The effects of national culture on the role of participation in different task situations

Prior studies primarily in Anglo-American and Asian cultural settings have found that budgetary participation interacts with reliance on accounting performance measures and task situations to affect managerial attitudes. Researchers have questioned if such findings can also be found in different cultural environments. As France has a high power distance and high individualism culture which is different from those of both the Anglo-American and Asian nations, this study investigates if such cultural differences may affect the findings of prior studies. Based on a sample of 44 French managers, the results indicate a similar significant three-way interaction effect. However, they also indicate that French managers have low levels of budgetary participation. Participation also has an insignificant effect on managers' job satisfaction in high task difficulty situations. These results are contrary to those of prior studies in Anglo-American and Asian cultural settings and may have important implications for the study of cultural effects on management control systems.