Page 227 - Cultures and Organizations

200 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

to stay longer), but this result does not express their greater avoidance of
uncertainty: it just shows that the IBM population contained a percentage
of younger women who planned to stop working for some time when they
had small children.
The only aspect of the IBM population other than nationality that
did show a close relationship with the uncertainty avoidance index was
average age. In countries in which IBM employees were older, we found
higher stress, more rule orientation, and a stronger intent to stay. There is
a circular logic in the relationship between UAI and age: in countries with
stronger uncertainty avoidance, people not only intended to but did change
employers less frequently; therefore, IBM employees in these countries on
average had been with the company longer and were older. 13

Uncertainty Avoidance in the Family

An American grandparent couple spent two weeks in a small Italian town
babysitting for their grandchildren, whose American parents, temporar-
ily located in Italy, were away on a trip. The children loved to play in the
public piazza, amid lots of Italian children with their mothers or nannies.
The American children were allowed to run around; they would fall down
but get up again, and the grandparents felt there was little real danger. The
Italians reacted quite differently. They would not let their children out of
their sight for a moment, and when one fell down, an adult would immedi-
ately pick the child up, brush off the dirt, and console the child. 14

Among the first things a child learns are the distinctions between
clean and dirty, and between safe and dangerous. What is considered clean
and safe, or dirty and dangerous, varies widely from one society to the
next, and even among families within a society. What a child has to learn

is to classify clean things from dirty things and safe things from danger-
ous things. In strongly uncertainty- avoiding cultures, classifi cations with
regard to what is dirty and dangerous are tight and absolute. The Italian
mothers and nannies (UAI 75) saw dirt and danger in the piazza where the
American grandparents (UAI 46) saw none.
British-American anthropologist Mary Douglas has argued that dirt—
that which pollutes—is a relative concept, depending entirely on cultural
interpretation. Dirt is basically matter out of place. What are dangerous