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Pyramids, Machines, Markets, and Families: Organizing Across Nations 323

The top five goals focus on immediate interests of the company—

growth, continuity, and short-term profits—and on the leader’s ego, repre-

sented by personal wealth and power. The middle five deal with stakeholder

relationships and the future: reputation, creativity, long-term profi ts, legit-
imacy, and employee interests. The bottom five deal with spiritual and

special interests: individual and societal ethics, game spirit, nation, and
family.
Attributions within individual countries, however, differed consider-
ably from this average. Using the ranking in Table 9.1 as a baseline, we
computed country profiles, showing for each country the goals on which it

deviated most (plus or minus) from this ranking.

Table 9.2 shows the profiles for five important economies: the United
States, India, Brazil, China, and Germany. The scores for the United
States were produced by M.B.A. students from five universities in different

regions of the country; the five produced almost identical goal rankings.
Their consensus ranking closely resembled the seventeen-country average
from Table 9.1; none of the other sixteen countries came closer. Four of the
top five goals—growth, personal wealth, this year’s profits, and power—

were rated even more important for U.S. business leaders than for their
colleagues elsewhere. In the past half century, U.S. business has grown into
a model for global business; the master of business administration course
is an American invention.
The two most notable differences between the U.S. ranking and the
overall average are continuity of the business, which U.S. M.B.A.s rated
less important than their colleagues from any other country, and respect-

ing ethical norms, internationally among the bottom five but rated quite
important in the United States. As we have shown in previous chapters,
what is considered ethical may differ from one country to the next. Across

the seventeen countries, ratings for respecting ethical norms tended to
correlate with ratings for staying within the law and for honor, face, and
reputation.
The countries next most similar to the international average were
India and Brazil, also shown in Table 9.2. In India, continuity of the busi-
ness came out on top. Notable differences from the international average
were patriotism, internationally near the bottom but in India much more
important than average, and profits ten years from now, which replaced

this year’s profits among India’s top fi ve.
Brazil’s profile gave game and gambling spirit and family interests

much more importance than the average; creating something new, prof-