Missing Relations Incorporating Relational Constructs Into Models of Culture

A5 an increasing number of organizations reach across national boundaries, organizational research increasingly addresses the question ofhow national culture influences individual behavior (Erez & Earley, 1993; Hofstede, 1991). Researchers face a choice among numerous definitions of culture and methods for studying it that have been developed in different academic disciplines (Keesing, 1974). As the diversity of chapters in this volume attests, researchers in different subfields oforganizational behavior have chosen different methodological paths and have arrived at different insights. The path chosen by most micro-level organizational behavior researchers is to study “subjective culture,” that is, to conceptualize culture as existing in an individual’s mental representations rather than in external structures and artifacts (Triandis, 1967, 1972, 1995). Cultural differences in values, beliefs, and attitudes are assessed through inventories such as those traditionally used to measure personality differences. Moreover, just as generalizations about personality were made in terms