According to Bhaskaran and Sukumaran (2007), this paper aims totrace the evolution of nationality-based business organizations inMalaysia and review whether national culture, as determined bythe nationality-based work values, beliefs and orientations of the ownersand managers of organizations, influences the values, orientations andpractices of organizations. The hypothesis 1 of the study stated that there aresignificant differences in the management practices of different”nationality” based business entities. Meanwhile the hypothesis 2stated that the differences in management practices across the businessentities are the outcome of the “nationality” of the owners, leadersand senior managers of the entities. The items that yielded factor loading ofmore than 0.30 were subjected to reliability analysis using the internalconsistency method (Cronbach’s alpha). Internal consistency analysis wasperformed independently for each item.
Where reliability coefficients exceeded0.70 the items were considered adequate for testing the hypotheses. Positivecorrelation would imply that attributes such as education and experience ofcandidates as opposed to attributes such as loyalty, clan/ethnic ties and longservice are the basis of control and management selection.
Negative correlationbetween staff relationship and management selection and control processsuggests that the business use arms-length executive search and recruitingmethods rather than using referrals from family members or ethnic/clan groups.As all three functions are significant beyond the 0.01 levels across thebusiness entities, it can be inferred that control process, managementselection and staff relationships are significantly different across the tenbusiness entities. Thus, H1 issupported. There are significant differences in hownational culture based business entities organise, manage work andconduct their business. Government Corporation and Government Company(privatized), although founded and headed by Malays revel diametrically oppositegroup centroid readings thus suggesting that management selection and staffrelationship in these two business entities are dissimilar. Thus, H2 is not supported.
It seemsthat differences in management practices across the business entities cannot beattributed to differences in the nationality of the owners, leadersand senior managers of these businesses. The study shows there can besignificant differences in the culture of business entities within acountry. However, even though ethnic/nationality issues dominate thecultural, social, economic and political environment in Malaysia, theethnic/national background of the owners, founders, leaders and senior managersdo not significantly influence the management practices of the differentbusiness entities. It gives the idea that few different components impactadministration culture and practices of organizations.
