Performance Attributions: A Cross Cultural Study Comparing Singapore, Japan and US Companies

Attributions shape people's realities, the explanations imposing cause-effect structures on our chaotic world. Not confined to the individual, publicized attributions further influence others' attribution formulation and subsequent decisions. Attributions in corporate discretionary narrative disclosures, persuasive tools to steer investor buy-sell decisions are significant economically. Focusing on such performance attributions, investigating cross-cultural attribution patterns and Singapore's cultural inclination, we study performance-attribution statements from company accounting narratives of three nations (United States of America, Japan and Singapore). Self-enhancing/ protecting tendencies, though found to exist in all the countries studied, seem more predominant in Asian than Western society, contrary to previous research. Singapore is also found to be more culturally similar to Japan. Keywords: Performance Attribution, Singapore, USA, Japan, Cross Cultural