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Managers' gender role attitudes: a country institutional profile approach

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Abstract

In this paper, we use the country institutional profile to investigate how selected cognitive, normative, and regulative aspects of various countries relate to traditional gender role attitudes of managers from these countries. Our cross-level analyses, using hierarchical linear modeling, control for a number of individual characteristics (i.e., age, education, gender, and social class). Results support our hypotheses that managers' traditional gender role attitudes relate positively to nation-level uncertainty avoidance and power distance. Moreover, the results support our predictions that gender egalitarian normative institutions, degree of regulation, and degree of educational development are negatively related to managers' traditional gender role attitudes. However, results reject our hypotheses regarding nation-level religiosity, assertiveness, and masculinity, not showing the proposed relationship with managers' traditional gender role attitudes. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank associate editor Mark Peterson and the three anonymous reviewers for their extensive and helpful comments throughout the review process. We also acknowledge the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) for making available a significant portion of the data used in this study.

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Correspondence to K Praveen Parboteeah.

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Accepted by Mark Peterson, Departmental Editor, 17 September 2007. This paper has been with the authors for four revisions.

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Parboteeah, K., Hoegl, M. & Cullen, J. Managers' gender role attitudes: a country institutional profile approach. J Int Bus Stud 39, 795–813 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400384

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400384

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