Page 46 - Cultures and Organizations

Studying Cultural Differences 31

The four basic problem areas defined by Inkeles and Levinson and
empirically found in the IBM data represent dimensions of cultures. A dimen-
sion is an aspect of a culture that can be measured relative to other cultures.
The four dimensions found will be described in Chapters 3 through 6. They
have been named power distance (from small to large), collectivism versus
individualism, femininity versus masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance (from
weak to strong). Each of these terms existed already in some part of the
social sciences, and they seemed to apply reasonably well to the basic prob-
lem area each dimension stands for. Together they form a four-dimensional
model of differences among national cultures. Each country in the model
is characterized by a score on each of the four dimensions.
A dimension groups together a number of phenomena in a society
that were empirically found to occur in combination, regardless of whether
there seems to be a logical necessity for their going together. The logic
of societies is not the same as the logic of individuals looking at them.
The grouping of the different aspects of a dimension is always based on
statistical relation ships—that is, on trends for these phenomena to occur
in combination, not on iron links. Some aspects in some societies may go
against a general trend found across most other societies. Because they are
found with the help of statistical methods, dimensions can be detected only
on the basis of comparative information from a number of countries—say,
at least ten. In the case of the IBM research, Geert was fortunate to obtain
comparable data about culturally determined values from (initially) forty
countries, which made the dimensions within their differences stand out
clearly.
The scores for each country on one dimension can be pictured as points
along a line. For two dimensions at a time, they become points in a dia-
gram. For three dimensions, they could, with some imagination, be seen

as points in space. For four or more dimensions, they become diffi cult to
imagine. This is a disadvantage of dimensional models. Another way of
picturing differences among countries (or other social systems) is through
typologies. A typology describes a set of ideal types, each of them easy to
imagine. A common typology of countries in the second half of the twen-
tieth century was dividing them into a first, second, and third world (a

capitalist, communist, and former colonial bloc).
Whereas typologies are easier to grasp than dimensions, they are
problematic in empirical research. Real cases seldom fully correspond to
one single ideal type. Most cases are hybrids, and arbitrary rules have to