Page 373 - Cultures and Organizations

338 CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

country such as the United States. In Europe the cultural relativity of the
laws that govern human behavior had been recognized as early as the six-
teenth century in the skepticism of Michel de Montaigne (1533–92). The
quote from Blaise Pascal (1623–62) referred to earlier in this chapter—
“There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on
the other” (the Pyrenees being the border mountains between France and
65
Spain)—was in fact inspired by Montaigne. Since Montaigne and Pas-
cal, the link between nationality and ways of thinking has sometimes been
recognized but more often forgotten.
The previous chapters have demonstrated six ways in which national
cultures differ; all of these have implications for organization and man-
agement processes. Theories, models, and practices are basically culture-

specific; they may apply across borders, but this should always be proved.
The naive assumption that management ideas are universal is not found
only in popular literature: in scholarly journals—even in those explicitly
addressing an international readership—the silent assumption of universal

validity of culturally restricted findings is frequent. Articles in such jour-
nals often do not even mention the country in which the data were collected
(which usually is the United States, as can be concluded from the affi liations
of the authors). As a matter of scientific etiquette we suggest that articles

written for an international public should always mention the country or
countries—and the time period—in which the data were collected.
Lack of awareness of national limits causes management and organiza-
tion ideas and theories to be exported without regard for the values context
in which they were developed. Fad-conscious publishers and gullible readers
in those other countries encourage such exports. Unfortunately, to rephrase
a famous dictum, there is nothing as impractical as a bad theory. 66
The economic success of the United States in the decades before and
after World War II has led some people in other parts of the world to

believe that U.S. ideas about management must be superior and therefore
should be copied. They forgot to ask about the kind of society in which
these ideas were developed and applied—if they were really applied as the
books and articles claimed. U.S. management researchers Mark Peterson
and Jerry Hunt wrote, “A question for many American normative theories
67
is whether they even apply in the United States.” U.S. ethnopsychologist
Edward Stewart had this to say: “North American decision-makers do not
observe rational decision-making in their own work and lives, as a gen-