In this article we study the role of power and power differences in cross-cultural perception. We do so by way of exploratory case studies in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the police in the Netherlands and Curaçao. We demonstrate how cross-cultural perception between two specific ethnic groups, European Dutch and African Curaçaoans, changes depending on the amount of power imbalance in the various organizational and national contexts. With this article, we follow the call for research on the impact of power dynamics on cross-cultural perception, an approach that goes beyond the traditional, dimensional approach that is prevalent in organization literature.
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