CONFIRMATORY CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH - TESTING THE VIABILITY OF A CORPORATION-WIDE SAFETY POLICY

This study examined variation in the relationships among constructs af fecting the perceptions of safety of workers at the U.S., French, and Argentine plants of the same division of a U.S. multinational, all aff ected by the same corporation-wide safety policy. We proposed differen ces based on the profiles of the three countries on three cultural dim ensions-individualism/collectivism, authoritarian or paternalistic man agement style, and autocratic or participative decision making-and com pared the cultural groups using multisample analysis in structural equ ation modeling. Results confirmed hypotheses predicting a lower effect of management's overall concern for employees on the extent to which safety was a priority in France than in the United States and a strong er effect of management concern on safety as a priority in Argentina t han the United States; in addition, an emphasis on production had less effect on perceived safety level in Argentina than in the United Stat es.