Page 12 - Cultures and Organizations

Preface

n the late 1960s Geert accidentally became interested in national

Icultural differences—and got access to rich data for studying them.

His research resulted in the publication in 1980 of a book called Cul-
ture’s Consequences. It was written for a scholarly readership; it had to be,

because it cast doubts on the universal validity of established theories
in psychology, organization sociology, and management theory: so it

should show the theoretical reasoning, base data, and statistical treat-

ments used to arrive at the conclusions. A 1984 paperback edition of the

book left out the base data and the statistics but was otherwise identical
to the 1980 hardcover version.
Culture’s Consequences appeared at a time when the interest in cultural
differences, both between nations and between organizations, was sharply
rising, and there was a dearth of empirically supported information on the
subject. The book provided such information, but maybe too much of it at
once. Many readers evidently got only parts of the message. For example,

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