Page 277 - Cultures and Organizations

250 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

Korean psychologist Uichol Kim believes the Western way of practic-

ing psychology does not fit in East Asia:
Psychology . . . is deeply enmeshed with Euro-American cultural val-
ues that champion rational, liberal and individualistic ideals. . . . This
belief affects how conferences are organized, research collaborations are
developed, research is funded, and publications are accepted. In East Asia,
human relationships that can be characterized as being “virtue-based”
rather than “rights-based” occupy the center stage. Individuals are con-
sidered to be linked in a web of inter-relatedness and ideas are exchanged
through established social networks. 33

In science and technology, Western Truth stimulated analytical, East-
ern Virtue, synthetic thinking. A Chinese student told Geert:

The biggest difference between the Chinese and the Western society is that
the Western society worships the hero and the Chinese worship the saint. If
one is good in doing one thing, one can be a hero. To be a saint, you have
to be good in everything.

During the Industrial Revolution in the West, the search for Truth led
to the discovery of laws of nature that could then be exploited for the sake
of human progress. Chinese scholars, despite their high level of civilization,
never discovered Newton’s laws. They were simply not looking for laws.
The Chinese script betrays this lack of interest in generalizing. It needs
three thousand or more different characters, one for each syllable, while by
splitting the syllables into separate letters, Western languages need only
about thirty signs. Western analytical thinking focused on elements, while
Eastern synthetic thinking focused on wholes. A Japanese Nobel Prize

winner in physics is quoted as having said that “the Japanese mentality is
unfit for abstract thinking.” 34

By the middle of the twentieth century, the Western concern for Truth
gradually ceased to be an asset and turned instead into a liability. Science
may benefit from analytical thinking, but management and government

are based on the art of synthesis. With the results of Western, analyti-
cally derived technologies freely available, Eastern cultures could start
putting these technologies into practice using their own superior synthetic
abilities. What is true or who is right is less important than what works
and how the efforts of individuals with different thinking patterns can be