Cultural Values and Managers' Hiring Decision in Twenty-Four Countries: Does Societal Culture Matter?

Based on the theory of universal human values as developed by Schwartz (1992, 1994), we conducted a crossnational comparison of two levels of values (i.e., the cultural values at the societal level and personal values at the individual level) in terms of their effects on managers’ decision of employment discrimination (hereafter DED). We argued that, when studying the relationship between cultural values and DED, one should consider not only those commonly-studied societal values, such as individualism/collectivism (hereafter I/C), but also personal values at the individual level. Analyzing data from over ten-thousand managers across 24 countries, we show that the effects of individual value are more robust than those of societal/institutions -level values in terms of their influence on DEDs. For instance, different from the findings from such a good journal as JIBS, we found that societal value of I/C has no significant relationship with either gender or immigrant discrimination. Moreover, the effects of both societal and individual values seem to be ordered by their relative importance to relevant discrimination, which supports the argument of universal values by Schwartz (1992, 1994).