| Cultural differences can cause a multitude of problems for US firms doing business abroad, thus creating a need to understand such differences. Differing views on authority and hierarchy, expectations about the company, achievement and success, risk-taking, and the need for rules can become an obstacle in the interactions between US managers and local personnel. The need to understand cultural differences has created a debate among scholars, which features a convergence and divergence viewpoint. Those favoring convergence maintain that managerial work values are shaped primarily by economic ideology, while those favoring divergence believe that national culture plays a more important role in such process. MBA education, usually exported from the United States, has been identified as a variable, which may play a role in lessening cultural differences. With the United States as the base country, two economically successful countries, Chile and Spain, which have embraced MBA education and hold significant cultural differences with the United States, were included in a study featuring MBA students that attempted to determine the degree to which cultural differences had lessened. The study, which involved a combined sample of 123 Chilean, Spanish, and US MBA students, revealed that although there was a lessening in cultural differences, as measured by Hofstede's cultural dimensions and use of independent sample t-tests and Chi-square tests, MBA education (operationalized by MBA education levels) and other key demographic variables were not found to play a significant role in reducing cultural differences, suggesting that nation is a better explanatory variable to account for such differences. Additionally, significant correlations were found between some of Hofstede's cultural dimensions and Schwartz's cultural dimensions. Lastly, the Spanish MBA sample was found to be more short-term oriented than its counterparts in Chile and the United States. The findings of this study are deemed significant because they add to the existing body of knowledge on convergence-divergence and national culture. In addition, the study provides a useful cultural profile for US multinationals operating in Iberoamerica, as well as for local business practitioners and business school administrators of this vast and important area of the world. |
