Page 70 - Cultures and Organizations

More Equal than Others 55

Measuring the Degree of Inequality in Society:
The Power Distance Index

Not only Sweden and France but other nations as well can be distinguished
by the way they tend to deal with inequalities. The research among IBM
employees in similar positions but in differ ent countries has allowed us
to assign to each of these countries a score indicating its level of power
distance. Power distance is one of the dimensions of national cultures intro-

duced in Chapter 2. It reflects the range of answers found in the various
countries to the basic question of how to handle the fact that people are
unequal. It derives its name from research by a Dutch experimental social
psychologist, Mauk Mulder, into the emotional distance that separates sub-
ordinates from their bosses. 1
Scores on power distance for fifty countries and three multicountry

regions have been calculated from the answers by IBM employees in the
same kind of positions on the same survey questions. All questions were of
the precoded-answer type so that answers could be represented by a score
number: usually 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. Standard samples composed of respondents
from the same mix of jobs were taken from each country. A mean score
was computed for each sample (say, 2.53 as the mean score for country X
and 3.43 for country Y), or the percentage of people choosing particular
answers was computed (say, 45 percent of the sample choosing answer 1 or
2 in country X and 33 percent in country Y). From that data, a table was
composed presenting mean scores or percentages for each question and for
all countries.
A statistical procedure (factor analysis) was used to sort the survey
questions into groups, called factors or clusters, for which the mean scores
or percentages varied together. This meant that if a country scored high
2
on one of the questions from the cluster, it also could be expected to score

high on the others; likewise, it could be expected to score not high but low
for questions carrying the opposite meaning. If, on the other hand, a coun-
try scored low on one question from the cluster, it also would most likely
score low on the others and score high on questions formulated the other
way around. If a country scored average on one question from the cluster,
it probably would score average on all of them.
One of the clusters found was composed of questions that all seemed to
have something to do with power and (in)equality. From the questions in