Page 374 - Cultures and Organizations

Pyramids, Machines, Markets, and Families: Organizing Across Nations 339

eral rule, but they restructure past events according to a decision-making
model. . . .Thus, in the United States rational decision-making is a myth.” 68
According to U.S. business historian Robert Locke, the successful indus-
trialization of the United States took place in a distinct historical context
and owed much more to external circumstances than to the quality of the
management principles used. 69
The belief in the superiority of American theories is reinforced by
the fact that most “international” management journals are published in

the United States with U.S. editors, and it is notoriously difficult for non–
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North American authors to get their papers accepted. British professors
David Hickson and Derek Pugh in their anthology Great Writers on Orga-
nizations included seventy-one names, of whom forty-eight were American,
fifteen British, and two Canadian; only six were non-Anglo. 71

U.S. business professor and consultant Michael Porter analyzed why
some nations succeeded much better than others in the international com-
petition of the latter part of the twentieth century. His “diamond” of the
determinants of national advantage recognized four attributes: (1) factor
conditions, by which he meant the availability of necessary production
factors such as skilled labor and infrastructure, (2) demand conditions,
(3) related and supporting industries, and (4) firm strategy, structure, and

rivalry. Porter stopped short of the question of why some countries get bet-
ter diamonds than others. He still assumed universal applicability of the
ethnocentric laws of competitive markets. 72
Just as certain nations excel in certain sports, others are associated

with specific disciplines. Psychology, including social psychology, is pre-
dominantly a U.S. discipline: individualist and mostly masculine. Sociology
is predominantly European, but even European sociologists rarely con-
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sider the influence of their nationality on their thinking. The great French

sociologist Pierre Bourdieu fiercely rejected critiques explaining his ideas
from the standpoint of his being French. In our eyes, far from invalidating
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Bourdieu’s theories, recognizing the fact of their French origin makes them
more understandable to others—just as U.S. models become more useful if
we realize their American origin.
In organization theories, the nationality of the author refl ects implicit
assumptions as to where organizations came from, what they are, and what
they try to achieve. These national “paradigms” all have the same starting
point: “In the beginning was . . .” After God had created men, men made