Page 236 - Cultures and Organizations

What Is Different Is Dangerous 209

hundred thousand employees, is the largest French telecommunications
company. On September 28, 2009, the twenty-fourth employee in a period
of just over eighteen months killed himself, by jumping off a bridge on a
Monday morning. The suicide explosion was blamed on a drastic restruc-
turing of the former government monopoly after its privatization; employ-
ees, previously considered civil servants, were relocated, and tasks were
changed by management decree with little concern for employees’ personal
feelings. In Table 6.1 France is a high-UAI country (score 86, rank 17–22).
The stress of the restructuring became too high for the victims’ tolerance
level.
Along with stress, another component of the UAI was the percentage
of IBM employees expressing their intent to stay with the company for
a long-term career. This was not only an IBM phenomenon: in higher-
UAI countries, other factors being equal, more employees and managers
look for long-term employment. At the same time, more people in these

countries (at least in Europe) find it difficult to achieve the right work-life
balance. 38
Laws, rules, and regulations were mentioned in the beginning of this
chapter as ways in which a society tries to prevent uncertainties in the
behavior of people. Uncertainty- avoiding societies have more formal laws
and informal rules controlling the rights and duties of employers and
employees. They also have more internal regulations controlling the work
process, although in this case the power distance level plays a role too.
Where power distances are large, the exercise of discretionary power by
superiors replaces to some extent the need for internal rules.
The need for rules in a society with a strong uncertainty- avoidance
culture is emotional. People—employers and employees but also civil ser-
vants and members of governments—have been programmed since early
childhood to feel comfortable in structured environments. Matters that can

be structured should not be left to chance.
The emotional need for laws and regulations in a strong uncertainty-
avoidance society can lead to rules or rule-oriented behaviors that are
purely ritual, inconsistent, or even dysfunctional. Critics from countries
with weaker uncertainty avoidance often do not realize that ineffective
rules can also satisfy people’s emotional need for formal structure. What
happens in reality is less important. Philippe d’Iribarne, in his comparative
study of a French, a U.S., and a Dutch manufacturing plant, remarked that
some procedures in the French plant were formally followed but only after