Page 188 - Cultures and Organizations

164 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

jewelry; they more often consider foreign goods as more attractive than

local products. They more often fly business class on pleasure trips.
Feminine cultures spend more on products for the home. More people
in these cultures take their “home” (their caravan, RV, or trailer) with them
on vacation. They spend more on do-it-yourself carpentry, on making their
own dresses, and, for smokers, on rolling their own cigarettes. Coffee is
a symbol of togetherness; people in feminine cultures own more electric
coffeemakers, guaranteeing that coffee in the home is always ready.

People in feminine cultures buy more fiction books, and people in mas-
culine cultures more nonfiction. U.S. author Deborah Tannen has pointed

to differences between male and female discourse: more “report talk”
(transferring information) for men, more “rapport talk” (using the conver-
46
sation to exchange feelings and establish a relationship) for women. De
Mooij’s data show that at the culture level, too, masculine readers are more
concerned with data and facts; readers from feminine cultures are more
interested in the story behind the facts.
In Chapter 4 we saw that survey data related the frequency of Internet
use to IDV; the Net is basically an individualistic tool. However, the use of
the Internet for private (nonwork) purposes correlates even more with low
MAS. Both the Internet and e-mail can be used for “rapport” purposes and
for “report” purposes; the former usage is more frequent in less masculine
societies. 47
Table 5.4 is a continuation of Tables 5.2 and 5.3, summarizing the key
issues from the past two sections.

Masculinity and Femininity in the Workplace

The Dutch manufacturing plant of a major U.S. corporation had lost three
Dutch general managers in a period of ten years. To the divisional vice

president in the United States, all these men had come across as “soft-
ies.” They hesitated to implement unpopular measures with their person-
nel, claiming the resistance of their works council—a body elected by
the employees and required by Dutch law that the vice president did not
like anyway. After the third general manager had left, the vice president
stepped in personally and nominated the plant controller as his successor—
ignoring strong warnings by the human resources manager. To the vice
president, this controller was the only “real man” in the plant management
team. He had always supported the need for drastic action, disregarding its