DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS - INFLUENCE TACTICS BY ASIAN-AMERICAN AND CAUCASIAN-AMERICAN MANAGERS

This article reports an empirical study of Asian-American managers' us e of influence tactics with superiors and subordinates compared to a g roup of Caucasian-American managers. Comparisons also were made betwee n self-reported and target-reported influence behaviors of these manag ers and the extent to which the managers used similar influence tactic s with both superiors and subordinates. Interestingly, this study foun d only minor differences between influence behaviors of Asian-American managers and Caucasian-American managers. Second, this study found di fferences between self-reported influence tactics and those same tacti cs as seen by the targets. Finally, the managers studied here, both As ian-American and Caucasian-American, used different influence tactics with superiors as compared to subordinates. The minor differences, wit h less than 3% of the variance due to managers' different ethnic backg rounds, suggest that differences found in cross-cultural studies may n ot be generalizable to different ethnic groups within one country.