Carla I. Koen. Comparative International Management

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autonomy/embeddedness strongly contrasts openness to change with maintaining the

status quo, individualism/collectivism does not explicitly do so. Rather, Hofstede sees

openness to change (modernism) and maintaining the status quo (traditionalism) as con-

sequences of individualism and collectivism, respectively (see Table 2.3).

Hierarchy versus egalitarianism

In hierarchical cultures, the unequal distribution of power, roles and resources is seen as

legitimate (values include social power, authority, humility and wealth). People are social-

ized and sanctioned to comply with the obligations and rules attached to their roles. In

hierarchical cultures, organizations are likely to emphasize the chain of authority, to

assign well-deﬁned roles in a hierarchical structure, and to demand compliance in the

service of goals set from the top.

Cultural egalitarianism seeks to induce people to recognize one another as moral

equals who share basic interests as human beings. It emphasizes transcendence of selﬁsh

interests in favour of voluntary behaviour that promotes the welfare of others (values

include equality, social justice, responsibility and honesty). People are socialized to inter-

nalize a commitment to voluntary cooperation with others and to feel concern for

everyone’s welfare. Organizations are likely to express egalitarianism by acknowledging

the legitimacy of cooperative negotiation among members who ﬂexibly enact their roles

and try to affect organizational goals. These goals may include the welfare of group

members and of the larger society, not only proﬁtability. Leaders are likely to motivate

others by enabling them to share in goal setting and by appealing to the joint welfare of

all.

The hierarchy–egalitarianism dimension is said to overlap with Hofstede’s power dis-

tance. Both are to do with legitimizing social inequality. Power distance refers to the

acceptance of inequality by less powerful people. It also expresses their fear of authority.

Hofstede sees it as a response to the inevitability of social inequality. Schwartz’s hier-

archy–egalitarian dimension addresses a different issue: assurance of responsible

behaviour that preserves the social fabric. Their capacity to assure responsible behaviour

gives hierarchical systems of ascribed roles their legitimacy. Hierarchy does not necess-

arily entail a preference for distance from authority. Egalitarianism emphasizes the moral

equality of individuals, their capacity to internalize commitments to the welfare of others

and to cooperate voluntarily with them. These key elements of egalitarianism are absent

from low power distance (Sagiv and Schwartz, 2000: 421).

Mastery versus harmony

Mastery-orientated cultures encourage active self-assertion in order to master, change

and exploit the natural and social environment to attain personal or group goals (values

include ambition, success, daring and competence). Organizations in such cultures are

likely to be dynamic, competitive and strongly orientated towards achievement and

success.

Harmony-orientated cultures accept the world as it is, trying to comprehend and ﬁt in

rather than to change or exploit (values include unity with nature, protecting the

environment and world peace). In this view, applying technology to manipulate the

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environment is problematic and may even be seen as illegitimate. Where harmony is

important, organizations are likely to be viewed holistically as systems to be integrated

with the larger society, which should minimize competition. Leaders are likely to try to

understand the social and environmental implications of organizational actions and to

seek non-exploitative ways to work towards organizational goals.

The mastery dimension corresponds to some extent to Hofstede’s masculinity dimen-

sion. Both emphasize assertiveness and ambition, and both have similar consequences for

organizations. However, Hofstede contrasts masculinity with femininity – tenderness,

care and concern for others. This implies that masculinity neglects or rejects the interests

of others. Schwartz contrasts mastery to harmony – being in tune with others and the

environment. Mastery calls for an active, even disruptive, stance, but it does not imply self-

ishness. Harmony might seem to overlap conceptually with uncertainty avoidance,

because both idealize a harmonious order. However, harmony stresses that people and

nature can exist together comfortably without the assertion of control. In contrast,

uncertainty avoidance emphasizes controlling ambiguity and unpredictability through

institutions and beliefs that provide certainty (Sagiv and Schwartz, 2000: 421). The con-

sequences for organizations of harmonious cultures do seem to reﬂect some of the

consequences of feminine cultures, however. Whereas harmony is argued to reduce com-

petition, femininity encourages achievement in terms of service, human contacts, and so

on (Table 1.4). Whereas leaders in a harmonious culture are likely to seek non-exploita-

tive ways to work towards organizational goals, feminine cultures are likely to stress

equality and solidarity, thus hampering exploitation.

Schwartz’s work has some advantages over that of Hofstede, the most important of which

are the higher face validity of the items used to operationalize the dimensions, and the

measurement characteristics of the scales. On the other hand, the items used by Schwartz

are broader than those of Hofstede, which focus on work-related values. This may limit

the applicability of Schwartz’s framework in the ﬁeld of comparative international man-

agement. Although it has strong theoretical foundations, the usefulness of Schwartz’s

framework has not yet been established to the same extent as that of Hofstede

(Steenkamp, 2001).

Fons Trompenaars: cultural dilemmas

Independently from the above approaches, Trompenaars drew on sociological literature to

theoretically derive dimensions of culture that may affect behaviour in business organiz-

ations. He developed a questionnaire intended to measure preferred ways of handling ﬁve

basic elements of social relationships speciﬁed by Parsons and Shils (1951), as well as pre-

ferred ways of managing in organizations. The questionnaire was meant to tap the values

of organizational employees. Questions have been raised, however, regarding the format

of many of the items used to measure values (Smith and Schwartz, 1997). During the

past decades, about 46,000 managers from over 40 countries have completed the ques-

tionnaire. In contrast to Hofstede and Schwartz, Trompenaars did not match the

demographic proﬁles of his samples. Respondents were mostly managers and other

employees who attended his training programmes. As indicated, Trompenaars’ cultural

model consists of six (in earlier work, seven) bipolar dimensions or ‘dilemmas’. We will

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look at each in turn (on the basis of Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, 2000) and, as

far as possible, relate them to Hofstede’s dimensions.

Universalism versus particularism

This dimension concerns ‘rules’ in contrast to ‘relationships’ as the principal determi-

nants of interpersonal behaviour. In a strongly universalist culture, personal

relationships should not interfere with business decisions. Nepotism is frowned on and

contractual agreements are the referees of conduct. Logical, rational analytical thinking

and impartial professionalism are ideal characteristics to cultivate and standards to main-

tain. In particularist cultures, institutionalized obligations to friendship and kinship are

considered ‘moral’ requirements, which are maintained through personalism, pater-

nalism and other social network mechanisms. Particularism is statistically associated

with Hofstede’s individualism–collectivism dimension as particularist cultures are nor-

mally also collectivist and, therefore, also high on the power distance dimension

(Hofstede, 1980: 229).

Individualism versus communitarianism

Trompenaars’ second dimension is almost identical to Hofstede’s dimension of individu-

alism–collectivism.

Speciﬁcity versus diffuseness

This dimension highlights the difference between cultures that analyse phenomena into

speciﬁcs (i.e. parts, facts, targets, tasks, numbers, units, points), and cultures that integrate

and conﬁgure such details into diffuse patterns, relationships and wider contexts.

Achieved status versus ascribed status

In some societies, status is accorded on the basis of achievement, whereas others ascribe

status on the basis of durable characteristics such as age. This dimension seems concep-

tually related to both power distance and individualism–collectivism. Achievement in

ascriptive cultures is less an individual and more of a collective concern, and organiz-

ations in these societies justify a high power distance and the resulting hierarchy as

requisite ‘power-to-get-things-done’. Power in such cultures does not require legitimizing

in the same way as in achievement-orientated cultures and abuse of power is checked by

the moral responsibilities inherent in patron–client-type relationships.

Inner-directed orientation versus outer-directed

orientation

This dimension distinguishes between cultures in which action is guided by inner-directed

judgements, decisions and commitments, and cultures in which action is guided by

signals, demands and trends in the outside world. At stake is whether virtue and right

direction is located within us or outside us.

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74 COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

Sequential versus synchronous time

Different attitudes towards time (past, present and future) are reﬂected by the contrast

between notions of time as linear and ‘sequential’, and notions of time as circular and

‘synchronic’. Such differences affect how we coordinate, plan and organize. A ‘sequential’

culture, where the focus is rational efﬁciency, is focused on getting things done in the

shortest possible sequence of passing time. In contrast, a synchronic culture allows par-

allel activities and is less orientated towards punctuality. The focus in synchronic cultures

is more likely to be on effectiveness than on efﬁciency.

There is a connection between this dimension and Hofstede and Bond’s dimension of

long-term versus short-term orientation as ‘Individualist cultures with a sequential view

of time are usually short-term in their business strategies. Collectivist cultures with a syn-

chronous view of time are typically long-term strategically’ (Trompenaars, cited in Gatley

et al., 1996: 111).

In Trompenaars’ early work a seventh dimension was also distinguished: affective versus

neutral. This dimension concerned the extent to which emotions or feelings may be

expressed in interpersonal communication. In a later study (Hampden-Turner and

Trompenaars, 1994), this dimension was replaced with another one, which was called

‘equality versus hierarchy’, which appears to resemble closely Hofstede’s power distance.

Trompenaars’ work is seen as less academically rigorous than Hofstede and Schwartz’s

work (for a criticism of Trompenaars’ work, see Hofstede 1996). For instance, it is not clear

to what extent the dilemmas do indeed form independent dimensions. The attractiveness of

his work, however, lies in the fact that, more than the other two studies, it offers some prac-

tical and intuitively appealing answers for managers involved in cross-cultural ventures.

The message of Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner is to submit that as cultures face

dilemmas in relationships with people, with time and with the environment differently, it

is necessary to recognize and reconcile differences and attempt to synthesize the advan-

tages inherent in all cultures. It is a reiteration of the view that there is no ‘one best way’

of managing and no objective truth in how best to generate wealth.

Each of these major studies of culture-level dimensions has yielded mappings of

national culture relative to one another. To explore further the relationship between

Hofstede, Schwartz and Trompenaars’ work we will now compare these mappings.

2.4 Cultural Clusters

Two key questions may be asked here.

1. Do the world’s national cultures form meaningful clusters? That is, do the clusters of

countries that emerge in an empirical analysis of their value proﬁles have common

or similar histories and/or socio-demographic characteristics that might account for

why they have evolved similar cultures?

2. What value proﬁles characterize these clusters?

The practical implications of cultural clusters can be illustrated through the fol-

lowing example (Ronen and Shenkar, 1985: 447).

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An MNC is establishing a venture in Switzerland. The corporation’s directors must

determine if management skills will be imported from its subsidiaries in France,

Germany or Italy. All three languages are spoken in Switzerland, albeit in different

areas. The country clustering [see Table 2.6] suggests that managers be brought

from Germany because Switzerland and Germany belong to the same cluster of

work values. German managers, therefore, can be expected to be closer to and more

familiar with workers’ attitudes in Switzerland.

Hofstede (2001) reported a hierarchical cluster analysis of 53 countries based on

their scores on the four IBM indexes (PDI, UAI, IDV and MAS). This analysis yielded 12

cultural clusters. Hofstede provided value proﬁles for each culture area. For reasons of

brevity, not all of Hofstede’s cultural clusters are mentioned here (see Table 2.6).

Schwartz (1994) and Schwartz and Ros (1995) conducted multidimensional scaling

analyses using nation scores on the seven culture-level value types Hofstede identiﬁed.

They replicated these analyses with data both from teachers (44 nations) and students

(40 nations). The same six culture areas were clearly distinguishable in both analyses:

West European, Anglo, East European, Islamic, East Asian and Latin American. Again,

Japan was distinctive. The similarity between the Hofstede and Schwartz culture areas is

remarkable. Some of the differences doubtless reﬂect the different sampling of nations –

for example, there are hardly any East European nations in Hofstede.

The value proﬁles that Schwartz reported for culture areas may also be noted. Similar

to Hofstede’s ﬁndings, he found that western European nations are characterized by a

high importance of egalitarianism (or low PDI) and intellectual autonomy (or high IDV),

and a low importance of hierarchy (or low PDI) and embeddedness (or collectivism)

(Sagiv and Schwartz, 2000).

A second region, encompassing the samples from eastern Europe (Slovenia, Estonia,

Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary) reveals a shared culture that empha-

sizes harmony (or high UAI) and embeddedness (low IDV or collectivism), rather than

mastery (or low MAS) and both types of autonomy (or low IDV). The indexes from

Yugoslavia and Slovenia, the only eastern European countries Hofstede analysed, conﬁrm

Schwartz’s picture.

Samples or countries from the English-speaking nations share a culture that tends to

emphasize mastery (or high MAS) rather than harmony (or low UAI) and affective

autonomy (or high IDV) rather than embeddedness (or collectivism).

Schwartz’s sample of sub-Saharan African countries (Ghana, Uganda, Namibia,

Nigeria and Zimbabwe) reﬂects strong cultural emphasis on embeddedness (low IDV or

collectivist) and hierarchy (or high PDI), little importance placed on affective autonomy

(or low IDV) and harmony (low UAI), and very little importance placed on intellectual

autonomy (low IDV) and egalitarianism (or high PDI). Hofstede’s sample of East and West

African countries, to a large extent, shows similar features, the only difference being that

Hofstede’s sample shows high UAI while the sample from Schwartz tends to reﬂect that

relatively little importance is placed on harmony, which, expressed in Hofstede’s dimen-

sions, would be low UAI.

Schwartz’s samples from East Asia (Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the

Philippines and Taiwan) also give little emphasis to egalitarianism (or high PDI) and intel-

lectual autonomy (low IDV). However, they vary substantially in their emphases on

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76 COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

Table 2.6 Hofstede’s country clusters

Clusters PDI UAI IDV MAS LTO

Australia

USA

Canada

Ireland

New Zealand

Germany

Switzerland

South Africa

Italy

low

medium

high

low

Denmark

Sweden

Netherlands

Norway

Finland

medium

high

medium

Belgium

France

low

low to

medium

high

low

low to

medium

Japan

high

medium

low

Austria

Israel

medium

high

medium

high

Yugoslavia

Slovenia

Turkey

Arab countries

Greece

Argentina

Spain

Brazil

low

high

112

medium

high

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NATIONAL CULTURES AND MANAGEMENT 77

mastery and harmony. China and, to a lesser extent, India attribute high importance to

mastery (or high MAS) and low importance to harmony (or low UAI); other countries

from East Asia are more moderate on these values. This is largely conﬁrmed by Hofstede’s

ﬁndings (see Table 2.6). In comparison with adjacent countries, Japan places more

emphasis on intellectual autonomy (or higher IDV in Hofstede’s model), and on mastery

(Japan scores higher on MAS than India in Hofstede’s model). Japan places higher

emphasis on harmony, which is expressed in a higher score for UAI in the Hofstede model.

Smith et al. (1996) present a plot of 43 nations on their two meaningful dimensions.

Two clear culture areas emerge, one for eastern Europe and the other for northern

Europe. Somewhat less clear Far Eastern, Latin and Anglo areas are also discernible. The

overlap of these results with those reported by Hofstede and Schwartz is substantial. The

northern European cluster was high on egalitarian commitment and on utilitarian

involvement. According to the items that formed these dimensions, this proﬁle signiﬁes a

cultural emphasis on achievement of status through personal merit, equality of indi-

vidual rights and rejection of paternalism, together with an emphasis on utilitarian

rather than loyalty considerations in interpersonal relations. This proﬁle is virtually the

same one as found by Schwartz for western Europe (Smith and Schwartz, 1997: 105).

The eastern European cluster, like the northern European one, was high on utili-

tarian involvement, but it was also high on conservatism. Thus it differed in emphasizing

acceptance of a hierarchical, paternalistic system of ascribed roles rather than an

emphasis on individual rights and responsibilities. This proﬁle is very similar to the one

Schwartz found for the eastern European culture area, one that emphasized conservatism

and hierarchy at the expense of autonomy, egalitarianism and mastery values (Smith and

Schwartz, 1997: 106).

The convergence regarding two culture-level dimensions in all the studies that have

Source: adapted from Hofstede (2001).

Venezuela

Colombia

Mexico

high

low

medium

Indonesia

Thailand

Taiwan

East Africa

West Africa

high

low

high

Malaysia

Philippines

India

Singapore

high

104

high

low

medium

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78 COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

covered numerous countries could be taken as an indication that the major dimensions of

culture-level variation in values have been identiﬁed. Moreover, because these studies

used data obtained in different ways and from different types of sample, it is apparent that

they are relatively robust. There is also evidence that they are relatively stable over time.

They emerged both from Hofstede’s data, collected nearly 30 years ago, and from much

more recent studies. Moreover, the Schwartz (1994) analysis yielded similar structures of

values among samples of rich and of poor nations. This would not be expected if the

massive changes that accompany socio-economic development also cause change in the

structure of values.

A warning is apposite, however. The dimensions that emerge from these studies are

affected by the locations that are sampled. No study has sampled many more than 50 of

the nearly 200 current national entities. Europe, North America and the Paciﬁc Rim are

well represented, but African and Arab countries are badly under-represented in all

studies. Moreover, the dimensions that emerge are affected by the values included in the

survey questionnaires. It is clearly too early to foreclose on the possibility that further the-

orizing and consideration of values found in indigenous studies will yet point to additional

major dimensions (Smith and Schwartz, 1997).

2.5 The Emic Approach

There seems to be an imbalance in the use of etic and emic approaches to culture in com-

parative international management. Clearly the etic approaches are better known among

management scholars. These approaches also come up with quantitative yardsticks for

comparing different national cultures, which can be used to operationalize the cultural

factor in comparative international research. This is one of the main reasons for the very

extensive use of Hofstede’s work in management studies, in particular international man-

agement. However, there is a danger to this rather one-sided concentration on the etic

approach. This is that scholars and practitioners less familiar with the background of the

studies will apply the dimensions scores uncritically, as if these represented the culture of

the countries in question. This is also at least partly due to the fact that emic scholars have

so far shown far less interest in cross-cultural management issues. However, the overem-

phasis on etic approaches, and in particular the quantitative ﬁndings, isolated from more

qualitative interpretations, leads to reiﬁcation of the dimensions: what was developed as a

tool for interpreting complex datasets comes to be seen as an inherent aspect of reality.

The conceptual lenses developed by Hofstede and other etic scholars can thus become

blinkers: because we expect to ﬁnd differences in, for example, power distance, we see

them everywhere, and we are likely to miss the many other differences that may also exist.

Therefore we think that it is essential that students of comparative international manage-

ment are familiar with both the etic and the emic approach, as this will provide them with

a more balanced and critical view. Below we will brieﬂy present the work of one emic

researcher who focuses explicitly on management and organization from a cross-cultural

perspective: Philippe d’Iribarne.

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Philippe d’Iribarne: the logics of culture

The French researcher Philippe d’Iribarne explicitly confronts in his work the ﬁndings of

etic research using ﬁndings from his own emic studies. From this perspective, the limi-

tations of etic research are serious. We will discuss d’Iribarne’s criticism of the application

of Hofstede’s power distance scale in France as an example. After that, we will discuss

d’Iribarne’s concept of culture, which is representative for today’s emic researchers, and

then present a summary of the ﬁndings of d’Iribarne’s main work, La Logique de l’Honneur

(d’Iribarne, 1989).

Limitations of the etic approach

On the basis of his own ethnographic research into French work organizations, d’Iribarne

takes issue with Hofstede’s ﬁnding that French culture would be characterized by a rather

large power distance (68, compared with 40 and 38 for both other countries studied in

detail by d’Iribarne, the USA and the Netherlands, respectively). This large power distance

raises questions for d’Iribarne, for it is higher than that of, for instance, Iran, South Korea,

Chile, Turkey or Colombia. It puts France (and Belgium, which in Hofstede’s study is

closely associated with France) out on a limb as the only non-autocratic nation between

the large power distance countries (d’Iribarne, 1996–97). The core of the problem,

according to d’Iribarne, is that in Hofstede’s power distance dimension the notions of

power and hierarchy are conﬂated. From his own research, as well as from other ethno-

graphic studies of French work organizations, d’Iribarne concludes that ‘in the case of

France, the notions of hierarchy and power are by no means the same’ (d’Iribarne,

1996–97: 36):

In fact, the existence of a large symbolic distance among the various levels of the

hierarchy does not in any way mean that the balance of power in France particularly

favors the upper levels of the hierarchy. One could even say that, to some degree,

the existence of a large hierarchical distance tends not to strengthen but rather to

limit the power of the bosses. (d’Iribarne, 1996–97: 37; original emphasis).

Looking at how the high score for France was obtained in Hofstede’s study, d’Iribarne

demonstrates clearly the limitations of questionnaire approaches in general, and

Hofstede’s instrument in particular. Hofstede’s power distance scale is made up of the fol-

lowing three questions:

1. How frequently are employees afraid to express disagreements with their managers?

2. Under which manager would the respondent prefer to work (choosing between

descriptions of what can be described as ‘autocratic’, ‘persuasive/paternalistic’, ‘con-

sultative’ and ‘democratic’ (Hofstede 2001: 85)?

3. To which of the above-mentioned four types of manager does the respondent’s own

manager correspond most closely?

Unsurprisingly, the less often employees are afraid to express disagreement with their

managers, the lower the power distance score. But the interpretation of the ‘preferred

manager’ and ‘perceived manager’ questions is less straightforward. In the ‘preferred

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manager’ question, a preference for a consultative manager is associated with a lower

score on power distance. But in the ‘perceived manager’ question, lower scores on power

distance are associated with not preferring an autocratic manager or a persuasive/pater-

nalistic manager. Note that a preference for a democratic manager is not associated with

a lower score on power distance. Hofstede sees this choice as unrealistic, as it is unlikely to

be effective in work organizations. He interprets this choice as a ‘counterdependent reac-

tion’ to a situation of large power distance (Hofstede, 2001: 86). But d’Iribarne notes that

the Netherlands scores less hierarchically than the USA with regard to the preferred

manager, but more hierarchically than the USA with regard to the perceived manager. In

d’Iribarne’s own research, the Americans emerged as much more hierarchical than the

Dutch, who, among other things, ‘vigorously resisted American methods of command,

which they judged too authoritarian’ (d’Iribarne, 1996–97: 40).

According to d’Iribarne the hierarchical distance in France may be large, but this is

mainly symbolic. Hierarchical position does not yield much power to managers, because

it actually separates them from their subordinates.

Thus, forepersons can be observed stressing the lowly nature of their practical

skills, compared with the more theoretical knowledge possessed by engineers,

while at the same time they exploit this divergence to keep engineers out of the

sphere under their own control. (d’Iribarne, 1996–97: 37)

On the basis of these and other observations, d’Iribarne questions the adequacy of

Hofstede’s interpretation of the French situation. He calls for a more idiographic

approach, using ethnographic methodology. Although d’Iribarne gives little detail of his

preferred methodology, some elements are clear from his work. In the preface to his book

La Logique de l’Honneur (1989) he states that he could not be satisﬁed with the superﬁcial

view that would arise from surveys and some interviews with top managers. Instead he

chose to concentrate on a very restricted research object: one single plant of an inter-

nationally operating company in each of three different countries (France, the USA and

the Netherlands). In these plants, direct observations were combined with documents

reﬂecting daily life and with open interviews (d’Iribarne, 1994: 82). These plant-level

data were coupled with multiple data sources concerning the countries in which these

plants were located. Putting such data next to each other, the observations at plant level

started to resonate with country-level sources about the ways in which individuals relate

to collectivities, in which good can be distinguished from bad, legitimate from illegitimate,

what is respectable from what is not respectable or what is indifferent (d’Iribarne, 1989:

11–12). In this way the logic governing the phenomena, both at the micro level and at the

level of the society, was uncovered. In essence, d’Iribarne’s study was a quest for meaning:

I have made an effort, in each of the localities, to understand the behaviours that

could be observed, sometimes odd to the stranger’s eye, starting from what gave

them meaning to those who adopted those behaviours. (d’Iribarne, 1989: 14; our

translation)

This method of trying to comprehend the meaning attributed to behaviour by local

actors, in d’Iribarne’s view, leads to ‘a more certain and precise understanding of the soci-

eties under investigation [even if ] it does not give the same impression of objectivity’

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