Causal Attributions for Corporate Performance: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Chinese and U.S. American Companies

Abstract

At the individual level, the self-enhancing attributional tendency has been shown to be more prevalent in North American cultures than in East Asian cultures. However, cross-cultural studies of attribution at the organizational level are scarce. To fill this gap, this study performs a content analysis of 200 corporate annual reports from Chinese and U.S. American companies. The findings suggest that both Chinese and U.S. American companies attribute favorable performance more to internal causes than to external causes, and attribute unfavorable performance more to external causes than to internal causes. However, the proportion of attributions associated with internal causes relative to external causes in explaining favorable performance is significantly greater for U.S. American companies than for Chinese companies.

Keywords:

• Attribution
• Self-Enhancing Bias
• Annual Reports
• Cross-Cultural
• Content Analysis

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank three anonymous reviewers, Shiv Ganesh, and Deborah Cai for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. He also thanks Bingrui Liu, Na Li, Jessica Palmer, and Zahirah Rana for assistance in data coding.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kaibin Xu

Kaibin Xu is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communications and Theater, Temple University