Power distance as a determinant of relations between managers and employees in the enterprises with foreign capital

The managers very often don’t take into consideration cultural determinants which can influence their employees’ attitude and preferences. This can result in the transfer of practices which are not suitable in specific cultural environment. The aim of this paper is to present the direction of the influence of one of the national culture dimensions – power distance on the internal relations between managers and workforce which include employee participation and communication. The first part of this article presents the direction in which differences in the level of power distance influence relations between managers and employees in the chosen country whose cultural background in the power distance dimension is diverse enough to allow cultural differences to be easily observed. The remaining part of the paper is dedicated to presenting the results of the empirical study examining how this relations are shaped in practice in the foreign capital enterprises operating in Poland. The comparison with the practice in the capital source countries will allow to draw conclusions about the degree of the influence of the capital source country culture on the employee participation and communication in foreign capital enterprises.