Page 266 - Cultures and Organizations

Yesterday, Now, or Later? 239

common dimension was the result of an empirical statistical analysis
at the country level; it was not a matter of either Western or Chinese
judgment. 4

The reason the dimension had not been found in the IBM research was that
the relevant questions had not been asked. The Western designers of the
IBM questionnaire had not considered them relevant. However, because
the dimension correlated with economic growth, Geert considered it an
essential addition for a global instrument. As persistence and thrift refl ect
an orientation toward the future, whereas personal stability and tradition
can be seen as a static orientation toward the present and the past, start-
ing with his 1991 book Geert labeled this fi fth dimension long-term versus
short-term orientation (LTO). 5
The fifth dimension was defined as follows: long-term orientation stands

for the fostering of virtues oriented toward future rewards—in particular, per-
severance and thrift. Its opposite pole, short-term orientation, stands for the
fostering of virtues related to the past and present—in particular, respect for
tradition, preservation of “face,” and fulfilling social obligations.

Table 7.1 lists index scores on the new dimension for the twenty-three
countries that participated in the CVS. The top positions are occupied by
6
China and other East Asian countries. (Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South
Korea, and Singapore were known in the last decades of the twentieth
century as the “Five Dragons” because of their fast economic growth.)
Continental European countries occupied a middle range. Great Britain
and its Anglo partners Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and
Canada scored on the short-term side. The African countries Zimbabwe
and Nigeria scored very short-term, as did the Philippines and Pakistan.
A problem with the new dimension was that scores were available for

only twenty-three countries, fewer than half the more than fifty in the IBM

database. The 2005 edition of this book listed LTO scores for sixteen addi-
tional countries based on replications and extrapolations; still too few, and
7
of doubtful quality. Misho Minkov’s analysis of the World Values Survey
offered us an opportunity to extend our database fourfold at one stroke.
This meant redefining long-term orientation in some respects.

Before we present the new scores and their implications we will fi rst
review some major conclusions from the CVS-based scores for twenty-
three countries.