Page 305 - Cultures and Organizations

274 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

ior patterns and the structure and functioning or malfunctioning of
national institutions. Through these processes, thinking affects economic
development.
Nearly all African countries have become dependent on foreign aid
and on loans from the International Monetary Fund. According to Joseph
Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and 2001 Nobel Prize
winner in economics, Africa’s economic problems have been compounded
by the conditions for loans dictated by the IMF. Even more than the World
Bank, the IMF has been dominated by short-term-oriented market fun-
damentalism. This posture has led to a stress on budget discipline at the
expense of education, health, and infrastructure and to forced liberaliza-
tion of imports while keeping Western markets closed for African exports,
88

ruining fledgling local enterprises. Table 7.4 classifi es the U.S. mind-set,
which dominates among the IMF advisers, in the same short-term orienta-
tion bracket as that of the country’s African clients.
Very short-term values were also found in a study of Australian
aborigines, as mentioned in Chapter 4. This, too, is a group whose eco-
89
nomic development is problematic. Also in their case, conditions created
by short-term-oriented white policies often compound their problem.
Table 7.5 summarizes key differences between societies on the dimen-
sion of short- versus long-term orientation based on WVS data.

The Future of Long- and Short-Term Orientation

The second time Duke Ching called Confucius to an audience, he again
asked him, “What is the secret of good government?” Confucius replied,
“Good government consists in being sparing with resources.” 90

The future is by definition a long-term problem. Our grandchildren and
their grandchildren will have to live with the long-term consequences of
our present actions.
The question Duke Ching put before Confucius 2,500 years ago is
still as topical as ever: What is good government? In 1999–2000 social
scientists from East Asia (China, Japan, and South Korea) and from Nordic
Europe (Denmark, Finland, and Sweden) in a joint project surveyed rep-
resentative samples of the populations of their countries about the same
issue. The survey showed differences in opinions about how the relation-

ship between rulers and citizens should be, reflecting the countries’ differ-