Risk Aversion in Management Decision Making

With the shrinking of the globe through globalization it is important to understand global business and culture. A considerable number of people rely upon Hofstede's 1980's findings. This chapter looks at the validity of those findings in general, his cultural dimensions, and uncertainty avoidance. This study tests the hypothesis that position level within an organization has an impact on the employee's level of uncertainty avoidance. The result of the linear regression model, R2 value of .019 and a significance level of .057, reflect that position level is not a predictor of uncertainty avoidance. However, a single sample t-test reflects that based on position level the employees had significantly different responses to the uncertainty avoidance questionnaire, p less than .001. These findings suggest that a difference does exist based on position level, but that there are other factors that have a greater impact on the level of uncertainty avoidance. Implications from this research as well as limitations and future research directions are also discussed.