11.1 Cross-cultural studies: value concept versus action orientation

Empirical studies of cross-cultural differences in leadership behaviour are rare (House et al ., 1997) and the classical studies conducted by Geert Hofstede (1980, 2001; Hofstede and Bond, 1988) are still drawn on today. Hofstede s data was collected between 1967 and 1973 by IBM subsidiaries in 64 countries . He subsequently added 10 other regional groupings that have since been split into 23 nation states.

Hofstede s theoretical concept focused on ˜basic values , which is viewed as the ˜deepest level of a culture. According to Hofstede (1993, p. 127), these values are embedded in the individual by the country in which he or she is born and socialized. In comparison with cross-national differences, the cultural dimensions of a profession or an organization are seen as ˜superficial at the level of symbols, heroes and rituals.

Hofstede identified five dimensions of national culture: power distance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, uncertainty avoidance , and short-term versus long- term orientation. In addition to anchoring leadership behaviour in the culture of the nation, Hofstede was convinced that this behaviour has a high resistance to change. With regard to methodology, Hofstede employed traditional quantitative empirical research and factor analysis.

Hofstede s work went unchallenged until 1994, when Robert House initiated the global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program (GLOBE). The project was conducted by 150 researchers from 60 countries (see House et al ., 1997, 1999) and followed in Hofstede s footsteps. His basic value orientation and methodology were retained, but during the research the quality of Hofstede s dimensions and their quantitative operationalization were criticized and improved. This led to the identification of seven cultural dimensions: uncertainty avoidance, power distance, collectivism I, collectivism II, gender egalitarianism, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation. The latter is defined as the degree to which a group encourages and rewards individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring and kind to each other. The initiators of the GLOBE project did not draft a complete theory of culture and accepted the eclectic and rather unsystematic theoretical limits of Hofstede s work. As far as leadership theories are concerned , the concept of charismatic leadership and the attribution theory of leadership come closest to the GLOBE project, in which ˜implicit leadership is one of the topics of research and ˜Leadership is defined . . . as the ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organization of which they are members (House et al ., 1997, p. 220).

Just before the GLOBE project started Trompenaars (1993) surveyed more than 10 000 managers in nearly 50 countries, with particular emphasis on Europe and eight ex-communist states, including Czechoslovakia. Trompenaars questionnaire included items that addressed seven hypothesized dimensions of cultural valuing. Thus he shared Hofstede s value orientation; but in contrast to the GLOBE project he deliberately avoided replicating Hofstede s dimensions. This was done to challenge the quality of the dominating classification and to check the replicability of the results of these older dimensions (Smith et al ., 1996).

The seven dimensions that Trompenaars borrowed from earlier theories by sociologists and anthropologists were reduced to two in subsequent studies, since it appeared that some of these were strongly correlated with one another:

The first of the two dimensions can be thought of as representing ˜hierarchy versus ˜equality . . . . Nations whose managers score high on hierarchy are those in which power differences are accepted, paternalism is expected, job appointments are likely to be on the basis of ascribed qualities, and preferential treatment is given to one s immediate associates . Nations whose managers score high on equality are those in which work is evaluated and appointments are made on the basis of objective criteria which are applied equally to all persons. The second dimension distinguishes ˜involvement from ˜autonomy . . . . Nations whose managers score high on involvement are those in which one s identity is defined in terms of one s long-term commitment to the organization. Nations whose managers score high on autonomy are those where job involvement is seen as dependent upon a calculus of one s current rewards, career prospects and alternative opportunities. (Smith, 1997, p. 377)

Comparing their results with those from Hofstede s earlier study, Smith et al . (1996) found that the scores on both of their dimensions were to some extent associated with Hofstede s scores for ˜power distance and ˜individualism versus collectivism . As far as country differences were concerned, they found a striking feature: the former communist countries of the Central European cluster were all characterized by combinations of ˜hierarchy and ˜autonomy , in contrast to the West European nations, which were characterized by a combination of ˜equality and ˜involvement (ibid., p. 247).

Two conclusions emerge from this comparison of Hofstede s and Smith et al . s data bases. First, the links between Hofstede s dimensions and the two dimensions extracted by Smith et al . provide some evidence of continuity in approaches to management in various countries of the world. The two studies used very different samples of respondents and different instruments, and were completed at different times, so the fact that their results showed some agreement is a persuasive indication that the global variations found by Hofstede were still there, even if they had decreased in magnitude. The second conclusion came directly from the inclusion of former Soviet bloc nations in Trompenaars samples. The data from these countries were collected in the late 1980s. The scores obtained confirmed what many would have expected, namely that the major variation in approaches to management within Europe lay between East and West:

The footprint of history which appears to leave the sharpest imprint at present is not that of the Roman Empire, but that of the Soviet Empire. These data do not of course establish that conclusion unequivocally. There may have been major divergences in approaches to management between Eastern and Western Europe long before the end of the Second World War. (Smith, 1997, pp. 377 “8)

Thus the major value-oriented studies, despite some missing data and their neglect of Central European countries, seem to have produced some coherent results. However, their relevance may be limited by their common reliance on the value concept, as values may be illusions and not predictors of behaviour. Values can be seen as ˜far from action concepts with a relative distance from ˜close to action concepts such as intended behaviour, commitment and volition (Szabo et al., 2001). A ˜close to action approach involves the investigation of actual leadership behaviour across cultures and includes basic values as well as situational factors. While value-oriented and action-oriented research can produce matching outcomes , as Jago et al. (1995) demonstrated in the case of Czechoslovakia and Poland using the action-oriented Vroom “Yetton model, the results can also diverge. For example the identification of diversity among the countries of the former Soviet bloc in Smith and Peterson s (1995) action-oriented ˜event management study contradicted the value-oriented results of Trompenaars (1993) data, which led Smith (1997) to make his statement about the sharp imprint of the Soviet Empire.