Does Culture Influence Mentoring Perspectives? A Comparative Study of Indian and U.S. Business Students
Academic Article
Overview
Overview
Abstract
Culture (both country affiliation and national espoused) has been shown to influence a variety of perspectives and behaviors. And culture often varies, on average, between countries. As accounting firms, and many other service-providing firms, shift more to outsourcing work to other countries, and especially to India, it is important to understand how culture might influence their work practices. One such relevant work practice is mentoring, which is critically important in the accounting profession. In this study, we examine two related associations. First, we compare the mentoring perceptions of survey respondents (who proxy for business professionals) in two culturally different countries, the U.S. and India. Second, based on significant differences, we expand our analysis to consider the association of espoused national culture on mentoring perspectives. This study uses a large sample of survey respondents – graduate business students from the U.S. (n = 422) and India (n = 442), to evaluate these relationships. Utilizing regression analyses, we find that career development support and role modeling seem relatively less important in India, as compared to the U.S., whereas social support seems relatively more important in India. The driving dimensions of espoused national culture seem to be power distance for career development support, collectivism for social support, and uncertainty avoidance for role modeling. Our findings have practical implications for multinational companies, including large U.S.-based public accounting firms.
