Page 355 - Cultures and Organizations

320 CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

even in this tightly coordinated corporation employees in different coun-
tries hold markedly different personal values, it is likely that interpreta-
tions of accounting rules in the subsidiaries of multinationals will often
deviate from what headquarters expect.
Differences among occupational value systems play a role in the com-
munication between accountants and other organization members. U.S.
students majoring in accounting were found to attribute higher value to
being clean and responsible and lower value to being imaginative than
other students, which suggests a self-selection on uncertainty- avoiding
29
values. In a Dutch and an international sample, Geert found that accoun-
tants stress the form of information, where people in operating roles will
stress its content. 30
Accountants are also the people who determine the value of the orga-

nization’s assets. Ways of valuing assets reflect underlying nonrational
value systems, such as the fact that machines are considered assets while
people are not. Hardware is less uncertain than software.

Corporate Governance and Business Goals

Traditionally, patterns of corporate governance, the ownership and control
of corporations, differ vastly among countries. A study across twelve Euro-
31
pean countries, published in 1997, showed that while in Britain sixty-one
of the hundred largest companies had dispersed shareholders (no single
owner holding more than 20 percent), in Austria and Italy no large com-
panies at all had this ownership type. The percentages of dispersed owner-
ship were significantly correlated with individualism (IDV). 32

Capitalism is historically linked to individualism. The United King-
dom inherited the ideas formulated by a Scot, Adam Smith (1723–90), about

the market as an invisible hand. In the individualist value pattern, the rela-
tionship between the individual and the organization is calculative both for
the owners and for the employees; it is based on enlightened self-interest.
In more collectivist societies, in comparison, the link between individuals
and their organizations is moral by tradition (Chapter 4). A hire-and-fi re
approach, as with a buy-and-sell approach, is considered immoral or inde-
cent. Sometimes firing employees is even prohibited by law. If it is not,

selling companies and firing redundant employees still carry a high cost
in terms of loss of public image and of goodwill with authorities.
Differences in power distance also affect corporate governance. Across
the same twelve European countries, dominant ownership of the hundred