Cross-Culture Management: An Examination on Task, Relationship and Work Overload Stress Orientations of Dutch and Vietnamese

Human capital plays an important role and acts as a strategic resource that helps firms achieve strategic competitiveness. In the global business context, understanding the expectations and behaviors of employees in different cultures is paramount for international and multicultural organizations to succeed. This paper examines the task and relationship orientations as well as the work overload stress perception of people in the low-context culture of the Netherlands and in the high-context culture of Vietnam. As a result of the analysis of 396 responses, some significant differences were found between the two samples. It appears that Vietnamese have significantly higher scores on task, relationship and stress orientations than Dutch respondents. While gender is a significant factor in task and relationship orientations, it did not demonstrate any differences in the stress perceptions of these respondents. In this paper, literature on Dutch and Vietnamese cultures is presented along with practical application, suggestions and implications for future studies.