Page 126 - Cultures and Organizations

I, We, and They 105

Rica’s long-standing emphasis on public education and public health; in
its more vigorous cooperative movement; in a judicial system notable by
Latin American standards for its impartiality and adherence to funda-
mental concepts of due process; and above all in the resilience of its poli-
tics, its capacity to find peaceful solutions, its appreciation of the need for

compromise. 18

Cases such as France and Costa Rica justify treating power distance
and collectivism as two separate dimensions, in spite of the fact that for
most countries they go together. One reason for the correlation between
them is that both are associated with a third factor: national wealth. If
national wealth is held constant (that is, if rich countries are compared with
rich ones only and poor with poor ones only), the relationship considerably
weakens. 19
Compar isons between the results of the IBM study and other studies
support the distinction between power distance and collectivism. Studies
dealing with inequality show results that are more correlated with power
distance than with individualism-collectivism, and studies dealing with
the integration of individuals into groups show results more correlated
with collectivism than with power distance. 20

Individualism and Collectivism
According to Occupation

One more argument in favor of distinguishing power distance from col-
lectivism is that while, as Chapter 3 showed, power distance indexes could
be computed not only for countries but also for occupations, individual-
ism indexes can be calculated only for countries, not for occupations. In a

comparison of how people in different occupations answered the fourteen
work goal questions from which the IDV was computed, their answers
could not be classified in terms of individualist or collectivist. In distin-

guishing occupations, for example, the importance of challenge and the
importance of use of skills go together, while in distinguishing countries
they are opposites. Across occupations, when personal time is rated more
important, chal lenge tends to be less important, while across countries the
two reinforce each other. 21
A pair of terms that can be used to distinguish occupations is intrin-
sic versus extrinsic. These words refer to what motivates people in a job,
the work itself (intrinsically motivating jobs) or the conditions and mate-