Abstract: | We investigate cultural variations in the strategic issue labels of threats and opportunities. In a survey of 276 American and international respondents, we investigate the sensitivity of issue attributes that discriminate between threat and opportunity. We find that the cultural value of uncertainty avoidance (UA) had a significant effect: Compared to low UA cultures, individuals from high UA cultures were significantly more sensitive to controllability in perceiving strategic issues. However, other cultural value dimensions (individualism, masculinity, power distance) did not have similar effects. Our results point to the need to link specific cultural dimensions to specific aspects of strategic issue analysis. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |