International Organizational Behavior 2e Chapter 2 Page 1
CHAPTER 2
CULTURAL FRAMEWORKS:
UNDERSTANDING ATTITUDES,
VALUES, AND BEHAVIOR
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
I tried to integrate the strengths of both Western and Eastern management
approaches, but without losing the essential qualities of each culture.
—Stan Shih, co-founder and chairman emeritus of Taiwan’s Acer Group,
on Acer’s management system
CHAPTER REVIEW OUTLINE
GRASPING CULTURE: INFLUENTIAL FRAMEWORKS
I. The Development of and Need for Culture Frameworks
A cultural framework attempts to summarize and classify a set of norms, behaviors,
customs, and traditions common to a given society. They are seductive in that they
can encourage management tendencies to rely on time-saving analytical shortcuts and
inhibit managers’ ability to be effective as they oversimplify culture and paint
employees around the world with a set of broad-brush generalizations.
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II. Hofstede’s Seminal Effort: Clustering Countries by Cultural Values
Geert Hofstede developed his framework using questionnaires collected from over
116,000 employees across more than 70 countries. This monumental set of data
yielded four bipolar cultural dimensions: individualism–collectivism, achievement–
nurturing, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. He developed a series of
A. Individualism–collectivism: Do people in a culture tend to see themselves as
individuals or as part of a group? In cultures where individualistic values hold
sway, a common belief is that people should take responsibility for themselves.
Consequently, autonomy, personal achievement, and privacy are highly valued. In
cultures where collectivism tends to dominate, group membership is highly
B. Achievement–nurturing: Are people more likely to value the assertive acquisition
of material success (such as money, power, etc.) or quality of life and good
relationships with co-workers? The achievement side of this dimension comes
from Hofstede’s observation that, in most cultures, men were more likely to value
C. Power distance: This dimension captures whether or not people accept wide
differences in power between individuals, i.e., is the culture accepting of having
power unequally distributed (large distance) or not (small distance)? In cultures
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unequally, it can be regarded as normal. Generally, executive authority and
discretion are more centralized in cultures where power distance is large.
D. Uncertainty avoidance: People tend to react differently to ambiguous or uncertain
events. Hofstede’s framework contends that culture, in the form of uncertainty
avoidance, partly determines those reactions. In cultures where uncertainty
avoidance is small, people are more likely to believe life has an inherent level of
unpredictability or uncertainty. People tend to be less enamored with, or
concerned about, complying with procedures, following rules, or respecting
organizational hierarchies. Taking risks, particularly when seeking personal
achievement, is encouraged.
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III. Mapping Hofstede’s Cultural Framework
By crossing pairs of cultural dimensions and plotting scores by country, Hofstede
developed useful culture maps which identify countries whose scores cluster in one of
four quadrants that reflect different combinations of the cultural dimensions. Figure
2.1 lists the country abbreviations used in Hofstede’s culture maps. As Figure 2.2
illustrates, Costa Rica is the only country combining collectivism and small power
distance. Much more common is collectivism and large power distance—many of the
nations in this quadrant are either Asian or Latin American.
Figure 2.4 displays the final map crossing power distance and uncertainty avoidance.
Most nations in the family quadrant are Asian—where loyalty to strong, paternal
leaders has traditionally been more important than policies and procedures. Countries
in the pyramid of people quadrant tend to have cultures that embrace powerful
leaders, but in a more hierarchical and rule-oriented work context. The well-oiled
machine quadrant is populated by Germanic countries where leaders tend to be less
A. Long-Term versus Short-Term Orientation
Hofstede added a fifth cultural dimension: long-term versus short-term
orientation. Evolving out of his work on Asian societies, this dimension
distinguishes cultures with a forward-looking view on life (long-term) from those
more concerned with the past and present (short-term).
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IV. Limitations of Hofstede’s Framework
Despite its obvious pluses, Hofstede’s framework does have drawbacks. An obvious
limitation is that it is missing a variety of countries. Hofstede’s latest work does
include cultural value estimates for new emerging market powerhouses such as China
and Russia, but some areas of the world remain underrepresented.
V. Trompenaars’s Cultural Dimensions
Fons Trompenaars’s more recent framework makes similar distinctions as Hofstede
(e.g., on individualism). On other cultural dimensions Trompenaars presents an
alternative perspective, due in part to newer data and the use of different methods. He
collected data from over 15,000 managers in 28 nations over a decade and identified
several bipolar cultural dimensions that constitute the heart of his framework—many
of which focus on relationships.
A. Outer-Directed versus Inner-Directed Views of the Environment
People who are outer-directed tend to believe that what happens in life is not
B. Universalism versus Particularism
This dimension relates to rules and whether relationships or situations should
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C. Neutral versus Emotional
Stoicism and suppression of emotional displays are tendencies on the neutral side
of this dimension, e.g., the Japanese are known for the value they tend to place on
emotional composure and reserve. At the other end of the spectrum are cultures
D. Specific versus Diffuse
Compartmentalization is typical in the United States and other specific cultures.
Work and family roles tend to be treated separately. In specific cultures,
E. Achievement versus Ascription
The U.S. is a good example of an achievement culture, where an individual’s
status is a function of how he or she has performed or what goals have been
reached. Tremendous clout is earned by being excellent in your chosen endeavors.
F. Individualism versus Communitarianism
This dimension seems identical to Hofstede’s view of individualism (you see
yourself as an individual first) and collectivism (communitarianism means you
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VI. The GLOBE Cultural Framework
The most comprehensive and far-reaching efforts to identify cultural dimensions and
use them to classify countries is the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Effectiveness (GLOBE) project. The major tool used by GLOBE was a survey
designed to assess nine cultural dimensions. These dimensions were developed from
the GLOBE team’s assessment of existing frameworks, particularly Hofstede’s, and
from interviews and focus groups conducted in a variety of countries. Figure 2.5
describes the nine GLOBE cultural dimensions, and presents examples of nations that
rank high and low on these dimensions. Six of the nine GLOBE dimensions appear to
overlap with dimensions in Hofstede’s framework. The GLOBE team has argued that
its study is a major step forward, and some of its dimensions that parallel Hofstede’s
are actually improvements, given more refined definitions and improved
measurements. They also contend its new dimensions represent a significant advance.
B. Two dimensions (gender egalitarianism and future orientation) also have roots in
Hofstede’s work, but the final three dimensions are new GLOBE additions that
can be helpful to international managers. Performance orientation may be
especially helpful for grasping motivation issues across cultures. This reflects the
extent to which good performance and striving for improvement are valued in a
culture (somewhat paralleling Trompenaars’ achievement versus ascription
dimension, and partially overlapping Hofstede’s masculinity–femininity
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C. Looking Ahead: The Future of the GLOBE–Hofstede Debate
The GLOBE effort is comprehensive and impressive in many ways, but it has not
escaped criticism. One concern is that while GLOBE was designed to replicate, if
not extend, Hofstede’s earlier work, it nonetheless defined and measured key
concepts quite differently. Some have suggested that GLOBE’s findings cannot
be directly compared with Hofstede’s, or that it is not completely clear what
GLOBE was actually measuring. GLOBE participants have argued that their
changes were designed to respond to, and improve on, shortcomings in Hofstede’s
MANIFESTATIONS OF CULTURE IN THE WORKPLACE
Relatively little has been said about specific ways that cultural differences can impact
international managers or how they should respond. Culture plays a role in virtually everything
associated with business, often in surprising ways. This section focuses on individual employees,
exploring how culture can shape work-related perceptions and important work attitudes. (See
Global Innovations, which addresses how cultural factors helped Facebook decide to enter the
social networking space in Russia and Indonesia.)
I. How Culture Shapes Work-Related Perceptions
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A. People
In one study, Chinese and Australians were asked to read detailed descriptions of
fictitious people that included attributes related to conscientiousness, sensitivity,
and so on. Next, respondents were asked about how they expected these people to
behave. The two groups of respondents were selected because of their cultural
differences. Australians are more individualistic and the Chinese more
B. Events
Culture also shapes the perceptions of events. In a study comparing more
individualistic Australians with their more collectivistic Chinese counterparts,
C. Perceptions of People and Events
Culture operates like an automatic filtering and organizing process when shaping
people’s perceptions. We tend to use cultural filters to quickly form perceptions
of coworkers and business partners without really understanding how those filters
work, so most of us have a hard time understanding or appreciating cultural filters
other people are using.
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experiences. Studies show that Asians who live in the West and Westerners who
spend extended time in Asia often learn to recognize how local values shape
perceptions, leading to enhanced understanding and a greater ability to adapt.
D. Time
To underscore the pervasive influence of culture on perceptions, consider
something as “objective” as time. Time is seen as a commodity in many Western
cultures (e.g., “time is money”), but in Eastern cultures time is often perceived as
something more fluid and flexible. This distinction is referred to as “event time”
Researcher Robert Levine has systematically studied the connection between
culture and time. Levine relied on several objective measures of time to assess the
impact of culture across several countries. His fascinating results are displayed in
Table 2.2.
E. Classifying Countries by Time Orientation
Researchers have distinguished between monochronic and polychronic
orientations toward time, which center on whether people in a culture tend to
focus on doing one thing at a time or tend to juggle a variety of things at once.
Cultures that are polychronic embrace a more fluid perspective on time that can
be hard to grasp for Americans, Canadians, and others coming from a
monochronic perspective. The polychronic orientation does not rely on an
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economic perspective. What would be considered “interruptions” in a
monochronic culture (i.e., the unscheduled derailing of some activity) tend to be
taken more in stride in a polychronic environment. People with a polychronic
II. Culture and Key Work Attitudes
While work is clearly an enormously important activity for people world-wide,
culture shapes how they feel about and react to their jobs. Culture can impact key
work attitudes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
A. Job Satisfaction
A recent study examined some 130,000 employees working in 39 nations for a
large multinational and found that job level (blue versus white collar) was
positively connected to job satisfaction in individualistic cultures like the US, but
not in collective cultures. Related to job satisfaction, employee engagement
includes confidence in company leaders and their concern for employees, and the
extent to which jobs are found challenging and offer growth opportunities. One
study found that workers in India and Brazil had the highest levels of employee
engagement anywhere in the world, with the US placing third. China placed
twelfth in the study, with Japanese workers scoring quite low in the rankings.