Responses of employees to cultural adaptation by a foreign manager.

This study examined how an often advocated strategy for bridging cultural distance in international business relationships affected participants' responses and behavioral intentions. Participants were employees (N=223) in the U.S. subsidiaries of Japanese manufacturing firms. The context was simulated by having participants respond to videotapes of a Japanese manager interacting with American subordinates. Cultural adaptation by the foreign manager was positively related to perceptions of similarity and managerial effectiveness and was negatively related to internal causal attributions for the manager's behavior. Attributions were directly related to participants' intentions to trust and perceptions of managerial effectiveness and moderated the relationship between perceptions of similarity and intentions to associate. Effects of participants' stereotypic expectations and the importance of nationality to their self-esteem were also explored