PROTESTANT RELATIONAL IDEOLOGY 1 Protestant Relational Ideology: The Cognitive Underpinnings and Organizational Implications of an American Anomaly

Cross-national comparisons of relational work styles suggest that the United States is an anomaly in its low relational focus. This article describes Protestant Relational Ideology (PRI), a cultural construct that explains the origins and nature of this anomaly. This construct refers to a deepseated belief that affective and relational concerns are considered inappropriate in work settings and, therefore, are to be given less attention than in social, non-work settings. Akin to an institutional imprinting perspective, a review of sociological and historical research links PRI to the beliefs and practices of the founding communities of American society. A social cognition perspective is used to explain the mechanisms through which PRI influences American relational workways. The article also describes a program of research that uses PRI to address a wider set of organizational behavior issues that include: antecedents of prejudice and discrimination in diverse organizations; sources of intercultural miscommunication; beliefs about team conflict; mental models of “professionalism” and its effect on organizational recruitment and selection. PROTESTANT RELATIONAL IDEOLOGY 3 Protestant Relational Ideology: The Cognitive Underpinnings and Organizational Implications of an American Anomaly [Our] practices and beliefs appear to us natural, permanent, and inevitable, whereas the particular conditions that make them possible often remain invisible. Asch (1952) In the corridors of American organizations, “Focus on the task” and “Don’t take things personally” are familiar words of advice, clichés repeated as subtle reminders about what it means to act “professionally.” The message is sometimes stated more bluntly. James Clifton, CEO of The Gallup Organization, tells of how frequently managers raise concerns about one particular item in Gallup’s popular ‘Q12 Survey’ on employee engagement: the one that asks, “Do you have a best friend at work?” As one manager states, “We discourage friendships in the workplace.” These directions for appropriate work behavior reflect a deep-seated sentiment that affective and relational concerns ought to be put aside at work in order to direct one’s attention to the task at hand. To be productive and efficient is prima facie to leave personal issues and emotional sensitivity at the office door. Exceptions to this organizational preference in the United States for maintaining a polite but impersonal work style have been found, primarily in countries outside North America and Northern Europe. In these societies researchers have documented several unique cultural imperatives that specifically encourage people to closely monitor social–emotional cues in virtually all interpersonal situations (Ayman & Chemers, 1983; Diaz-Guerrero, 1967; Earley, 1997; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, Marin, Liansky & Betancourt, 1984). The traditional path taken to account for these exceptions has been to generate theory grounded in values and traditions indigenous to their respective cultures. For example, the emphasis on expressive social PROTESTANT RELATIONAL IDEOLOGY 4 emotionality and harmony in Mexican culture has been traced to the indigenous cultural value of simpatia in Mexican society (Diaz-Guerreo, 1967; Triandis, et al., 1984). Chinese preferences to conduct business through a web of loyal interpersonal networks are described as a manifestation of quanxi in Chinese society (Bond, 1986; Tsui & Farh, 1997). Familial characteristics of business relations in many Korean organizations are conceptualized with respect to the Korean tradition of chaebol (Kim, 1988). Heightened sensitivity among the Japanese to the needs and concerns of others is argued to stem from the central role of amae in Japanese society (Doi, 1962). Such cultural studies offer rich theoretical accounts of relational styles abroad that deviate from the impersonal ideal workway of North America and Northern Europe. What is an exception versus what is the modal tendency, however, is more clearly revealed in comparative research designed to differentiate cultures along broad relational dimensions. This literature shows that in contrast to American patterns, heightened attention to relational concerns is in fact common across a large and diverse set of societies. For example, independent American self-construals contrast with more relationally sensitive, interdependent Japanese self-construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). American individualism also stands out from the harmony-focused Chinese collectivism (Bond, 1986; Earley & Gibson, 1998) or the Italian and French emphasis on team goals over an individual’s goals (Hampden-Turner & Trompenaars, 1993). American preferences for task-focused leaders over social-emotional leaders vary from Indian preferences for leaders high in both domains (Kool & Saksena, 1988; Sinha, 1979, 1980). Lack of attention to contextual details and relational cues in communication distinguish American social interactions from high-context Latin American, Chinese and Korean exchanges (Earley, 1997; Hall, 1983; Sanchez-Burks, et al., 2003; Ting-Toomey, 1991). The pattern that emerges suggests that mainstream American society is a cultural anomaly in its low PROTESTANT RELATIONAL IDEOLOGY 5 degree of relational focus. Across East Asia, Latin America, India, the Middle East and parts of Europe, social-emotional concerns are carefully monitored in virtually all interpersonal situations. One shortcoming of this literature, however, is that a different explanation is offered for every deviation from mainstream American patterns when it appears that it is in fact the American patterns that deviate from the norm. Anomalies beg to be explained. Moreover, the possibility of an American anomaly in relational work style has important implications for the field given the reliance on primarily American samples to generate and validate theory. What then can explain the origin and psychological nature of what appears to be a peculiar relational work style? This article describes a cultural construct called Protestant Relational Ideology, or PRI (Sanchez-Burks, et al., 2003). This construct will be used to address these questions and to explore several organizational behavior dynamics influenced by an attention to affective and relational concerns in the workplace. The next section reviews research on interpersonal patterns across cultures to further examine the extent to which mainstream American society appears as a cultural anomaly in its low degree of relational focus. The PRI construct is introduced next, followed by a review of sociological and historical research that links its origins to the ideology and practices of the founding communities of American society. A social cognition perspective is used to explain the mechanisms through which PRI influences workplace perceptions, decisions and behavior. After reviewing experimental evidence validating PRI’s main propositions, a program of research is described that uses PRI to address a wider set of issues that include: (1) antecedents of prejudice and discrimination in diverse organizations; (2) sources of intercultural difficulties in communication; (3) cultural variation in beliefs about team conflict and its implications; and (4) PROTESTANT RELATIONAL IDEOLOGY 6 implicit mental models of “professionalism” and its effect on organizational recruitment and selection. Relational Styles across Cultures There has been a long-standing interest within the social sciences in mapping out variation in how cultures define and structure the nature of interpersonal relations. The definitions of culture that underlie many of these formulations resonate with what the cognitive anthropologist Sperber (1996) describes as community-specific ideas about what is true, good and efficient. As Sumner (1906/1979) argued, these unique folkways have a directive and historical force and as such are part of the fundamental building blocks for a society. In short, culture in this area of inquiry refers to “shared understandings made manifest in act and artifact,” (Redfield, 1947). The constructs most often studied by psychologists to capture this variation in relational style include independence–interdependence (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Singelis, 1994), individualism–collectivism (Hofstede, 1980; Hsu, 1981; Triandis, 1995; Triandis, Malpass & Davidson, 1972) and high context–low context cultures (Hall, 1976). The construct of independence–interdependence focuses specifically on the nature of the relationship between self and other (Singelis, 1994). Markus and Kitayama (1991) argue that members of interdependent cultures, for example the Japanese and Koreans, place importance on maintaining interpersonal harmony and remain highly attentive to the needs, desires and goals of others in social interactions. In contrast, members of independent cultures such as in the U.S., emphasize individual happiness and focus on how relationships can serve their own needs, desires and goals. Ambady and colleagues (1996) show that whereas Korean managers structure the way they convey information based on the relationship between self and other, Americans are less PROTESTANT RELATIONAL IDEOLOGY 7 influenced by the relationship than by the content of the information being conveyed. Research within the individualism–collectivism tradition makes similar distinctions between self and other but focuses more on the relationship between the individual and the group. Ting-Toomey and colleagues (Ting-Toomey, 1988; Ting-Toomey et al., 1991) have argued that collectivists, more often than individualists, make a large relational investment in ingroup members. The collectivism of the Chinese is reflected in their use of language that maintains “face” for self and other—a strategy that reaffirms interpersonal bonds (Earley, 1993, 1997; Hu, 1944). Americans instead rely on language that is geared more toward conveying information than to