Page 78 - Cultures and Organizations

60 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

For the multilingual countries Belgium and Switzerland, Table 3.1
gives the scores by the two largest language areas. For Canada there is
an IBM score for the whole country and a replication-based score for the
French-speaking part. The IBM sample for what was once Yugoslavia has
been split into Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia. The other countries in Table
3.1 all have a single score. This does not mean that they are necessarily
culturally homogeneous; it means only that the available data did not allow
a splitting up into subcultures.
Table 3.1 shows high power dis tance val ues for most Asian countries
(such as Malaysia and the Philippines), for Eastern European countries
(such as Slovakia and Russia), for Latin countries (Latin America, such as
Panama and Mexico, and to a somewhat lesser extent Latin Europe, such
as France and Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium), for Arabic-
speaking countries, and for Afri can coun tries. The table shows low values
for German-speaking countries, such as Austria, the German-speaking
part of Switzerland, and Germany; for Israel; for the Nordic countries
(Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) and the Baltic States (Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania); for the United States; for Great Brit ain and the
white parts of its for mer empire (New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, Canada);
and for the Netherlands (but not for Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of
Belgium, which scored quite similar to Wallonia). Sweden scored 31 and
France 68. If such a difference existed already two hundred years ago—for
which, as will be argued, there is a good case—this explains Bernadotte’s
culture shock.

Power Distance Defi ned

Looking at the three questions used to compose the PDI, you may notice

something surprising: questions 1 (employees afraid) and 2 (boss autocratic
or paternalistic) indicate the way the respondents perceive their daily work
environment. Question 3, however, indicates what the respondents express
as their preference: how they would like their work environment to be.
The fact that the three questions are part of the same cluster shows
that from one coun try to another there is a close relationship between the
6
reality one perceives and the reality one desires. In countries in which
employees are not seen as very afraid and bosses as not often autocratic or
paternalistic, employees express a preference for a consultative style of deci-