Late Again? A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Meeting Lateness Frustration by Punctual Attendees

Workplace meetings are often used to help accomplish individual, group, team, and organizational goals. Despite the relatively common occurrence of meeting lateness in U.S.-American samples, less is known regarding other cultural contexts. Following Conservation of Resources theory, we expect that employees from different cultures should experience meeting lateness as a legitimate stressor. Cross-cultural theory suggests that organizational practices, understandings, and use of time may be construed differently as a function of power distance and individualism/collectivism orientations. Working adults (N = 1432) from Chile, China, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, and the USA described how frustrated, irritated, and upset they would be given various scenarios in which the role (meeting leader, colleague) and degree of lateness (5, 10, 15 minutes) of the late arrival were manipulated. Additionally, we found that applying COR theory to meeting lateness served as a valuable framework in examining how lateness is associated with negative effects across our six cultures of interest. The observed cross-cultural differences in the reactions toward others’ lateness appears to be a function of individual interpretation of their cultural context as well as their own individually oriented interests. The data also show that individuals from cultures of larger power distance and collectivist orientations interpret norm violations more negatively, lending themselves to distinct reactions in communicating that lateness is an unacceptable behavior.