Page 100 - Cultures and Organizations

82 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

the United States in the decades before and after World War II has made
people in other countries believe that U.S. ideas about management must
be superior and therefore should be copied. They forgot to ask about the
kind of society in which these ideas were developed and applied—if they
were really applied as the books claimed. Since the late 1960s the same has
happened with Japanese ideas.
The United States in Table 3.1 scores on the low side, but not extremely
low, on power distance (rank 57–59 out of 74). U.S. leadership theories tend
to be based on subordinates with medium-level dependence needs: not too
high, not too low. A key idea is participative management—that is, a situ-
ation in which subordinates are involved by managers in decisions at the
discretion and initiative of these managers. Comparing U.S. theories of
leadership with “industrial democracy” experiments in countries such as
Sweden and Denmark (which scored extremely low on PDI), one fi nds that
in these Scandinavian countries initiatives to participate are often taken by

the subordinates, something U.S. managers fi nd difficult to digest, because
it represents an infringement on their “management prerogatives.” Man-
agement prerogatives, however, are less sacred in Scandinavia. On the other
hand, U.S. theories of participative management are also unlikely to apply
in countries higher on the power distance scale. Subordinates accustomed
to larger Power Distances may feel embarrassed when the boss steps out
of his or her role by asking their opinion, or they may even lose respect for
such an ignorant superior. 33
Table 3.5 summarizes key differences between small- and large-power-
distance societies from the last two sections; together with Tables 3.3 and
3.4, it provides an overview of the essence of power distance differences
across all spheres of life discussed in this chapter.

Origins of Power Distance Differences
European countries in which the native language is Romance (French, Ital-
ian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish) scored medium to high on the power
distance scale (in Table 3.1. from 50 for Italy to 90 for Romania). Euro-
pean countries in which the native language is Germanic (Danish, Dutch,
English, German, Norwegian, Swedish) scored low (from 11 in Austria to
40 in Luxembourg). There seems to be a relationship between language
area and present-day mental software regarding power distance. The fact
that a country belongs to a language area is rooted in history: Romance