Managing Internationalisation - Patricia Adam

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Globe Study: More Issues Arising

      The influence of culture on business issues is still a favourite topic for many researchers worldwide. One truly international approach was endeavoured in the so called GLOBE study. The acronym GLOBE stands for “Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness” and was conducted as a multi-method and multiphase research programme. It was designed to conceptualise, operationalise, test, and validate a cross-level integrated theory of the relationship of culture and societal, organisational, and leaders effectiveness. During the phases 1 and 2 in the middle of the 1990s altogether 170 researchers throughout the world combined their efforts to collect and analyse survey data from 17,300 (middle) managers in 951 organisations and 62 societies. The first omnibus publication edited by House et al. (2004) provided findings about culture, leadership and organisations on 800 pages.45 Additional in-depth studies of 25 societies were published by Chhokar et. al. in 2008.46

      The GLOBE research project defined culture as “shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives that are transmitted across generations.”47 This definition was applied on the societal and organisational level. Culture was examined based on practices and values. Practices were defined as “the way things are done in this culture” whereas values were defined as judgements about “the way things should be done”.48 The methodological approach followed was very sophisticated and based on multiple methods and checks. The research was designed by multicultural teams with the clear intention to bypass typical cultural biases already in the setup of the survey.

      Finally, GLOBE used nine major attributes or dimensions of culture, several of them based on Hofstede’s research. An overview of these is provided in Figure 2-35. Special emphasis was laid on the analysis of the cultural dimensions and several dependent variables, for instance the Human Development Index, Gross National Product per capita, measures of welfare of society members as well as certain leadership dimensions. Details of these findings will be discussed in the respective chapters dealing with these issues.

      Figure 2-35: GLOBE: Nine Cultural Dimensions49

      The GLOBE study grouped 62 participating societies in 10 distinct country clusters, based on previous empirical studies and other factors such as common language, geography, religion, and historical accounts. These are depicted in Figure 2-36.

      Figure 2-36: GLOBE: Country Clusters50

Critical Acclaim

      The three previously introduced models of culture are subject to profound criticism concerning the defined concepts of culture, the measurement of culture “per se”, the dimensions utilised in comparison to alternative dimensions used by other scientists and the applied methodology.

Typical Problems of Cross-Cultural Research

      All cross-cultural research is subject to various criticisms based on typical challenges arising from the extremely complex and opaque research topic itself. These include:51

      1 Definition problems of all terms used. These concern the definition of “culture” itself as well as all terminology used in questionnaires or interviews. A special problem is the translation of the defined concepts in other languages.

      2 Assuming incorrect equivalencies concerning functions, concepts, instruments, and measurement. People from different cultures might have a different understanding of certain (business) functions, of concepts like loyalty or might interpret the scales in the questionnaires in different ways.

      3 Choosing non-representative participants. If all participants of the survey originate from the same background, for example one organisation or one profession or one company level, it is possible that these do not represent a fair sample of the countries studied. Their views might be influenced by a very distinct (sub-)culture.

      4 Methodological simplicity, as the methodology is for example often based on one ethnocentric pattern and one timeframe, providing bias, misinterpretation and inaccuracies. Therefore, many critics claim the basic principle that a cultural research should be based on a multi-disciplinary approach.

      Many scientists, especially psychologists and sociologists, claim that cross-cultural research providing country scores only produces stereotypes, which is not an appropriate way to deal with cultural issues. Fons Trompenaars defends the usefulness of crosscultural models by arguing that all models categorise and are therefore in fact stereotypes. Using models for cultures can be acceptable if the people dealing with this kind of stereotype meet two conditions. The first is that they are conscious about it and the second is that they postpone judgement. For example, the sixth dilemma illustrates that Asians are more polychronic and Westerners are more monochronic. This is obviously an exaggeration. There certainly are polychronic Westerners and sequential Asians. This stereotype mainly warns that the chance that there are people with the other inclination is higher when meeting people from the other culture.52 This warning might lead to negative consequences if people immediately put a critical judgement on it. When they are able to postpone judgement and treat this issue as a reminder to accept different solutions with an open mind, the knowledge about this stereotype can facilitate all kinds of international encounters.

Critical Acclaim of Hofstede’s Dimensions

      The criticism concerning the Hofstede model is based on some of the points cited in 2.5.1.53

      To 1.: The level of culture researched is not clearly defined, as Hofstede tries to approach values by questioning behaviour. There is a controversy concerning the legitimacy of such an approach, as the basic assumptions that are seen to form the most important (and hidden) parts of culture are not touched.

      To 3.: All participants of the study are employees or managers of IBM. Some argue that the strong company culture of IBM leads to uniformity of their personnel in certain aspects, which provides a bias to the study. Hofstede argues the opposite and explains that just because of this certain homogeneity he is able to ascribe the differences observed to country cultures. Also, the IBM background enables him to avoid equivalency problems (as defined in 2.)

      To 4.: Hofstede’s methodology is criticised in several aspects. His dimensions are not seen as appropriately selective and their denomination as not completely accurate. His comparison of different cultures is seen as superficial as it is not based on a thorough analysis of the culture described. Especially the equalisation of culture and countries is criticised, as many countries have within their borders several (sub)cultures that should be researched separately. Another critical aspect (also referred to by Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner in 1997) concerns the questions he employed that were seen as mainly an imitation of questions used in various US-based psychological profile tests.

      The existence of a cultural bias in the setup of the original study was proven impressively in the findings of the Chinese Value Survey. However, Hofstede acknowledged these findings willingly and added them to his framework. It is natural for research issues that corrections and additions occur over time, given the willingness of more researchers worldwide to contribute to the original findings. In this respect Hofstede managed to induce many following studies.

      Altogether, Hofstede’s

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