Page 191 - Cultures and Organizations

He, She, and (S)he 167

In France, which scored moderately feminine in the IBM studies, there is
occasionally a lot of verbal insult, both between employers and labor and

between bosses and subordinates, but behind this seeming conflict there is
a typically French “sense of moderation,” which enables parties to continue
working together while agreeing to disagree. 51
Organizations in masculine societies stress results and try to reward
achievement on the basis of equity—that is, to everyone according to per-
formance. Organizations in feminine societies are more likely to reward
people on the basis of equality (as opposed to equity)— that is, to everyone
according to need.
The idea that small is beautiful is a feminine value. The IBM survey
itself as well as public opinion survey data from six European countries
showed that a preference for working in larger organizations was strongly
correlated with MAS. 52
The place that work is supposed to take in a person’s life differs between
masculine and feminine cultures. A successful early twentieth-century U.S.
inventor and businessman, Charles F. Kettering, is reputed to have said:

I often tell my people that I don’t want any fellow who has a job working
for me; what I want is a fellow whom a job has. I want the job to get the
fellow and not the fellow to get the job. And I want that job to get hold of
this young man so hard that no matter where he is the job has got him for
keeps. I want that job to have him in its clutches when he goes to bed at
night, and in the morning I want that same job to be sitting on the foot of
his bed telling him it’s time to get up and go to work. And when a job gets
a fellow that way, he’s sure to amount to something. 53

Kettering refers to a “young man” and not to a “young woman”—his is a
masculine ideal. It would certainly not be popular in more feminine cultures;

there, such a young man would be considered a workaholic. In a masculine
society, the ethos tends more toward “live in order to work,” whereas in a
feminine society, the work ethos would rather be “work in order to live.”
A public opinion survey in the European Union contained the question
“If the economic situation were to improve so that the standard of living
could be raised, which of the following two measures would you consider to
be better: Increasing the salaries (for the same number of hours worked) or
reducing the number of hours worked (for the same salary)?” Preferences
varied from 62 percent in favor of salary in Ireland to 64 percent in favor of