Individualism–collectivism and business context as predictors of behaviors in cross-national work settings: Incidence and outcomes

► Business employees described problem work events when working cross-nationally. ► Problem type varied with language fluency, hierarchy and individualism–collectivism. ► Individualists focused on task issues, but collectivists gave more emphasis to relational issues. ► Task focus predicted positive outcome for all respondents. ► Focus on harmony and behavior change showed positive outcome if the other party was collectivistic. Brief descriptions of cross-national problem events by 1349 organizational employees from many nations were content analyzed. Contrasts between individualistic and collectivistic behaviors were much more strongly predicted by variations in business context (e.g., language spoken and hierarchical relations between the parties involved) than by a measure of nation-level in-group collectivism practices. Respondents from individualist nations emphasized performance goals and task focus, whereas those from collectivist nations emphasized personal aspects of work relations more strongly. Task-focused behavioral responses to problems were uniformly associated with positive outcome, whereas the outcome of emotional responses interacted significantly with individualism–collectivism practices. The results are interpreted in terms of collectivists’ greater attention to context.