Page 232 - Cultures and Organizations

What Is Different Is Dangerous 205

national surveys, mentioned in Chapter 4. Acquiescence is the tendency to
give positive answers to any question, regardless of its content. For ques-
tions dealing with values, this tendency was correlated with collectivism
and large power distance. For questions dealing with descriptions of the
actual situation, the tendency to give positive answers all across was cor-
related with weak uncertainty avoidance. In high-UAI countries people
showed a negative tendency in describing their work and life situation. 27

Uncertainty Avoidance at School

The International Teachers Program (ITP) around 1980 was a summer
refresher course for teachers in management subjects. In a class of fi fty
there might be twenty or more different nationalities. Such a class offered
excellent opportunities to watch the different learning habits of the stu-
dents (who were teachers themselves at other times) and the different
expectations they had of the behavior of those who taught them.
One dilemma Geert experienced when teaching in the ITP was choos-
ing the proper amount of structure to be put into the various activities.
Most Germans, for example, favored structured learning situations with
precise objectives, detailed assignments, and strict timetables. They liked
situations in which there was one correct answer that they could fi nd.
They expected to be rewarded for accuracy. These preferences are typical
for stronger uncertainty- avoidance countries. Most British participants,
on the other hand, despised too much structure. They liked open-ended
learning situations with vague objectives, broad assignments, and no time-
tables at all. The suggestion that there could be only one correct answer
was taboo with them. They expected to be rewarded for originality. Their
reactions are typical for countries with weak uncertainty avoidance.

Students from strong uncertainty- avoidance countries expect their
teachers to be the experts who have all the answers. Teachers who use
cryptic academic language are respected; some of the eminent gurus from
these countries write such difficult prose that one needs commentaries by

more ordinary creatures explaining what the guru really meant. It has been
remarked that “German students are brought up in the belief that anything
which is easy enough for them to understand is dubious and probably unsci-
28
entifi c.” French academic books not infrequently contain phrases of half