Stress, Task, and Relationship Orientations Across German and Vietnamese Cultures

Abstract

Cultural background and context can be an important predictor of a manager’s behavior, stress and leadership orientation. This paper examines the stress, task, and relationship orientations of people in the high-context culture of Vietnam and in the low-context culture of Germany. As a result of the analysis of 420 responses, some significant differences were found between the two samples. It appears that Vietnamese have higher scores on task, relationship and stress orientations than German respondents. While gender is a significant factor in stress perceptions, it did not demonstrate any differences in the task and relationship orientations of these respondents. In this paper, literature on German and Vietnamese cultures is presented along with practical application, suggestions and implications for future studies.

Key words: Culture; Germany; Leadership; Relationships; Stress perception; Tasks; Vietnam