differ in forecasting growth prior to stress. However, after stress, RH students expected more economic growth than LH students. Conclusions: These studies inform us that the effects of stress on various indices of DM may depend on one’s HP. In some contexts, LH participants “pay the price” and make less analytic DM due to stress, while in other instances, RH participants experience greater effects of stress on their DM. Whether reduced analytic DM during stress is necessarily inadequate, and the contexts in which LH and RH participants differ in their DM due to stress will both be discussed.