Organizational flexibility in Western and Asian firms: An examination of control and safeguard rules in five countries

This paper examines the influence of family and government ownerships and o f labour unions on the adoption of control and safeguard rules in Asian (Ho ng Kong, Korea, and Malaysia) and Western (Australia and Canada) organizati ons. Following Ng and Dastmalchian (1998), control rules are those rules ap plied to employees and their behaviour at work, whereas safeguard rules are designed to address managerial discretion. Using data from 119 organizatio ns, of which 58 are from Asia and the remaining 61 from the West, the resul ts show that, contrary to general expectations, government organizations fr om both regions are no more rules-oriented than their non-government counte rparts. Another unexpected finding is that unionized Asian organizations ha ve fewer safeguard rules, not only in comparison with nonunion Asian firms but also relative to unionized Western organizations. The results also show that Asian family organizations have fewer safeguard rules in comparison w ith both other Asian firms and other family firms in the West.