Different strokes for different folks? Influence tactics by Asian-American and Caucasian-American managers

Abstract

This article reports an empirical study of Asian-American managers' use of influence tactics with superiors and subordinates compared to a group of Caucasian-American managers. Comparisons also were made between self-reported and target-reported influence behaviors of these managers and the extent to which the managers used similar influence tactics with both superiors and subordinates. Interestingly, this study found only minor differences between influence behaviors of Asian-American managers and Caucasian-American managers. Second, this study found differences between self-reported influence tactics and those same tactics as seen by the targets. Finally, the managers studied here, both Asian-American and Caucasian-American, used different influence tactics with superiors as compared to subordinates. The minor differences, with less than 3% of the variance due to managers' different ethnic backgrounds, suggest that differences found in cross-cultural studies may not be generalizable to different ethnic groups within one country.