Page 69 - Cultures and Organizations

54 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

mentality (he later became king of Norway as well) and to his subordi-
nates’ constitutional rights. He was a good learner, however (except for
language), and he ruled the country as a highly respected constitutional
monarch until 1844.

Inequality in Society

One of the aspects in which Sweden differs from France is the way society
handles inequality. There is inequality in any society. Even in the sim-
plest hunter-gatherer band, some people are bigger, stronger, or smarter
than others. Further, some people have more power than others: they are
more able to determine the behavior of others than vice versa. Some people
acquire more wealth than others. Some people are given more status and
respect than others.
Physical and intellectual capacities, power, wealth, and status may
or may not go together. Successful athletes, artists, and scientists usu-
ally enjoy status, but only in some societies do they enjoy wealth as well,
and rarely do they have political power. Politicians in some countries can
enjoy status and power without wealth; businesspeople can have wealth
and power without status. Such inconsistencies among the various areas
of inequality are often felt to be problematic. In some societies people try
to resolve them by making the areas more consistent. Athletes turn profes-
sional to become wealthy; politicians exploit their power and/or move on to
attractive business positions in order to do the same; successful business-

people enter public office in order to acquire status. This trend obviously
increases the overall inequalities in these societies.
In other societies the dominant feeling is that it is a good thing, rather
than a problem, if a person’s rank in one area does not match his or her rank

in another. A high rank in one area should partly be offset by a low rank
in another. This process increases the size of the middle class in between
those who are on top in all respects and those who lack any kind of oppor-
tunity. The laws in many countries have been conceived to serve this ideal
of equality by treating everybody as equal regardless of status, wealth, or
power, but there are few societies in which reality matches the ideal. The
praise of poverty in the Christian Bible can be seen as a manifestation of a
desire for equality; the same is true for Karl Marx’s plea for a “dictatorship
of the proletariat.”