Page 401 - Cultures and Organizations

366 CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

survey. Soon afterward the company started losing money; a few years
later it changed ownership and top management.

Individual Perceptions of Organizational Cultures

Different individuals within the same organizational unit do not necessarily
give identical answers to questions about how they see their organization’s
practices. The IRIC study did not look at differences among individuals:
its concern was with differences among organizational cultures. Michael
Bond, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who was interested in indi-
vidual differences, offered to reanalyze the IRIC database from this point
of view. Chung-Leung Luk, at that time Bond’s assistant, performed the
necessary computer work. His results show the structure in the variation
of individual scores around the means of the organizational units: in what
ways individuals’ answers differed after organization culture differences were
eliminated. This extension of the IRIC project has been described in a joint
paper by Hofstede, Bond, and Luk. 25

The individual perceptions study first analyzed the values questions
and the practices questions separately. As is natural, individuals within the
same unit differed more in their values, which were private, than in their
perceptions of the unit’s practices, in which they shared. Yet it became clear
that for individuals, values and perceptions of practices were related, so in
the further analysis they could be combined. This combination produced
six dimensions of individuals’ answers:

1. Alienation, a state of mind in which all perceptions of practices were
negative. Alienated respondents were misers: they scored the orga-
nization as less professional, felt management to be more distant,

trusted colleagues less, saw the organization as less orderly, felt more
hostile to it, and perceived less integration between the organization
and its employees. Alienation was stronger among employees who
were younger, less educated, and nonmanagerial.
2. Workaholism, a term chosen by the researchers for a strong com-
mitment to work (for example, the job is more important than leisure
time), as opposed to a need for a supportive organization (for example,

wanting to work in a well-defined job situation). Workaholism was
stronger among employees who were younger, more educated, male,
and managerial.