In today’s interconnected world, we interact with people from all different cultures, especially
in the work environment.
I’m from California in the United States which, according to the January 2020 issue
of U.S. News and World Reports, holds seven of the top ten spots of the most diverse big
cities in the United States.
But even if you don’t live in a city steeped in diversity, you are still communicating
with people from different cultures, thanks very much to the internet.
The most comprehensive study of culture is the one conducted by Geert Hofstede for IBM,
but that was way back in the 1960s and early 70’s.
The question is: Do those taxonomies still apply today?
Enter the GLOBE Project, which is described as a “unique large-scale study of cultural
practices, leadership ideals, and generalized and interpersonal trust in 150 countries in
collaboration with nearly 500 researchers.”—a lot of words to say it’s big study.
GLOBE, founded by Robert House in 1991, stands for Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Effectiveness.
While this study focused on the interrelationships between societal culture, societal effectiveness
and organizational leadership, we’ll be focusing on the societal culture aspect.
This video will offer a very brief comparison of Hofstede’s and GLOBE’s taxonomies and
then focus on describing the nine cultural dimensions of the GLOBE study: Performance
Orientation, Assertiveness, Future Orientation, Humane Orientation, Institutional Collectivism,
In-Group Collectivism, Gender Egalitarianism, Power Distance, and Uncertainty Avoidance—although
we will cover them in a different order than they are presented on the GLOBE Project website.
If you’ve seen my last video on Hofstede’s cultural taxonomies, the same caveats apply:
These are likelihoods, not absolutes.
Like Hofstede, GLOBE’S research focuses on national culture—and culture is more
than that.
(I’m hoping you already have a working knowledge of Hofstede’s Cultural Taxonomies.)
Culture is dynamic, meaning cultural practices change over time so the “placement” of
a particular culture on one end of the scale today may be different from what it was in
the past as well as where it might be in the future.
And I already told you that I’m from the United States, so you’ll likely hear some
of my biases in our discussion.
Let’s compare the two approaches of Hofstede and GLOBE.
The basic concept is the same: Both use a scale to plot a country’s values.
Hofstede’s scale ran from 0 to 100 or more while the GLOBE Project’s scale is limited
to 7 points.
Like Hofstede, the GLOBE project is a large-scale research project based on data from 17,000
managers from 62 countries around the world.
And there are some countries missing from the list, so when I don’t mention countries
like Norway or Iceland as countries with, say, strong women’s rights, that’s because
they weren’t one of those 62 countries in the study.
Also, both projects were focused on an international business perspective: Hofstede focused on
IBM employees while GLOBE looked at middle managers.
In terms of differences, the most obvious is the number of dimensions: Hofstede’s
has six while GLOBE has nine.
Keep in mind that House, the founder of the GLOBE project, had Hofstede’s research to
build on.
In fact, GLOBE takes apart some of Hofstede’s taxonomies and reworks them.
However, GLOBE does off two unique cultural dimensions.
The GLOBE project also looked at “practices” (what is) and “values” (what should be).
It’s one thing to say you value equality between the sexes but another thing to actually
practice it.
The study also looked at leadership issues, but we won’t go into that in this video.
Finally, not only did the GLOBE project break down the results by country, but also organized
the countries into ten “culture groups,” allowing for some easier comparisons.
This radar chart (that looks like a spiderweb), shows the differences in scoring between two
of those culture groups: Nordic Europe and Eastern Europe.
Or, if you prefer, the bar chart.
These are only included to show you that there are definitely differences between the two
culture groups, but you are welcome to stop and rewind the video if you want to look at
them in detail.
So, now, onto the dimensions, some of which are identical to Hofstede’s, some variations,
and some that can be considered new.
To be clear, these groupings are my opinion.
We’ll start with the two Hofstede dimensions that GLOBE validated—they even carry the
same names.
You’ll recall that Uncertainty Avoidance relates to the tolerance a society has toward
uncertainty: Are you uncomfortable with uncertainty so that you need rigid rules to know exactly
what is going to happen?
Or can you deal with ambiguity, letting things unfold, and viewing the lack of knowing as
interesting?
The GLOBE Project identifies Sweden, Singapore, Denmark, and Germany as high on the scale,
meaning they are much more open to uncertainty.
On the other end of the scale, cultures that are uncomfortable with ambiguity, you’ll
find Russia, Hungary, Guatemala, and Bolivia.
The United States is placed in about the middle of the scale.
And you should remember that Power Distance refers to the concept that some cultures accept
that inequity is normal, power is not distributed equally (a decentralized power structure),
where authority is highly respected and followed while other cultures view status as less important,
not automatically accepting people’s and government authority.
In the words of the GLOBE Project, “the extent to which the community accepts and
endorses authority, power differences, and status privileges.”
Countries with higher power distances, more likely to accept power inequities between
people and organizations, are Nigeria, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Thailand, and
South Korea.
Countries with lower power distances, with more of a centralized power structure and
more likely to question their leaders when they disagree with them, are Denmark, South
Africa, the Netherlands, and Bolivia.
Where is the U.S.? More toward the low power distance side.
Now we’re moving to some of the GLOBE dimensions that you are relatively familiar with, as
they are variations of some of Hofstede’s taxonomies.
Hofstede’s Long-Term Orientation taxonomy becomes Future Orientation in the GLOBE Project.
This involves the degree to which people plan for the future, such as investing.
It also relates to spontaneity and how you plan for social gatherings.
The variation?
There’s no mention of a past orientation.
Scoring high on this list—these are the planners—Singapore, South Africa, the Netherlands,
Malaysia, and Austria.
The low-scoring countries—the “live for the present” approach—are Russia, Argentina,
Poland, Hungary, and Guatemala.
You’ll find the U.S. on the higher end of the scale.
While we do have national policies focused on future goals, we also live in the moment:
the U.S. has the most credit card debt in the world!
Let’s move to what Hofstede called the Individualism vs. Collectivism dimension, which GLOBE separated
into two: Institutional Collectivism and In-Group Collectivism.
The first deals with connection to groups and organizations in general for practical
reasons while the other focuses more on family and more intimate group connections—more
emotional cohesiveness and pride.
And, yes, according to this research, there is a difference between these two dimensions.
The countries that score high on one dimension are not necessarily the same ones scoring
high on the other dimension.
Institutional Collectivism is defined as “the degree to which organizational and societal
institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective
action.”
Okay: You can think of this as collectivism as a practicality: How much do you support
the pooling of community resources to ensure others are taken care of, even if it means
that your own goals suffer?
Countries scoring high on this dimension are Sweden, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and
New Zealand.
In these cultures, there is more of a concern for the group than the individual.
Think about employees who take a pay cut to ensure that others are able to keep their
jobs: The group is more important than the individual.
Greece, Hungary, Germany, Argentina, and Italy score lower on this dimension, meaning that
the society’s economic system is designed to help facilitate the individual’s interests
rather than the group’s.
And where is the U.S. in comparison to other countries?
Towards the middle but leaning toward the lower side of the scale.
In-Group Collectivism relates to a culture’s cohesiveness, pride, and loyalty to their
organizations and family.
I think of it as the emotional equivalent of Institutional Collectivism.
Children and parents take pride in each other’s accomplishments and children tend to live
with their parents until marriage and the adult children take their aging parents into
their homes.
Cultures scoring high on this dimension, showing a strong family cohesiveness, are the Philippines,
Georgia in Eastern Europe, Iran, and India.
In India, for example, married couples traditionally continue living with the husband’s family
after marriage.
Low-scoring cultures on the In-Group Collectivism dimension are Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand,
and the Netherlands.
You’ll also find the U.S. on this side of the scale.
Hofstede’s Masculinity vs. Femininity Taxonomy has been separated into two different GLOBE
dimensions: Assertiveness (a characteristic typically ascribed to males) and Egalitarianism
(characteristics usually applied to females).
Assertiveness is the degree to which individuals are forceful, confrontational, and aggressive
(what Hofstede identified as masculine characteristics), as opposed to cooperative and compassionate
(traditionally a feminine characteristic).
Countries loading high on this scale are Albania, Nigeria, Hungary, Germany, and Hong Kong,
where direct communication is favored.
In these countries, if you want something, you ask for it and you make your expectations
clear and unambiguous.
And, yes, you’ll see the United States in the top ten percent of countries in terms
of assertiveness.
On the low end of the scale are Sweden, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Japan, where the
desire is more towards consensus-building and cooperation.
Representing the feminine side of Hofstede’s Masculinity vs. Femininity taxonomy is GLOBE’s
Gender Egalitarianism dimension, sometimes referred to as Gender Differentiation: How
much women are considered “equal” to men in terms of status, power, and job opportunities.
In cultures rating high on this scale, you’ll see women having more job opportunities and
holding powerful positions.
That includes countries like Hungary, Russia, Poland, and Slovenia.
On the lower end of the scale, where women have lower status both at work and in the
home, are South Korea, Kuwait, Egypt, and Morocco.
In Morocco, for example, while women make up about half of the country’s population,
only about one in four hold jobs outside the home—a fact that I noticed when I visited
that country about four years ago.
And here is an example of my bias as a woman in the U.S. Remember that a score of seven
on the GLOBE scale would be a country where men and women have achieved true equality,
yet the highest score on this dimension is Hungary’s 4.08.
And the United States, where I live, has yet to see a female president.
Interesting, when you compare the U.S.’s Gender Egalitarianism “value” score—what
we say we want to be—it is significantly higher than what we say happens in practice:
5.06 in value vs. 3.34 in practice.
Two GLOBE dimensions are considered “new”: Humane Orientation and Performance Orientation.
“Humane,” in this case, refers to human rights: how much fairness, altruism, generosity,
and kindness are encouraged and valued.
I can see this as yet another extrapolation of the Femininity characteristics Hofstede
identified but on a larger scale.
High-scoring countries on this Humane dimension are Zambia, the Philippines, Ireland, Malaysia,
and Thailand—these countries tend to be more concerned about being kind and fair to
others.
Spain, Greece, Hungary, Germany, and France are the lowest-scoring countries.
That’s not to say they don’t care about human rights, but they don’t emphasize it
as much.
The U.S. is placed near the middle of the scale but closer to the Humane side.
The second new dimension is Performance Orientation, which focuses on how much a community encourages
and rewards high standards, improvement in performance, and innovation.
You might think of this as an emphasis on tasks: Training, feedback, and explicit communication
can improve performance and people are more valued for what they do, not who they are.
Countries emphasizing high performance are Singapore, Albania, Hong Kong, New Zealand,
and South Africa—and, yes, the U.S. is in the upper ten percent of high-performance
orientation countries, but not the highest.
Countries scoring lower on this dimension are more likely to value the individual as
a person and negative feedback is more implied so as not to make the other feel uncomfortable.
Countries like Greece, Venezuela, Russia, Hungary, and Qatar fall on the low end of
the scale.
Well!
That was a lot to cover!
Even if you can’t remember which culture is high on which dimension, you should at
least be able to understand that different cultures have different values and behaviors—and
that both Hofstede’s research and the GLOBE Project help us organize and understand those
differences.
With that I’ll say: Goodbye from Sacramento, California, the third most diverse city in
the U.S.A!