Page 273 - Cultures and Organizations

246 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

An international public opinion survey of human values and satisfac-
tions asked respondents to choose between two opinions:

1. There is too much emphasis upon the principle of equality. People
should be given the opportunity to choose their own economic and
social life according to their individual abilities.
2. Too much liberalism has been producing increasingly wide differ-
ences in people’s economic and social life. People should live more
equally.

The percentages of respondents choosing opinion 2 varied from 30 in
France to 71 in Japan and were correlated significantly with LTO-CVS. 22

Long-term orientation stands for a society in which wide differences in eco-
nomic and social conditions are considered undesirable. Short-term orienta-
tion stands for meritocracy, differentiation according to abilities.
Horizontal coordination refers to networks. The key concept of guanxi
(pronounced “gwon shee”) in Asian business is by now known worldwide.
It refers to personal connections; it links the family sphere to the business
sphere. In high-LTO societies, having one’s personal network of acquain-
tances is essential for success. This is an evident consequence of collectiv-
ism (relationships before task), but it also demands a long-term view. One’s
capital of guanxi lasts a lifetime, and one would not want to damage it for
short-term, bottom-line reasons. 23
One consequence of adaptiveness in business plus the importance of
networks is that high-LTO exporting countries on average score higher
on the Bribe Payers Index (BPI) than low-LTO countries (see the section
on corruption in Chapter 6). Companies in high-LTO countries will more
easily use side payments and services to their customers and prospects
abroad, which Transparency International classifies as bribing. 24

Implications of LTO-CVS Differences for

Ways of Thinking

Dr. Rajendra Pradhan was a Nepalese anthropologist who in 1987–88 con-

ducted a ten-month field research project in the Dutch village of Schoonre-
woerd. He thus reversed the familiar pattern of Western anthropologists
doing field research in Eastern villages. Schoonrewoerd was a typical

Dutch village in the rural heart of the province of South Holland, with
1,500 inhabitants and two churches from different Calvinist Protestant