Page 356 - Cultures and Organizations

Pyramids, Machines, Markets, and Families: Organizing Across Nations 321

largest companies (one person, family, or company owning between 20 and
33
50 percent) was positively correlated with power distance. In high-PDI
France, banking, the development of large companies, and foreign trade
were historically strongly directed and controlled by the state according
to the principle of mercantilism; other fairly large companies continue to
be family owned.
In the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden,
but also in Austria, ten or more of the hundred largest corporations were
owned by a cooperative; in Britain and Italy, virtually none. The share
of cooperatively owned corporations was negatively correlated with mas-
34
culinity. Cooperatives appeal to the need for cooperation in a feminine
society.
A Russian economist, Radislav Semenov, compared (in 2000) the sys-
tems of corporate governance in seventeen Western countries and showed
that culture scores explained their differences better than any of the eco-
35
nomic variables suggested in the literature. By a combination of power
distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity, he was able to classify
countries in terms of market, bank, or other control; concentration of own-
ership; mind-sets of politicians, directors, employees, and investors; forma-
tion and implementation of economic policy; and industrial relations. In a

separate analysis he studied ownership of firms across forty-four countries

worldwide; this time he found a significant relationship with uncertainty
avoidance only. His study shows the importance of cultural considerations
when exporting one country’s solutions to another, as was frequently tried
in Eastern Europe in the 1990s.
Corporate governance is also related to corporate financial goals. It is

a naive assumption that such goals are culture free. In interviews by the
Dutch researcher Jeroen Weimer with Dutch, German, and U.S. business
executives, besides the subject of making profits, the Dutch talked about

assets, the Germans about independence from banks, and the Americans
36
about shareholder value. This diversity refl ects the institutional differ-
ences among the countries (the strong role of banks in Germany, for exam-
ple) as well as the prevailing ideologies (the shareholder as a culture hero
in the United States).
Personal goals of top business executives are not limited to fi nancial

matters, of course, but how to find out what they really are is problematic.
Asking the executives themselves will predictably produce self-serving,
politically correct answers. Geert resolved this dilemma by asking junior
managers and professionals enrolled in part-time M.B.A. courses to rate