Cross-culture management: An empirical examination of task and relationship orientations of Omani and the Vietnamese

Cross-culture management scholars have suggested that contextual factors such as culture can impact one’s leadership orientations. This paper uniquely investigates the leadership orientations, which include task and relationship orientations, of people in the Netherlands and Oman. Through the analysis of 396 responses including 208 respondents from the Netherlands and 188 respondents from Oman, it appears that Omani working adults are more taskoriented than Dutch working adults. Gender is not a factor in both the task and the relationship orientations of respondents. There is a significant interaction in the relationship scores based on gender between the two cultures: Omani male respondents are more relationship-oriented than their Dutch counterparts while Dutch female respondents are more relationshiporiented than their Omani counterparts. In this paper, implications for management, recommendations for future research and limitations will also be discussed.