Page 44 - Cultures and Organizations

Studying Cultural Differences 29

faint resemblance to actual behavior, but even statements about the desired,
although closer to actual behavior, do not necessarily correspond to the
way people really behave when they have to choose.
The desirable differs from the desired in the nature of the norms
involved. Norms are standards for behavior that exist within a group or
1
category of people. In the case of the desirable, the norm is absolute, per-
taining to what is ethically right. In the case of the desired, the norm
is statistical: it indicates the choices made by the majority. The desirable
relates more to ideology, the desired to practical matters.
Interpretations of value studies that neglect the difference between
the desirable and the desired may lead to paradoxical results. A case in
which the two produced diametrically opposed answers was found in the
IBM studies, to be described later on in this chapter. Employees in dif-
ferent countries were asked for their agreement or disagreement with the
statement “Employees in industry should participate more in the decisions
made by management.” This is a statement about the desirable. In another
question people were asked whether they personally preferred a manager
who “usually consults with subordinates before reaching a decision.” This
is a statement about the desired. A comparison of the answers to these two
questions revealed that in countries in which the consulting manager was
less popular, people agreed more with the general statement that employ-
ees should participate in decisions, and vice versa; the ideology was the
mirror image of the day-to-day relationship with the boss. 2

Dimensions of National Cultures

In the first half of the twentieth century, social anthropology developed

the conviction that all societies, modern or traditional, face the same basic

problems; only the answers differ. American anthropologists, in particu-
lar Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) and Margaret Mead (1901–78), played an
important role in popularizing this message for a wide audience.
The logical next step was that social scientists attempted to identify
what problems were common to all societies, through conceptual reasoning

and reflection on field experiences as well as through statistical studies.
In 1954 two Americans, the sociologist Alex Inkeles and the psychologist
Daniel Levinson, published a broad survey of the English-language litera-
ture on national culture. They suggested that the following issues qualify
as common basic problems worldwide, with consequences for the function-