Preferred decision-making styles: A cross-cultural comparison

398 graduate and undergraduate business students from the USA, Japan, and Hong Kong were administered Kirton's (1976) Adaption-Innovation Inventory of decision style. Analysis of variance showed that mean group scores differed significantly with the U.S. respondents showing a preference for the Innovator style and the Chinese respondents the Adaptor style. Contrary to our hypotheses, the Japanese respondents did not show a clear preference for either style. We hypothesize that the differences among groups may be a function of cultural values and discuss the implications of our findings for managing cross-cultural teams.