Striving for a New Ideal: A Work Environment to Energize Collaborative Capacity Across East and West Boundaries

Contemporary organizations have realized the importance of creating work environments that energize and sustain collaborative capacity. Nowhere is the need for collaborative capacity more apparent than when business interactions and collaborative work efforts cross country boundaries. Collaborative capacity is the foundation to an organization's key resource, the collaborative capital. Creating a work environment or climate that supports, enhances, and maintains collaborative capacity is essential for achieving high levels of collaborative capital. In this chapter, we review an exploratory, cross-cultural investigation of the work environments that guide organizations (public and private universities) in the United States and in several Asian countries. One hundred and ninety-four staff from a university in the United States and a combined total of 976 individuals from eight universities throughout Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) were asked to assess their organizations’ work environments using the Performance Environmental Perception Scale (PEPS; David Ripley (1998) The development of the performance environment perception scale and its underlying theoretical model. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Tennessee, Knoxville). We describe what work environment factors were viewed the same across Eastern and Western cultures, and what factors were viewed differently. Additionally, we present a model of work environment factors that can be used to enhance and sustain collaborative capacity across Eastern and Western cultures.