The Influence of Values on Management Practices

That research on the management of public and private organizations has been dominated by the settings and assumptions of the United States is widely acknowledged. Yet little research is truly centered in nonWestern countries rather than mere application of Western concepts. This failure is particularly apparent in empirical theory testing. While there are numerous excellent discussions of the limitations of U.S. assumptions in other cultures (e.g., Arora, 1972; Hofstede, 1980a), there has heretofore been little empirical testing of genuinely nonWestern theories of management. However, when such research has been undertaken, it has been particularly fruitful. For example, Haire, Ghiselli, and Porter's (1966) research on cross-national differences in employees' work goals led to an important research stream in comparative management (Hofstede, 1980b; Ronen and Shenkar, 1985). Our understanding, particularly of public management, has been limited by a body of public sector management research that is particularly culture-specific. One example of this cultural specificity has been the debate over the differences between public and private organizations. Allison (1983) argued that government organizations are mean-

ingfully different from businesses because governmental managers can directly contact their allies on congressional committees to subvert their supervisor's commands. They can also undermine their hierarchical superiors by "leaking" discrediting information to the press. Further, civil service protections, which were developed to prevent elected officials from using governmental organizations to maintain themselves in office, result in fewer performance-contingent employee incentives (Pearce and Perry, 1983) than do practices in business organizations. McCurdy (1978) countered that the majority of governmental workers -for example, clericals -work in conditions that would be virtually identical in large complex business organizations.
Yet, this public-private debate -although framed in universal terms -implicitly assumes a societal structure that is particular to the Western democracies. Not all governments are directed by elected bodies; in fact, such governments are the minority. Not all societies have a free press. Still, these other societies have large governmental and business organizations, and to assume that features of Western democratic governmental organizations that are clearly particular to their own traditions are universal features of all organizations is a disservice to organization theory.
This ethnocentric theorizing has practical consequences for the management of organizations in all societies. While the problems for managers in non-Western countries are obvious (see Al-Saigh, 1986;Arora, 1972), such ethnocentricity also impedes understanding in the West. For example, members of the U.S. general public observe the comparative slowness of processes in governmental organizations and assume that this is a result of some inherent feature of "governmental organizations" rather than a reflection of values of due process and merit-based decision making. The widespread equation of "governmental organization" and "bureaucracy" among members of the general public reflects these assumptions.
Here, a general theoretical argument regarding public-private differences that have practical implications, first suggested by Bozeman (1987), is extended and tested.

The cultural context and governmental organizations
Attention to the cultural and economic context of public administration has a long history (Riggs, 1961(Riggs, , 1964Heady, 1984). As important as this theoretical work is, it has not received substantial empirical t ing. The most prominent exceptions are Berger (1957) and Ali (198 Berger did not find support for his hypothesis that "Western nor were held more strongly by those Egyptian civil servants who more exposure to the West. Although Berger was disappointed in t results, we suggest that he erred in assuming that mere exposure Westerners and their institutions could or would significantly cou the "ecological effects" of economics and culture so well described Riggs and Heady. Ali (1986) found that Iraqi managers in the publ and private sectors held different personal beliefs. Public manage reported more Marxist and "bureaucratic" beliefs which reflected fact that they worked in larger organizations and had greater poli responsibilities than did the Iraqi business managers. More recently, Bozeman (1987) argued that governmental organ tions tend to represent their society's values to a greater extent tha private businesses. This is because members of society view their g ernmental organizations as more reflective of their values than the their businesses. One reason for this is that governmental organizat often exist for the expression of certain values (e.g., in education social services). In addition, as "owners" of their governmental org zations, members of societies often feel that their organizations sh reflect their preferences -in their means as well as their ends. T the U.S. civil service protections of due process and traditions of o dissent have had a relatively greater influence on the managemen American governmental organizations than on businesses. For exa ple, there are laws protecting "whistle blowers" in the U.S. governm (or in their private government contractors), but there are no su provisions for business employees unconnected to public ser Hence, if governmental organizations more closely reflect t society's ideals than do businesses (which must meet the need those -often foreigners -who supply their capital), we would ex to find the greatest cross-national managerial practice difference governmental organizations.
We suggest that this argument can explain the mixed results rega ing the influence of differences in culture-specific values on the a tudes of business employees (see Lincoln, Hanada, and Olson, 1 Birnbaum and Wong, 1985). This lack of differences across countr may result from private sector employees' expectations that their ues should be less influential in the design of profit-making busine Assessing cross-national variations in organizational practices The present study tests hypotheses of the role of values in governmental and business organizational practices in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in comparable U.S. organizations. Saudi Arabia is a particularly appropriate country in which to compare the effects of values on management practices. It is a society with large governmental and private business organizations explicitly operating according to Saudi values and traditions (Al-Aiban, 1988). It provides a clear contrast to American society, which is dominated by ideals that are based on what Weber (1947)  Note that these are ideals, not necessarily descriptions of actual practice in U.S. organizations (e.g., Monroe, 1970). Yet, the U.S. Civil Service regulations, beginning with the system's establishment in 1883, and recently reinforced by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, have established policies designed to implement these ideals. For example, all U.S. federal promotions are to be based on merit; the Civil Service Reform Act requires performance appraisals to be based on objective data whenever possible. Consistent with this argument that U.S. governmental organizations would more closely reflect Weberian bureaucratic values than would American businesses, Rainey (1983) found that his U.S. governmental managers reported greater formalization and less managerial flexibility than did comparable business managers. While there are other comparative studies of managerial job attitudes (e.g., Buchanan, 1974;Solomon, 1986;Perry and Rainey, 1988), Rainey's emphasis on structural organizational features provides a useful point of departure for the present research.
In contrast to the organizational assumptions of Americans, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is governed by a structure akin to what Weber (1947) characterized as traditional authority structures (and what Riggs called the "sala model"). Ali (1990) suggested that management practices in Arabic societies are influenced by Islam, tribal traditions, colonial legacies, Western influences, and government intervention. Particularly relevant to the present study is his discussion of the importance of personal and family loyalties operating within sys-terns of bureaucratic rules which are developed to appear "more W ern" and are not seriously implemented.
Saudi Arabia is a hereditary monarchy, which retains significan judicial, legislative, and executive powers in the hand of the S ruling family. Organizationally, rights and responsibilities are alloc among Saudi citizens who represent their families according to bo the family's social rank and their personal qualifications in the soc Of course, as in all traditional societies, positions are obtained thro a mix of both individual merit and family position. The most pro nent example occurs in the ruling family where any one of a grou men from this extended family is eligible to become king. Simila traditional societies raise the social rank of individuals (or, more cisely, of their families) who have contributed exemplary service; this elevation is expected to be passed on to descendants. Thus, as (1986-87) suggested, the system recognizes merit and is dynamic, at any point in time the society is, to a certain extent, organized on basis of social relations among families that are rooted in the histo contributions of lineage groups. The Saudi view of the national interest provides another illustrat contrast between U.S. and Saudi assumptions. The Saudi nationa terest is not viewed as the result of the clash of competing inter Rather, the well-being of each family is viewed as dependent on well-being of the country as a whole. As individuals and individu interests are emphasized in the United States, the family is empha in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia professional full-time governmental and business work force organ into offices and departments, participants' reports of managem practices should reflect the traditional authority of their society r than the legal-rational principles that are relatively more character of American organizations (Ali, 1990). Saudi government and busi managers, since they share the same traditional expectations, wou both be expected to operate according to these traditional organiz principles.
HI: Saudi managers in both private and public sectors will report significantly more traditional and significantly less bureaucratic organizational practices than U.S. managers.
Although the focus of the present work is on governmental/business management comparisons in Saudi Arabia, this hypothesis is necessary to establish that the new scales reported here are, in fact, reflecting differences between Saudi and U.S. managerial perceptions. Within the kingdom, private business organizations should be relatively more influenced by Western bureaucratic principles than the governmental organizations. This is because their concern for profits will lead the managers of business organizations to be relatively more concerned with efficiency (Ali, 1986). In addition, many private Saudi businesses have U.S. and other venture partners and customers. These private businesses, therefore, would be expected to experience pressures to be more compatible from these task-environment organizations (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967).
H2: Saudi governmental managers will report that their organizations are characterized by relatively more traditional and less bureaucratic practices than will Saudi business managers.
However, in contrast to Berger (1957), we do not believe that "amount of Western contact" is the major factor leading to relatively more bureaucratic practices in Saudi business organizations. That is, Saudi managers do not run their organizations according to relatively more traditional principles because they do not know how to run their organizations bureaucratically; rather, they have made a choice intended to express their cultural preferences. Differences in organizational practices are the result of a balancing of personal preferences (or what Hofstede [1980b] called "collective mental programming") and environmental pressures, not the effects of a lack of knowledge or "level of development." Note that these choices are not necessarily explicitly articulated (although in Saudi Arabia many of them have been); rather, they reflect the differences in values that have been extensively documented by comparative-management researchers.
H3: After controlling for direct foreign work-related contacts, Saudi governmental managers will report that their organizations are characterized by relatively more traditional and less bureaucratic practices than will Saudi business managers.

Method of sample selection and procedure
Questionnaires were distributed to governmental and business managers in Saudi Arabia and the United States personally by the first author in 1987. All respondents were promised anonymity, with only a code number identifying their sector on the questionnaire. Manager selected because it was assumed they would be more familia both management practices and the questionnaire methodology would nonsupervisory employees. Two hundred and forty ques naires were distributed to the managers in the Saudi ministrie ing agriculture, health, finance, posts and telecommunicatio education; 68 percent or 164 useable responses were received the Saudi governmental managers. Ninety Saudi business m representing agricultural products, basic industries, real estate pital, resort, and financial firms were asked to participate, wi (64 percent) returning useable questionnaires. There were no d ences across managerial level or organization in response r the United States, questionnaires were distributed to a smaller ple of federal managers working in three agencies and manage industrial and financial companies in the Washington, DC Forty-four (34 percent) useable questionnaires were retur governmental and business American managers. The disappo response of the U.S. managers precludes a confident cross-n comparison of American and Saudi differences. However, th sponses were retained in the present report (to test hypot because they provide an exploratory comparison group to h tablish the ability of the new scales to differentiate manageria tices in different nations.

Measures
All of the variables are multi-item scales constructed from questionnaire items. Saudi managers received an Arabic version of the instrument. The questionnaire was constructed first in English (the bureaucratic practices items were taken from an English-language instrument developed by Rainey). The English-language questionnaire was professionally translated to Arabic in Saudi Arabia. The translated questionnaire was reviewed by the first author and another professional translator with significant experience working for the Saudi government to ensure that the terminology corresponded to that used by the target population. The three held several rounds of meetings to perfect the translation, with final decisions made by the first author.

B ureaucratic practices
Measures of the extent to which bureaucratic principles govern organizational practices are widely available. In the present study, Rainey's (1983) items were adopted because they were used in an empirical (U.S.) governmental and business comparison. All questionnaire items were Likert-type in which the respondents were asked to indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement on five-point scales. Rainey's original items were factor-analyzed.1 Unfortunately, Rainey's original nine scales were not replicated in our sample. Since Rainey's original reliabilities were all acceptable, something in the translation and administration in a different country may have led to these problems. In any case, it was decided to use the bureaucratic practices scales that emerged from the present factor analyses of Rainey's items. The first scale, "Rule Boundedness," consisted of four items and had an alpha of 0.63. The items for all of the scales used in this report appear in Table 1.
The second bureaucratic practices scale was a version of Rainey's "Goal Clarity" scale. Clear expectations and directions were seen by Rainey as a feature of organizations guided by legal-rational or bureaucratic principles. The three items composing this scale obtained an alpha of 0.61 in the present sample.

Traditional practices
There are no available scales assessing the extent to which traditional authority is used in organizations. This is in contrast to the extensive attention given to relative bureaucratization (Blau, 1974;Pearce and Page, 1990). This lack does not seem to reflect the absence of traditional practices in Western societies. For example, the importance of personal contacts in mobility has been widely discussed as "mentorship" in the careers literature. It may rather be more a reflection of the extent to which legal-rational ideals direct inquiry, particularly in the United States. This report provides the first exploratory attempt to develop paper-and-pencil scales to assess perceptions of traditional organizing practices.
Twenty-seven positively and negatively worded items were developed in several brainstorming sessions by the authors. One of the greatest challenges was the development of items that were not reac- Even if a manager is a poor performer, formal rules 0.48make it hard to remove him from the organization.
Producing low-quality work decreases my chances for 0.52promotion.
If a manager is particularly effective, it is easy under 0.56the rules for his superior(s) to reward him with higher pay.

Goal clarity
The organization for which I work has goals -0.82 which are clearly defined.
It is easy to give a precise explanation of the -0.64 goals of my organization.
Doing high-quality work makes me feel I am -0.72 developing my abilities. tive for managers who would be familiar with the Western concepts of the "correct" (that is, legal-rational) way to run organizations (see Ali, 1990).

Traditional practices items Rotated loadings
The twenty-seven original items were factor-analyzed with a varimax rotation as described in note 1. Sixteen items loaded at least 0.40 on one factor, with a difference of 0.10 for subsequent loadings on other factors. (The items and factor loadings appear in Table 1.) The useable scales are called "Job Is Personal Property" (alpha = 0.80), "Non-Merit Evaluation Criteria" (alpha = 0.78), "Nepotism" (alpha = 0.73), and "Western Contact" (alpha = 0.61). These scales demonstrated acceptable validity using conventional standards.2 Table 2 contains the intercorrelations (as well as means and standard deviations) among the scales used in this report.

Hypothesis 1
Saudi managers in both sectors were expected to report significantly more traditional and significantly less bureaucratic organizational practices than American managers. The hypothesis is partially supported. The Saudi managers reported significantly less rule-boundedness than their American counterparts (2.99 versus 3.28, p < 0.01), consistent with the hypothesis. Yet, the Saudi managers reported greater goal clarity than did the Americans (4.01 versus 3.56,/? < 0.01), contrary to prediction. We found no differences in the extent to w reported that colleagues considered their jobs to be their per (2.85 versus 2.95, ns). However, the use of nonmerit crite 1.93, p < 0.05) and nepotism (3.27 versus 2.68, p < 0.01) w with the hypothesis asserting that these practices would be m in Saudi than in U.S. organizations. Thus, three of the f consistent with the hypothesized managerial reports of le and more traditional practices in Saudi than in U.S. organizat

Hypothesis 2
Saudi governmental managers were expected to report th nizations were relatively more traditional and less bure would Saudi business managers. Again, this hypothesis w in three of the five tests (see Table 3). Saudi business ported that their organizations were more rule-bound, evaluate employees using performance-based criteria, an terized by nepotism than were their governmental count were no significant differences between reported goal cla ing jobs as the personal property of their incumbents. T port the theoretical argument that governments are mor organized according to principles reflecting their soc values, while business organizations must balance the with the demands of other elements in their task environments. However, this differ in contact was not significantly associated with any differences in ganizational practices, as can be seen in Table 4. In no case did wo related contact with foreigners contribute significant expla variance in organizational practices; the effects of managing in e Saudi ministries or Saudi businesses reported in Table 3 are virtua duplicated in Table 4. Thus, the relatively less traditional and m bureaucratic organizational practices of Saudi businesses canno assumed to be the result of greater personal contact between S business managers and their more bureaucratic Western colleagues.

Discussion
Saudi managers, in both government and business, reported that their organizations were less rule-bound, used more nonmerit criteria in personnel decisions, and were characterized by greater nepotism than did U.S. managers from business and government. Further, the Saudi governmental managers reported that their organizations were less rule-bound, less merit-based, and employed more nepotism in staffing than did the Saudi business managers. These patterns held even when we controlled for the extent to which managers worked with foreigners. This buttresses the argument that the use of more traditional organizing practices was an informed choice, rather than the result of ignorance of bureaucratic principles. Thus, Saudi governmental organizations more closely reflected the organizing ideals of their society than did the businesses, which must mediate between their personal ideals and the meritocratic pressures of members of their task environments.
The hypothesized patterns did not appear for the variables of Goal Clarity and Job Is Personal Property. For the former, we found a reversal of the hypothesized direction (Saudis reported greater goal clarity than did Americans). It may be that this variable is not a good surrogate for degree of bureaucratization. Saudi Arabia has a comparatively smaller and more homogeneous population -ethnically and religiously -than does the United States. It is possible that goal clarity is more a function of organizational size and homogeneity rather than of the extent to which organizations are bureaucratically organized. There are two possible explanations for the lack of significant differences in these managers' reports of use of office for one's personal Weber suggested that this was a characteristic of traditional so ties, but it may well be that the practice has only been forced und ground in societies adopting legal-rational values. That is, the Uni States and other Western organizations may be influenced by mo traditional practices than is usually acknowledged (Monroe,19 After all, there are many anecdotes concerning American manage use of organizational resources to support their own careers or co sumption. Unfortunately, due to the small U.S. sample obtained, co dent Saudi-American conclusions await further research. Certainly, pattern of results found in the present study seems to suggest that organizational practices in these two countries may be more comp than the simple bureaucratic/traditional dichotomy originally prop These findings provide additional insight into the debate over dif ences between government and business organizations. It seems th the Western-centered debate has turned on distinctions that are par lar to their own national political economies -to the ideals that Am cans and other Westerners expect their governmental organization uphold. This evidence contradicts the assumption that there is anyt particularly "bureaucratic" or "open" about governmental organ tions themselves. Rather, it supports Bozeman's (1987) contention governmental organizations are governed by principles that m closely reflect the values that members of that society hold than private businesses. This is an important distinction for practice a theory, and it is hoped that this work will help to shift this pub management debate to a more truly universal focus.
This recognition of the role of values in management should mak easier for managers in non-Western society to make more finely gauge judgments about which management theories from the West to app This work is also intended to allay the implicit assumption that m observers and advisors hold that managing according to other legal-rational principles reflects a "lower level of development" ra than choice. In fact, because non-Westerners are forced to contr their values with those of Westerners, they could be seen as mak more informed choices than are Westerners who are not exposed frequently to alternative forms of management in practice, particu in the public sector.
There are several implications for the practice and study of pub management. This work suggests that large-scale shifts in societal ues will influence the nature of organizations, particularly governm tal organizations. Several of the shifts affecting U.S. public managers may reflect these societal shifts. For example: • The assumption that governmental organizations are inherently slower and more cumbersome is reflected in the movement to private sector contracting of governmental services. These decisions might be analyzed by examining what values are being reflected in these transfers.
• The movement to performance-based pay systems in government (Pearce and Perry, 1983) should probably be seen as a reflection of a shift in societal values: less employee protection for more efficiency (and perhaps a greater appearance of equity).
Heretofore, much discussion of the role of values in organizations has assumed that governmental organizations always represent "positive" or widely admired values. We suggest, rather, that they are institutions reflective of their societies. As the values of members of society shift, we would expect pressures on organizations, and especially on governmental organizations, to adopt different practices. This work suggests that governmental organizations will tend to bear the burden of representing their members' values and, as such, should be the arenas of greatest conflict when values do shift. Notes 1. The factor-analysis procedure consisted of a principal-components analysis with varimax rotation using the Saudi respondents only (the small sample size precluded using the American sample for this procedure). The criteria for determining whether items loaded onto a particular factor were as follows: an item must load at least 0.40 on the target factor, and the difference in the loading on the next-highest factor should be greater than 0.10. This approach to determining whether an item has a salient loading on a factor is a conservative one (Gorsuch, 1983) and ensures that the resultant scales contain items with higher levels of shared variance.
2. In order to test the validity of these three new traditional -practices scales, two approaches were taken. First, a test of the convergent and discriminant validity of the scales was completed, based on Campbell and Fiske's (1959) work.
Unfortunately, cross-method tests of convergent and discriminate validity were not possible; however, two within-method comparisons provide some evidence of the extent to which these scales are internally homogeneous and assess distinct features of traditional practices. The mean intrascale item correlations for these scales were 0.45, 0.42, and 0.40, respectively. The mean interscale, interitem correlations (absolute values) were 0.23, 0.24, and 0.25 for Job Is Personal Property, Non-Merit Evaluation Criteria, and Nepotism. Thus, these scales appear to have acceptable levels of discrimination among themselves.
As Nunnally (1967) and his successors have noted, for theoretical resear most important aspect of the validity of a measure is the test of its co validity. Tests of construct validity involve testing hypotheses concern the construct should relate to other constructs. If the measure does not pe expected, the researcher cannot be sure whether the measure or the theor fault. However, if the hypotheses are confirmed, this provides substan dence that the measure is a valid representation of the construct. In the test, it was hypothesized that, based on the theoretical work of Weber, cratic and traditional organizational practices reflected fundamentally d organizing principles, such that organizations that are relatively more bur would be less traditional, and vice versa. That is, traditional organizatio tices were hypothesized to be correlated negatively with the presence of cratic practices. As can be seen in Table 2, all three of the traditionalscales are significantly negatively correlated with the two bureaucratic-pr scales. This suggests that these scales are, in fact, measuring facets of a c (namely, traditional organizational practices) that is inversely related to cratic practices, as would be expected from Weber's theoretical work. O the three hypotheses tested in this report also reflect hypothesized relati between these constructs and others, so that their confirmation provides a supporting evidence of these scales' construct validity.