How future managers view societal culture : a comparison across seven CEE countries

The purpose of our exploratory study is to describe the characteristics of a sample of Central and East European students in business and engineering from their cultural assumption perspective. The cluster-distinctive cultural practices are: High Power Distance, In-group and Institutional Collectivism, low Humane and Future Orientation. Expectations (ideals) record significant differences for all cultural dimensions, with the highest ones concerning Power Distance (desire to decrease), Performance Orientation and Humane Orientation (desire to increase). Country of origin influences the students' perceptions to a greater extent than their expectations, letting us presume that some of the societal cultural dimensions in the investigated region might show a trend toward harmonisation.