Is National Culture A Myth These slides are indicative only

1
Is National Culture A Myth?These slides are
indicative only

• 12th November 2003
• Brendan McSweeney
• School of Management
• Royal Holloway
• University of London
• The data obtained from within a single MNC does
  have the power to uncover the secrets of entire
  national cultures
• Geert
  Hofstede, 198044

2
The notion of unique,enduring, uniform and causal
national culture has a long history

• In 1797 the French counter-revolutionary Joseph
  de Maistre declared I have seen Frenchmen,
  Italians, Russians. But for man, I declare I have
  never in my life met him.
• W. B. Yeats claim that there was a national
  "Collective Unconscious or Anima Mundi of the
  race" (1922)
• W. W. M. Eiselen the intellectual architect of
  apartheid - stated in 1929 that culture not race
  was the true basis of difference, the sign of
  destiny
• A. J. P. Taylor pronounced that The problem
  with Hitler was that he was German (in Davies,
  1999)

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so too has rejection

• Samuel Beckett repudiated Yeats notion of
  "collective unconscious" as "sanctimonious
  clap-trap".
• Slater says that the idea of an individual or a
  group as a monolithic totality is delusional
  and ridiculous (1970)
• Anderson has vividly described nations as
  imagined communities (1991)
• Anthropologists Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson
  (1992) have written "we are now recognising that
  the territorially distinct cultures
  anthropologists claimed they were studying were
  never as autonomous as they imagined".
• Philip Bock unhesitatingly states We must
  conclude that the uniformity assumption is false
  (1999)

4
Wider Significance

• The policy and analytical significance of
  national culture largely depends on what degree
  of causal power is attributed to it - from a
  supremely independent variable, the superordinate
  power in society to, at the other extreme, a mere
  epiphenomenon, a powerless superstructure
• The homogenizing effects or not of
  globalization
• Potential for transnational developments e.g. EU
• Basis for acceptance as a citizen
• Education policy
• Universal human rights
• Conceptions of national identity
• National guilt
• Etc.
• Multiple organizational management, locational,
  and marketing implications

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Significance of Hofstede

• A National Cultural Determinist little or no
  causal role for other cultural or non-cultural
  factors. It shapes everything Hickson and Pugh
  (1995 90).
• Claims to have
• Demonstrated the existence of, and measured, and
  compared such national cultures in scores of
  nations i.e. countries
• Shown how multiple characteristics of those
  countries (educational systems, ways of doing
  business, architecture, cuisine, etc.) reflect
  and can be understood through the relevant
  national culture
• To have done so scientifically (117,000
  questionnaires, etc.)
• Huge Following
• Significant following in all management
  disciplines
• Widely used by management training companies
• The most cited non-US author in the entire Social
  Science Citation Index
• By 1998 Hofstede was able to claim that a true
  paradigm shift has occurred

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OVERVIEW

• Describe Hofstede's claims about national
  cultures including the sense in which he uses the
  notion of culture and national culture
  specifically
• Describe and critiques his identification method
• Describe and critiques his attempts to illustrate
  the explanatory value/usefulness of his
  descriptions of national cultural differences
• Questions the plausibility of the concept of
  nationally uniform and systematically causal
  national cultures (regardless of who
  identifies them)

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Hofstedes Conception of National Culture

• Territorially Unique
• Nationally Shared (common component or
  statistical average (central tendency)
  inconsistently applied)
• Subjective software of the mind mental programs
• Determinate (not merely an influence, but the
  influence
• Identifiable (or at least differences between)
  through main dimensions
• Enduring (for many centuries past and to come)

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Hofstedes Claims

• To have empirically identified found the
  national cultures (or differences between such
  cultures) of 40 nations (later added 13 more)
• The cultures or differences between them are
  described on the basis of the four main
  bi-polar dimensions of national culture viz.
• Power-distance
• Uncertainty Avoidance
• Individualism
• Masculinity
• Later Confucian Dynamism
• And that these dimensions strongly influence
  national actions, institutions etc. in
  predictable ways

9
The Dimensions

• The dimensions can be useful in structuring
  analysis they have a long history in the social
  sciences
• They are thus not Hofstedes dimensions but the
  dimensions he uses
• Discussed at length in the 1952 magisterial
  review of the anthropological conception of
  culture by Alfred Kroeber (Berkley) and Clyde
  Kluckhohn (Harvard)(unacknowledged by Hofstede)
• More extensive and subtle dimensions in the
  literature (e.g. Schwartzs work)

10
Power-Distance (attitude to authority)

• Power Distance the extent to which the less
  powerful members of organizations and
  institutions within a country expect and accept
  that power is distributed unequally (Hofstede
  Peterson, 2000).
• Measured by Hofstede on the basis of just three
  questions
• Highest Power Distance Malaysia (the most
  deferential)
• Lowest Power Distance Austria (the least
  deferential)

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UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE

• Uncertainty Avoidance intolerance for
  uncertainty and ambiguity (Hofstede Peterson,
  2000401)
• Highest Greece
• Lowest Singapore

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INDIVIDUALISM

• Individualism
  Collectivism
• Individualism the relationship between the
  individual and the collectivist which prevails
  within in a given society (1980213)
• Highest U.S.A.
• Lowest Venezuela

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MASCULINITY

• Masculine
  Feminine
• assertiveness and competitiveness vs
  modesty and caring
• Masculinity pertains to societies in which
  social gender roles are clearly distinct (i.e.
  men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and
  focused on material success whereas women are
  supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with
  the quality of life)
• Femininity pertains to societies in which social
  gender roles overlap (i.e. both men and women are
  supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with
  the quality of life. 199183 (my emphasis)
• Very Masculine includes Japan Ireland, GB,
  Germany, USA
• Very Feminine includes Sweden Yugoslavia
  Chile

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117,000 IBM questionnaires

• Not as many used as is suggested
• Combined figure for two surveys
• 66 countries, but only 40 yielded scores
• Number of IBM employees whose responses were
  usedof less than one-third of 117,000
• Unrepresentative
• In only 6 (out of the 66) countries were there
  more than 1,000 in both surveys
• In 15 countries reported on - less than 200
  respondents
• First survey in Pakistan 37 employees and second
  70
• Only surveys in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore
  88, 71 and 58 respectively

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IBM questionnaires

• Not designed for Hofstedes purpose
• Not independently administered
• Respondents knew of possible consequences of
  their answers for them
• Blue collar workers responses excluded
  marketing and sales staff only

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5 Crucial Assumptions (each necessary each
fatally flawed)

• Every micro-location is typical of the national
• Every respondent had already been permanently
  programmed with three non-interactive cultural
  programs
• National culture creates response differences
• National culture can be identified through the
  response differences
• Its the same in every situation in a nation

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1. National Identifiable from the local

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1. National Identifiable in the Local

• Version 1 (the national is uniform) presupposes
  that every national individual carries the same
  national culture - what is to be found is
  presupposed (catastrophic circularity) Something
  is presupposed and imposed, and yet depicted as
  an empirical achievement.
• Version 2 (an average tendency is the average
  tendency)
• In principle there is always an average tendency
  e.g. in the world, continent, country, region,
  cycling club, brothel or whatever but why assume
  that an average tendency in one micro-location is
  the national tendency?
• Atypicality of IBM

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Assumption 2 Every respondent had already been
permanently programmed with three
non-interactive cultures

• Only one organizational culture in any and every
  IBM subsidiary
• So a cultural monopoly, no harmonious,
  dissenting, emergent, contradictory,
  organizational cultures in IBM
• One global occupational culture for each
  occupation
• No interaction between the three cultures
• No other cultural (or other influences) on the
  responses)
• (OrC OcC NC1) (OrC OcC NC2) NC1 -
  NC2

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• (OrC OcC NC1) (OrC OcC NC2) NC1 - NC2
• (OrC OcC NC1) (OrC OcC NC2) NC1 - NC2
• Very convenient! But reductive, mechanical,
  impoverished, and absurd

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2. Cont. Three distinctive Components

• Organizational There is only one inter and intra
  subsidiary organizational culture (not cultures)
  in IBM (Hofstede) Plausible? Dogmatic!
  pronounced to exit failure to engage with
  extensive multiple organizational cultures
  literature
• Occupational Throughout the world members of the
  same occupation share an identical world-wide
  occupational culture (Hofstede). Matching
  desirable (mundane), but criticism of
  implications drawn occupational culture of
  Turkish laboratory clerk same as Texan laboratory
  clerk British accountant German accountant
  etc. Nil effect of different accounting courses
  (RH UBT?) professions (ICAEW CIMA, ACCA
  CIPFA ICAS, etc.) different types and
  significance of capital markets post etc.
• Individuals as cultural blotting paper who have
  been immersed in homogeneous occupational fluid
  (Fraber, 1950)

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2. Three distinctive Components Cont.

• Values are acquired in ones early youth, mainly
  in the family and in the neighbourhood, and later
  at school. By the time a child is 10 years old,
  most of its basic values have been programmed
  into its mind For occupational values the place
  of socialisation is the school or university, and
  the time is in between childhood and adulthood
  (Hofstede, 1991182)
• My criticism is not of the possible enduring
  impact early influences but of the claims that
  (a) these experience alone are significant, and
  (b) that the content and impact of occupational
  experiences are globally uniform

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3. National Culture Creates Questionnaire
Response Differences

• Classification Nationally classified data is not
  evidence of national causality. Almost every
  classification would produce difference - but
  what is that status of such differences?
• Where the unexplained variance is rather large
  we can easily fool ourselves into believing that
  we know something simply because we have a name
  for it Jim March, 196669
• Dopes Individuals as mere relays of national
  culture
• Q. To which one of the above types described
  would you say your superior most closely
  corresponds?
• Completion often in groups and with foreknowledge
  that managers were expected to develop corrective
  actions. Would confidential research undertaken
  by independent researchers have obtained the same
  responses?

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4. National Culture Can Be Identified By Response
Difference Analysis

• Assumption 3 is a necessary but not sufficient
  condition of 4
• Cause and effect are conflated culture is
  conceptualised as a determinant but it is
  described via texts (answers to fixed choice
  questions)
• The links between the questions analysed and the
  dimension they are supposed to indicate are often
  unclear, sometimes bizarre. Robinson (1983)
  describes the dimensions as hodgepodge of items
  few of which relate to the intended construct
  (See Dorfman Howell, 1988 Bond, 2002, also)
• Different questions have revealed different
  dimensions e.g. Schwartz identified seven
  dimensions quite different than Hofstedes
  (1994).
• Bi-polarity of dimensions e.g. either
  individualism or collectivism but the two can
  coexist and are simply emphasised more or less
  depending on the situation Harry Triantis,
  199642

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5. Situationally Specific i.e. its the same
everywhere within a nation

• Claims to have identified national culture (or
  differences) that are nationally pervasive in
  the family, at school, at work, in politics
  (1992) hence his claim that just about every
  human construct (institution, architecture, etc.)
  are consequences of national culture
• Survey (with all its other limitations) was only
  of employees, indeed only some categories of
  employees undertaken within the workplace which
  was in a specific location within each country
  the question were almost entirely work-related
  they were administered within the
  formal-workplace
• No parallel surveys were undertaken in
  non-workplaces
• Ironically Hofstede is committed to one
  situational specificity the nation, but blind
  about all others

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SECOND TYPE OF JUSTIFICATION

• Hofstede peppers his books and articles with
  descriptions of events which he employs to
  validate his measurements of national
  cultures and to demonstrate that they affect
  human thinking, feeling, and acting, as well as
  organizations and institutions, in predictable
  ways (2001 xix).
• No part of our lives is exempt (1991170)
• Again methodological critique

27

• If descriptions of historical/contemporary
  events are to serve as validity tests of
  determining influence they should meet the
  following criteria
• (a) no counter events in the same country
• (b) the occurrence of similar events - and no
  counter-events - in other countries with
  comparable Hofstedeian cultural configurations
  and
• (c) no similar events in countries with very
  dissimilar cultural configurations.
• Hofstede did not apply these tests in conducting
  his research and his stories fail these tests

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Example

• Freud was an Austrian and there are good
  reasons in the culture profile of Austria in the
  IBM data why his theory would be conceived in
  Austrian rather than elsewhere Feelings of
  guilt and anxiety develop according to Freud
  when the ego is felt to be giving in to the id.
  The Austrian culture is characterized by the
  combination of a very low power distance with a
  fairly high uncertainty avoidance. The low power
  distance means that there is no powerful superior
  who will take away our uncertainties for us One
  has to carry these oneself. Freuds superego is
  an inner uncertainty-absorbing device, an
  interiorized boss
• Austria's very high MAS masculinity score
  sheds some light on Freuds concern with sex
  (Hofstede, 2001385)(emphasis added).

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No uniform attitude to authority in Austrian
writing

• Some Austrian Writers were/are suspicious of
  authority but some are very supportive
• The Austrian Hitler urged complete submission to
  a powerful superior in Mein Kampf
• As did the Viennese born prolific and influential
  writer Guido von List whom in Der Unbesiegbare
  (The Invincible) and other books prohesised and
  unquestioningly supported the arrival of the
  'strong man from above'.
• In 1905 Freud published Three Essays on the
  Theory of Sexuality. Around the same time
  Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel
  Venus im Pelz (Venus in Furs) which focused on
  voluntary submission to humiliations administered
  by fur-clad women and the ultimate fantasy of
  submission to the all powerful man - was
  re-published.
• Hitler lived in Austria until he was 24 years
  old long after Hofstede claims that an individual
  has indelibly acquired a national culture

30

• 90 of adult Austrians voted for unification
  with fascist Germany in the 1938 Anschluss and so
  to be under the control of a powerful leader

31
Sex

• Fellow Austrian, Felix Salten, wrote the
  pornographic best-seller Josefine Mutzenbacher
  Die Lebensgeschichte einer weinerischen Dirne,
  von ihr selbst erzählt (Josefine Mutzenbacher A
  Viennese Whore's Life Story, Told By Herself).
  This is further validation in Hofstede's terms,
  but like the rest of his stories it's just an
  isolated untested anecdote.
• Many Austrian writers - contrary to the
  implication in Hofstede's story - are not
  'concerned with sex' (Hofstede, 2001385).
  There is, for instance, little mention of sex in
  Austrian Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf or in the
  writings of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein, and
  Felix Salten also wrote the extremely successful
  asexual animal novel Bambi - later adopted by
  Walt Disney.
• Countries with radically different Hofstedian
  MAS scores from Austria (2nd most masculine) -
  such as Sweden (the least masculine) produce just
  as much literature about sex as does Austria.

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• A genuinely open exploration of the
  conditions of possibility and the possible
  influences on Freud's theories would surely
  consider - amongst many other possible factors -
  his birth and early years in Moravia (then part
  of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now in the
  Czech Republic) his family and school
  backgrounds his later education his class his
  Jewishness the extensive anti-Semitism in
  Vienna, his relationship with his wife and
  children those he analysed his network of
  friends - Austrian and non-Austrian the
  significant age gap between his parents his
  non-religious upbringing in a turbulent turn of
  the century imperial city (Vienna) the decline
  of the Austro-Hungarian Empire what he read his
  mentors, and so on, and so on.
• Linking a national cultural dimension with
  the views of a writer is an easy but facile
  'game' to play. It is as intellectually spurious
  and equally invalid as the statement that Freud
  developed his theories because he was born on 6th
  May and therefore a Taurus.
•  

33
Another Example

• In masculine cultures like the UK and the
  Republic of Ireland there is a feeling that
  conflicts should be resolved by a good fight ...
  The industrial relations scene in these countries
  is marked by such fights. If possible management
  tries to avoid having to deal with labor unions
  at all, the labor union behaviour justifies this
  aversion Hofstede (199192)
• Ranking in Hofstedes Masculinity Index Ireland
  (joint 7th) GB (9th)
• Only one section (labor unions) are said to
  influenced by that which is supposed to be
  national
• Management is treated as immune to n.c. and
  influenced by something non-cultural
• In Hofstede's 'masculinity' index, Japan is the
  most masculine country and Germany has the same
  score as Great Britain, yet throughout the
  post-2nd -World War period their industrial
  relations has been the exemplar of co-operation.
• Roche and Geary (2000) found 'team-working in
  57 of Irish workplaces direct employee
  participation in one-third of them and that
  Ireland is in the top league for employee
  participation'.

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Working Days lost in industrial disputes per 1000
employees (annual averages)

• 1961-65
  1966-70 1971-75
• Masculine Ireland 337.5
  625.6 292.7
• Masculine GB 127.0
  222.6 538.6
• Feminine Spain 14.1
  37.1 95.6
• Source ILO Labour Relations Yearbook
• So Hofstede is correct!!!??
• Ranking Ireland 7th
• GB 8th
• Spain 30th

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Working Days lost in industrial disputes per 1000
employees (annual averages)

• 1961-65
  1966-70 1971-75
• Masculine Ireland 337.5
  625.6 292.7
• Masculine GB 127.0
  222.6 538.6
• Feminine Spain 14.1
  37.1 95.6
• 1976-80
  1981-85 1986-90
• Masculine Ireland 716.1 360.6
  183.7
• Masculine GB 521.7
  387.4 117.5
• Feminine Spain 1,089.8 400.9
  433.6
• Source ILO Labour Relations Yearbook

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Steps towards a real analysis

• Even a preliminary analysis of industrial
  relations 'masculine' Ireland would need to
  consider the common educational background of
  many of the employees and managers the dominant
  position of one trade union the series of
  national pay agreements and partnership deals
  between government, employers and trade unions
  employee appointment of one third of the main
  board of state companies the effects of changes
  in fiscal policy on take-home pay the rivalries
  between craft unions wholly based in Ireland and
  those with continuing affiliations to largely UK
  based trade unions and so forth.  

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• Because Irish culture has a low Power Distance
  an Irish person typically seeks to spoil a
  convenient dogma with some contradictory facts.
  In contrast, the French with a high Power
  Distance would never even dream of being
  critical. Bourdieu? Derrida? Ferry? Foucault?
  Latour? Lyotard? Ricoeur? Saussure? Deluze?,
  never heard of them
  
• (what Hofstede might say - in private)

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Hofstedes chronic a proiriismVindicating not
Validating

• He fails to look for counter-evidence.
  Consciously or not he fits a very partial account
  of events to a particular national culture
  depiction. His stories are mere dogmatic fitting
  to what he already knows
• Karl Popper states that so long as a theory
  withstands detailed and severe tests we may say
  that it has proved its mettle or that it is
  corroborated. Hofstedes stories cannot
  withstand even the mildest testing

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• To accept that Hofstede failed to identify
  national cultures does not also require a
  rejection of the existence of such cultures.
• Continuing to refer to Hofstede I now, however,
  raise four doubts about the explanatory value of
  such cultures.
• Wallerstein states that he is skeptical that we
  can operationalise the concept of culture ... in
  any way that enables us to use it for statements
  that are more than trivial (1990 34). I agree
  with him and regard the notion of national
  culture to be at best an empirically useless
  concept.

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• The influence of other cultures
• Non-cultural influences
• Change
• The instability of nation

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1. The influence of other cultures

• If culture is theorized as influential why should
  such influence be restricted to national culture?
• If other cultures are accepted as potentially
  influential how can uniform national
  actions/practices (across time and space) be
  their consequence?

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2. Non-cultural influences

• Why should cultural-causation (national or
  non-national) be privileged over administrative,
  coercive means of social action? Hitlers New
  Order was an order (Gellner, 1987).
• Would it have been meaningful, for example, to
  talk of the religiosity of the Spaniards without
  a description of the monopolistic position of the
  Catholic church in Spain under Franco, or of
  the irreligiosity of the Russians without
  considering the attitude of the Soviet government
  towards religion Maurice Farmer (1950301)

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3. Temporal variability

• Hofstede claims that the national cultural
  configurations he found will last for a long
  time, at least for some centuries (199147)
• His Evidence to pronounce upon centuries past
  and future? Comparison of two IBM surveys not
  for all of the countries and maximum gap of 4
  years i.e. BA
• Each nation is treated as having somehow been a
  producer of unique culture but somehow each has
  now ceased to produce
• The national culture of Germany, e.g. is the
  same now as it was during the Nazi period despite
  defeat, destruction, division and awareness of
  the horrors of the Holocaust.
• The national culture of Ireland is the same as it
  was prior to the Great Famine (pop. 9 m.) as it
  is now among the 3m. Celtic Tigers. In the
  dark 1950s Louis McNiece said that the Irish
  lacked commercial culture by the late 1990s it
  had the highest growth rate in Europe

44
4. Conflation of Nation Country and State
the Instability of Countries

• Confuses notions of nation, state, and country
• As Walker Connor states "The prime
  fact about the world is that it is not largely
• composed of nation-states" (197839).
  He reports a 1971 survey of 132 entities
• generally considered to be states
  which concluded that only 12 states (9.1) could
• justifiably be described as
  nation-states.
• Fissure How many nations is composed of? As
  Hofstede has measured Yugoslavias national
  culture there must be a national culture
  common to Serbia, Croatia, Kosova, etc.
• The borders of many European countries
  (Poland, Germany, Hungary have changed radically
  in the 20th century)
• Fusion Following reintegration of Hong Kong with
  mainland China do we now know the national
  culture of the entire Chinese nation!
• But what if Taiwan had been/were
  reintegerated which, according to Hofstede
  logic, would be the Chinese national culture
  that identifed by him in Hong Kong or Taiwan
  his descriptions differed significantly

45
Conclusion 1

• Extreme, singular, theories, such as
  Hofstede's model of national culture are
  profoundly problematic. His conflation and
  uni-level analysis precludes consideration of
  interplay between macroscopic and microscopic
  cultural levels and between the cultural and the
  non-cultural (whatever we chose to call it).

46
Conclusion 2

• Scholarship, requires of its practitioners a
  vital minimum of intellectual independence - the
  capacity to achieve some distance from ones
  prejudices to discard previously held
  interpretations that do not pass tests of
  evidence the unwillingness to ignore available
  counter-evidence and the readiness to enter into
  and openly engage with rival views. Hofstede's
  writings and his antagonistic, partisan promotion
  of his work repeatedly fail these tests.

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Conclusion 3

• We may think about national culture we may
  believe in national culture we may act in the
  name of national culture but it has not been
  plausibly demonstrated that national culture is
  how we think.
• Instead of seeking an explanation for assumed
  national uniformity from the conceptual lacuna
  that is the essentialist notion of national
  culture, we need to engage with and use theories
  of action which can cope with change, power,
  variety, multiple influences - including the
  non-national - and the complexity and situational
  variability of the individual subject.

48
Is national culture a myth?

• No in the sense that belief in it has been
  central in the construction and maintenance of
  national identity
• Yes in the senses that
• The claims by Hofstede et al. to have identified
  and measured distinctive, enduring, and
  systematically causal national cultures rely on
  fundamentally flawed assumptions and the evidence
  of the predictive capacity of those depictions is
  contrived (confirming not validating).

49
Recommendations

• Dont use the term culture (and any other
  holistic reifications) its a deluding comfort
  word and cure-all -instead separate out the
  various notions/processes that are lumped into
  the term
• Dont presuppose national uniformity hesitate
  before using the prefix of a countrys name
• Dont fall into the traps of upward or
  downward conflation (Archer)
• Dont assume that people are cultural dopes
• Dont fail to engage with counter-views
• Dont accept gurus claims require the same
  standard of evidence we expect at masters level
• Dont accept simplistic causal theories y f(x)