Page 127 - Cultures and Organizations

106 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

rial rewards provided (extrinsically motivating jobs). This distinction was
popularized in the late 1950s through the research on work motivation by
the American psychologist Frederick Herzberg and his team, who argued
that the intrinsic factors are the real “motivators,” while the extrinsic
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ones represent the psychological “hygiene” of the job. People in occupa-
tions demanding more education tend to score intrinsic elements as more
important, while people in lower-status, lower- education occupations pre-
fer extrinsic elements. The intrinsic-extrinsic distinction, while useful for
distinguishing occupation cultures, in its turn is not suitable for comparing
countries.

Individualism and Collectivism in the Family

In the beginning of this chapter, individualism was associated with a
nuclear family structure and collectivism with an extended family struc-
ture, the latter leading to the distinction between in-group and out-groups.
The relationship between the individual and the group, as with other basic
elements of human culture, is fi rst learned in the family setting. The fact
that Japan scores halfway in Table 4.1 (with a rank of 35–37 and an IDV of
46) can at least partly be understood from the fact that in the traditional
Japanese family only the oldest son continued to live with the parents, thus
creating a lineal structure somewhere in between nuclear and extended.
The child who grows up among a number of elders, peers, and juniors
learns naturally to conceive of him- or herself as part of a “we,” much more
so than does the child in a nuclear family. A child of an extended family is
seldom alone, whether during the day or at night. An African student who

went to Belgium to attend university told us that this was the first time in
her life she had ever been alone in a room for any sizable length of time.

Conversely, northern European students returning from internships in Peru
or Malaysia complained that they were never left alone by their hosts.
In a situation of intense and continuous social contact, the mainten-
ance of harmony with one’s social environment becomes a key virtue that
extends to other spheres beyond the family. In most collectivist cultures,
direct confrontation of another person is considered rude and undesirable.
The word no is seldom used, because saying “no” is a confrontation; “you
may be right” and “we will think about it” are examples of polite ways of
turning down a request. In the same vein, the word yes should not neces-