1) Read all of the following material.
2) Choose any country (other than the U.S.) that you want to consider
3) Using the twenty different cultural factors consider managerial differences that will (or might) occur in that nation as a result of those factors. Much of this will be subjective and interpretive…that is, different choices might be made. You may find that certain of these factors will be more pertinent to your analysis than others…state that within your paper.
4) This is a demanding, but worthwhile, exercise.
5) I am using this in almost an experimental manner…. This is the first time I’ve used this assignment and I am interested in how you handle it. With that in mind…I will be “gentle” in my assessment.
We have been talking about international cultures. As you are aware, culture is a major determinant of behavior and the outcomes achieved. I have extracted, and placed below, the findings of an extensive and well validated investigation into the characteristics of a nation’s culture if it supports economic progress as compared to a culture that is resistive to economic progress. This study is merely descriptive of what “is” and does not deal with advocacy or “should” statements. It also does not suggest that economic outcomes are the best standard by which to judge a culture…. the intent here is to demonstrate the cause and effect relationship between culture and outcomes. Management decisions cannot ignore the strength or weakness of these factors as they create their strategies.
Reading this should heighten your awareness of the importance of culture (anywhere) in terms of effecting outcomes…in this case “economic” or managerial outcomes.
AJ
TWENTY CONTRASTING CULTURAL FACTORS
This list contrasts a value system favorable to economic development and one that is resistant. This does not establish what “should” be; that you could debate forever. The debate, however, would be empty…for if a culture is dramatically from these cultural elements supporting economic development that culture will fail. These twenty factors define, through measured reality, what “is” and what has been.” Keep in mind I am not advocating these directions. I am merely reporting what studies have shown.
1) Religion
Throughout history, religion has been the richest source of values. It was of course Max Weber who identified Protestantism, above all its Calvinist branch, as the root of capitalism. In other words, what initiated economic development was a religious revolution, one in which the treatment of lifes winners (the rich) and losers (the poor) was centrally relevant. Weber labeled the religious (essentially Roman Catholic) current that showed a preference for the poor over the rich publican, whereas he termed the current that preferred the rich and successful (essentially Protestant) pharisaic.
Where a publican religion is dominant, economic development will be difficult because the poor will feel justified in their poverty, and the rich will be uncomfortable because they see themselves as sinners. By contrast, the rich in pharisaic religions celebrate their success as evidence of Gods blessing, and the poor see their condition as Gods condemnation. Both the rich and the poor have a strong incentive to improve their condition through accumulation and investment.
In the context of this typology, publican religions promote values that are resistant to economic development, whereas pharisaic religions promote values that are favorable.
2) Trust in the Individual
The principal engine of economic development is the work and creativity of individuals. What induces them to strive and invent is a climate of liberty that leaves them in control of their own destiny. If individuals feel that others are responsible for them, the effort of individuals will ebb. If others tell them what to think and believe, the consequence is either a loss of motivation and creativity or a choice between submission or rebellion. However, neither submission nor rebellion generates development. Submission leaves a society without innovators, and rebellion diverts energies away from constructive effort toward resistance, throwing up obstacles and destruction.
To trust the individual, to have faith in the individual, is one of the elements of a value system that favors development. In contrast, mistrust of the individual, reflected in oversight and control, is typical of societies that resist development. Implicit in the trusting society is the willingness to accept the risk that the individual will make choices contrary to the desires of government. If this risk is not accepted and the individual is subjected to a network of controls, the society loses the essential engine of economic development, namely, the aspiration of each of us to live and think as we wish, to be who we are, to transform ourselves into unique beings. Where there are no individuals, only peoples and masses, development does not occur. What takes place instead is either obedience or uprising.
3) The Moral Imperative
There are three basic levels of morality. The highest is altruistic and self-denyingthe morality of saints and martyrs. The lowest is criminaldisregard for the rights of others and the law. The intermediate morality is what Raymond Aron calls a reasonable egoismthe individual engages in neither saintly nor criminal behavior, reasonably seeking his or her own well-being within the limits of social responsibility and the law.
The highest morality is illustrated by Marxs slogan from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs and by the Roman Catholic Churchs insistence on clerical chastity. Neither is consistent with human nature.
In development-favorable cultures, there is widespread compliance with laws and norms that are not totally exigent and are therefore realizable. Moral law and social reality virtually coincide. In development-resistant cultures, on the other hand, there are two worlds that are out of touch with each other. One is the exalted world of the highest standards and the other is the real world of furtive immorality and generalized hypocrisy. The law is a remote, utopian ideal that does little more than express what people might in theory prefer, whereas the real world, effectively out of touch with all law, operates under the law of the jungle, the law of the cleverest or the strongest, a world of foxes and lions disguised as lambs.
4) Two Concepts of Wealth
In societies resistant to development, wealth above all consists of what exists; in favorable societies, wealth above all consists of what does not yet exist. In the underdeveloped world, the principal wealth resides in land and what derives from it. In the developed world, the principal wealth resides in the promising processes of innovation. In the resistant society, real value resides, for example, in todays computer, whereas the favorable society focuses on the generation of computers to come.
In the British colonies in North America, uninhabited lands were available to those who would work them. In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies to the south, all lands were claimed by the Crown. From the outset, wealth belonged to those who held power. Wealth thus did not derive from work but from the ability to earn and retain the favor of the king.
5) Two Views of Competition
The necessity of competing to achieve wealth and excellence characterizes the societies favorable to development, not only in the economy but elsewhere in the society. Competition is central to the success of the enterprise, the politician, the intellectual, the professional. In resistant societies, competition is condemned as a form of aggression. What is supposed to substitute for it is solidarity, loyalty, and cooperation. Competition among enterprises is replaced by corporativism. Politics revolve around the caudillo, and intellectual life has to adjust itself to the established dogma. Only in sports is competition accepted.
In resistant societies, negative views of competition reflect the legitimation of envy and utopian equality. Although such societies criticize competition and praise cooperation, the latter is often less common in them than in competitive societies. In fact, it can be argued that competition is a form of cooperation in which both competitors benefit from being forced to do their best, as in sports. Competition nurtures democracy, capitalism, and dissent.
6) Two Notions of Justice
In resistant societies, distributive justice is concerned with those who are alive nowan emphasis on the present that is also reflected in a propensity to consume rather than to save. The favorable society is likely to define distributive justice as that which also involves the interests of future generations. In such societies, the propensity to consume is often smaller and the propensity to save is often greater.
7) The Value of Work
Work is not highly valued in progress-resistant societies, reflecting a philosophical current that goes back to the Greeks. The entrepreneur is suspect but the manual laborer somewhat less so, since he must work to survive. At the top of the prestige ladder are the intellectual, the artist, the politician, the religious leader, the military leader. A similar prestige scale characterized Christendom until the Reformation. However, as Max Weber observed, the Reformation, and particularly the Calvinist interpretation of it, inverted the prestige scale, enshrining this work ethic. It is this same inverted value system that importantly explains the prosperity of Western Europe and North Americaand East Asiaand the relative poverty of Latin America and other Third World areas.
8) The Role of Heresy
With his thesis of free interpretation of the Bible, Martin Luther was the religious pioneer of intellectual pluralism at a time when dogmatism dominated Christendom. The unpardonable crime at the time was not sin but heresy. Yet the questioning mind is the one that creates innovation, and innovation is the engine of economic development. Orthodox societies, including the former Soviet Union, suppress innovation. The collapse of the Soviet Union had more than a little to do with its insistence on Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy.
9) To Educate Is Not to Brainwash
We have seen that value systems favorable to development nurture the formation of individuals who are innovators, heretics. Education is the principal instrument of this nurturing. However, this must be a form of education that helps the individual discover his or her own truths, not one that dictates what the truth is. In value systems resistant to development, education is a process that transmits dogma, producing conformists and followers.
10) The Importance of Utility
The developed world eschews unverifiable theory and prefers to pursue that which is practically verifiable and useful. The intellectual traditions in Latin America focus more on grand cosmovisions, which put it at a developmental disadvantage. Ariel, the phenomenally popular book by the Uruguayan Jos Enrique Rod that appeared in 1900, draws the distinction by using two characters from Shakespeares The Tempest: the comely, spiritual Ariel, representing Latin America, and the ugly, calculating Caliban, representing the United States. However, it was the North Americans, not the Latin Americans, who opened the path to economic development. At the same time, we must note that utilitarianism suffers from a troubling lacuna, symbolized by the horrors of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
11) The Lesser Virtues
Advanced societies esteem a series of lesser virtues that are virtually irrelevant in traditional cultures: a job well done, tidiness, courtesy, punctuality. These contribute to both efficiency and harmoniousness in human relations. They are unimportant in a resistant culture, partly because they impinge on the assertion of the individuals wishes and partly because they are overwhelmed by the great traditional virtues of love, justice, courage, and magnanimity. Nevertheless, the lesser virtues are characteristic of societies in which people are more respectful of the needs of others.
12) Time Focus
There are four categories of time: the past, the present, the immediate future, and a distant future that merges into the afterlife. The time focus of the advanced societies is the future that is within reach; it is the only time frame that can be controlled or planned for. The characteristic of traditional cultures is the exaltation of the past. To the extent that the traditional culture does focus on the future, it is on the distant, eschatological future.
13) Rationality
The modern world is characterized by its emphasis on rationality. The rational person derives satisfaction at the end of the day from achievement, and progress is the consequence of a vast sum of small achievements. The premodern culture, by contrast, emphasizes grandiose projectspyramids, the Aswan Dam, revolutions. Progress-resistant countries are littered with unfinished monuments, roads, industries, and hotels. But its not important. Tomorrow a new dream will arise.
14) Authority
In rational societies, power resides in the law. When the supremacy of the law has been established, the society functions according to the rationality attributed to the cosmosnatural lawby the philosophers of modernity (e.g., Locke, Hume, Kant). In resistant societies, the authority of the prince, the caudillo, or the state is similar to that of an irascible, unpredictable God. People are not expected to adapt themselves to the known, logical, and permanent dictates of the law; rather, they must attempt to divine the arbitrary will of those with power; thus the inherent instability of such societies.
15) Worldview
In a culture favorable to development, the world is seen as a setting for action. The world awaits the person who wants to do something to change it. In a culture resistant to development, the world is perceived as a vast entity in which irresistible forces manifest themselves. These forces bear various names: God, the devil, a powerful international conspiracy, capitalism, imperialism, Marxism, Zionism. The principal preoccupation of those in a resistant culture is to save themselves, often through utopian crusades. The individual in the resistant society thus tends to oscillate between fanaticism and cynicism.
16) Life View
In the progressive culture, life is something that I will make happenI am the protagonist. In the resistant culture, life is something that happens to meI must be resigned to it.
17) Salvation from or in the World
In the resistant conception, the goal is to save oneself from the world. According to traditional Catholicism, the world is a vale of tears. To save oneself from it is to resist temptations in a quest for the other world, the world after death. But for the puritan Protestants, salvation in the other world depends on the success of the individuals efforts to transform this world. The symbol of the Catholic vision is the monk; that of the Protestant vision, the entrepreneur.
18) Two Utopias
Both progress-prone and progress-resistant cultures embrace a certain kind of utopianism. In the progressive culture, the world progresses slowly toward a distant utopia through the creativity and effort of individuals. In the resistant culture, the individual seeks an early utopia that is beyond reach. The consequence is again a kind of fanaticismor cynicism. The latter utopianism is suggested by the visit of Pope John Paul II to India, where he insisted that all Indians have a right to a dignified life free of poverty and at the same time rejected birth control.
19) The Nature of Optimism
In the resistant culture, the optimist is the person who expects that luck, the gods, or the powerful will favor him or her. In the culture favorable to development, the optimist is the person who is resolved to do whatever is necessary to assure a satisfactory destiny, convinced that what he or she does will make the difference.
20) Two Visions of Democracy
The resistant culture is the heir of the tradition of absolutism, even when it takes the form of Rousseauistic popular democracy, which admits no legal limits or institutional controls. In this vision, the absolute power of the king accrues to the people. The liberal, constitutional democracy of John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, James Madison, and the Argentine Juan Bautista Alberdi characterizes the vision of democracy in the progressive culture. Political power is dispersed among different sectors and the law is supreme.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
This list of twenty cultural factors, which contrasts a value system favorable to economic development and one that is resistant, is not definitive. It could be amplified by additional contrasts or it could be reduced, seeking only the most important differences. The criterion has been practicality, and these twenty factors are sufficient to obtain some idea of the contrasting visions from which the two value systems flow.
It is important to be mindful that neither the favorable nor the resistant exists in the real world. Rather, as Weber would say, they are ideal types, or mental constructs, that facilitate analysis because they offer two poles of reference that help us locate and evaluate a given society. The closer a society is to the favorable ideal, the more likely it is to achieve sustained economic development. Conversely, a society that is close to the resistant pole will be less likely to achieve sustained economic development.
An imaginary line runs between the resistant and favorable poles on which the real societies can be located. That location is not permanent, however, because no value system is static. There is continuous, albeit slow, movement on the line away from one pole and toward the other. Like two illuminated ports that call to the navigator from different directions, the ideal types permit a diagnosis of the course and speed of a given nation toward or away from economic development. Should it come close to the reefs of the resistant pole, it is time to consider what needs to be done to change the course and speed of the cultures value system to enhance the prospects of arriving at the opposite pole. Similarly, it should be possible to identify those values that, even if not wholly favorable to development, must be conserved because they preserve the identity of the societyso long as they do not block access to development.
Whether in the West or the East, development did not really exist before the seventeenth century. This was equally true for Europe and China, for pre-Columbian America and India. Productivity levels were low around the world because the societies were all agrarian. There were good years and bad years, mostly the result of climatic factors, above all rainfall, but there was no sustained economic development. The reason was cultural. Values that encouraged capital accumulation with a view to increased production and productivity did not exist. The value systems were anti-economic, emphasizing, for example, the salvation of the soul of the Egyptian pharaohs, art and philosophy in ancient Greece, the legal and military organization of the Roman Empire, mastery of traditional philosophy and literature in China, and the renunciation of the world and the quest for eternal salvationoften through warof the Middle Ages in Europe.
It was the Protestant Reformation that first produced economic development in northern Europe and North America. Until the Reformation, the leaders of Europe were France, Spain (allied with Catholic Austria), the north of Italy (the cradle of the Renaissance), and the Vatican. The Protestant cultural revolution changed all that as heretofore second-rank nationsHolland, Switzerland, Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Prussia, and the former British colonies in North Americatook over the reins of leadership. Economic development, in the form of the industrial revolution, brought wealth, prestige, and military power to the new leaders. Furthermore, the non-Protestant nations had to face the reality that their failure to pursue economic development would lead to their domination by the Protestant countries. They had to choose between Protestant hegemony and their traditional resistant valuestheir identity.
The responses varied across a spectrum from one non-Protestant country to another. At one extreme was Puerto Rico, which sold its Latin soul for the mess of pottage of economic development. At the other extreme is the Islamic fundamentalism of Iran, which ardently rejects Western-style development as a threat to an ancestral identity whose preservation is the chief goal of those in power.
Other nations pursued courses between these two extremes. Imperial China disdained the power of the West until it was subjugated by it. The Maoist communist revolution can be interpreted as Chinas first real accommodation to the West, albeit in the form of the Western heresy of Marxism. Deng took a further step in the direction of the West by opening the doors to capitalism, albeit within an authoritarian political system.
Following the visit of the U.S. naval squadron to Tokyo Bay in 1853, when it became apparent to the Japanese that they could not defend themselves against the West, Japans new Meiji leadership staked out a different course:
They would accept Western technology but not Western culture. Japan then built a formidable war machine that defeated China and Russia but was itself destroyed in World War II. That trauma was followed by an imposed democratization that has since taken root and a refocusing of Japanese priorities away from warfare toward industry and commercewith astonishing results. A similar path has been followed by South Korea and Taiwan, both former Japanese colonies.
The Catholic countries of Europe have accepted the logic of economic development, particularly since World War II. As the rate of growth in the Protestant countries has declined, in part because of the waning of the earlier religious energy, France, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, and Spain have crossed the frontier that separates development from underdevelopment.
Is Catholic Latin America following the same path? In the 1980sthe lost decadeLatin America experienced an economic crisis precipitated by its resistant values. It remains to be seen whether Latin America will in fact achieve the lofty heights of economic development, democratization, and modernization.
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