Cultural Values and Assessment Center Practices in the Americas, Europe, and Asian Countries
It has been generally observed that assessment center (AC) procedures are different in different countries, but the specific differences in specific countries have not been systematically studied. We would expect that AC practices would differ across countries, because in several countries the situational conditions for personnel selection and personnel development are diverse. This assumption is corroborated by a recent study examining internationally employed methods of personnel selection (Ryan, McFarland, Baron & Page, 1999). Beyond this research of general personnel selection, the following aspects of AC practices are thus far unclear: (a) how are differences between organizational culture and national cultural values (e.g. power distance, insecurity avoidance) reflected in the current AC practices, and (b) how do these differences in organizational culture and national cultural values contribute to explaining the different efforts in these countries aimed at quality control of ACs? Hence we are conducting a worldwide study about the development, execution and evaluation of ACs in the Americas, Europe, and Asia to try to explain how these organizational and country differences relate to AC practices. Our presentation will give an overview of the objectives of the study and the design. Moreover we discuss the connection between national cultural values and specific AC techniques. This discussion should generate ramifications for future AC use in the respective geographical regions, and new directions should be found regarding research theories on cultural differences.
Speaker
Diana E. Krause
Colorado State University
Since April 2004 Ms. Krause worked as a Post doc researcher at the Colorado State University, Department of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Fort Collins. From 1998 to 2003 she was a lecturer and researcher at the Technical University Berlin (Germany), Department of Economics and Management, Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior. In 2003 she received her Ph.D. on the subject “Leadership by means of power and trust in innovative processes”. From 1993 to 1998 she studied Psychology at the Humboldt University Berlin and Economics and Management at the Technical University Berlin. Moreover, she worked for different organizations as a consultant and cooperation and communication trainer.
Specializations: Assessment Center, Innovation, Leadership and Cooperation