Page 304 - Cultures and Organizations

Yesterday, Now, or Later? 273

Noorderhaven, with Bassirou Tidjani from Senegal. African scientists in
Africa and African students abroad were asked to suggest value survey

items. Through a “Delphi” approach, the first results were anonymously
fed back to the contributors, and their comments were incorporated. The
questionnaire, in an English or a French version, was then administered to
samples of male and female students in the African countries Cameroon,
Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe and outside Africa
in Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Guyana, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the
Netherlands, and the United States; it yielded a total of 1,100 respondents
in fourteen countries. 85
Unlike the case with the Chinese Value Survey, the African Value Sur-
vey did not reveal a new, African-inspired value dimension. It produced
six factors. Four of these were significantly correlated each with one of

the IBM dimensions. One other was trivial, caused by differences between
86
the two language versions. The remaining factor (the second strongest
in Noorderhaven and Tidjani’s analysis), traditional wisdom, was signifi -
cantly correlated with LTO-CVS and opposed the African countries (and
some of the European countries) to the Asian countries in the study. 87
Distinctive items on the short-term pole of this dimension were “Wisdom
is more important than knowledge” and “Wisdom comes from experience
and time, not from education.” These statements fiercely oppose Confucian

values.
This result of the African Value Survey, just as with the story at the

beginning of this section, confirms the low scores for African countries on
both LTO-CVS and LTO-WVS. In Table 7.4 the scores for three north-
ern African and ten middle and southern African countries are all on the
short-term side. Putting pride over practical results and expecting wisdom
without knowledge and education does not encourage working and study-
ing today for reaping benefi ts tomorrow.

In African countries, cause-effect relationships that are obvious to out-
siders are sometimes denied. An example was the refusal of then-president
Thabo Mbeki of South Africa to recognize the link between HIV conta-
gion and AIDS. A widespread belief in witchcraft supports blaming oth-
ers and occult forces for evils that, according to outsiders, Africans have
brought on themselves.
The values scores do not imply that all Africans are short-term think-
ers, nor that all East Asians are long-term thinkers. They do mean that
these ways of thinking are sufficiently general to affect common behav-