- Email: [email protected]
Riding the waves: A rejoinder
Inr. J. Int~wulrurtrl
Rel. Vol. 21, No. 2. pp. 2X7 ~290. I997 t 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights remved. Printed in Great Britain 0147-1767’97 517.00+0.0(1
Pergamon
PII: SO147-1767(97)00001-l
RIDING THE WAVES: A REJOINDER
GEERT
HOFSTEDE
Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation, and Tilhurg, The Netherlands
Maastricht
Charles Hampden-Turner has rushed to the rescue of Fons Trompenaars from my critique of the latter’s book. Their joint response, however, hardly deals with the points I raised. The essence of my criticism was that Trompenaars’ own database did not support his model; that his seven criteria are conceptual categories in the researcher’s mind, but that his respondents did not show evidence of making similar distinctions in their minds. I also noted that the respondents’ answers were not summarized into country scores on the seven “dimensions”, so it was not clear where a country was supposed to be positioned on each dimension. Finally. no attempts were made to compare Trompenaars’ conclusions to those of other studies, either country-level indicators (like GNP/capita) or results of survey studies (like those of the Eurobarometer). Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars argue that the approach in Trompenaars’ book is okay; it is only different from mine. To this purpose they make statements about what they suppose my viewpoints to be. which makes one wonder how much of my work they really read. They make a straw puppet in order to burn it. For example, a main theme in my books is the cultural relativity of ideas, even scientific theories; I will be about the last person to argue that social science methodology is culture free. I nowhere argue that categories like individualism and collectivism exclude each other at the individual level; I only show that I found empirically at the country level that if a country has more of one, it generally has less of the other. In studying cultural phenomena, I do not believe in “independent” and “dependent” variables; 1 argue for circular causation and feedback loops [such as, in Hofstede (1980, p. 27) or Hofstede (1984, p.22)]. Nor do I see cultures as static, although I do believe they often have very ancient roots which are unlikely to disappear overnight. I do believe. however, in testing my ideas against my observations; if my theory states that something is A but inspection of my data shows it to be B. I believe it is time to revise my theory. Within the national culture shared 287
288
G. Hofstede
by Trompenaars and I, this approach is not a matter of preference: it is a matter of scientific integrity. Hampden-Turners and Trompenaars’ references to IBM and American social scientists are very ill-informed: about the Americans to whom they refer, the origins of my research, and about IBM in the 60s and 70s. The American social science research tradition is predominantly empiricist but precisely the scholars whom Trompenaars cites were exceptions; which is why they stood out as unique, and are still remembered. Talcott Parsons was a staunch theorist who had studied in Europe and rebelled against “the prevailing empiricism of American sociology”; he has been called “the most abstract theorist in contemporary social science” [both quotes are from Rocher (1974, p. l)]. Florence Kluckhohn’s husband Clyde was a member of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University, of which Parsons was Chairman from 1946 to 1956, and as devoted to the development of grand theory as Parsons. F. Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s categories were really developed in a field study of five small communities in the U.S.A.-neither more nor less-just read their book (Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961). Later attempts to equip their theories with a broader empirical underpinning have by my knowledge never been convincing-if anybody wants to show the opposite please give me the references. For an overview of the-mainly American-early literature related to what I called “dimensions of culture”, describing the contributions of these authors and others, see Hofstede (1980, pp. 42-50) abridged in Hofstede (1984, pp. 3437). Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars suggest that I am not sure on the shoulders of which giants I stand. Well, all those giants are referred to there. The IBM material to which I had access during my initial research was very useful-but I only started to take the results seriously after I found them to correlate with the results of other studies [for a summary of all the studies involved see Hofstede (1980, pp. 32633 1) and Hofstede (1984, pp. 2222227)]. Michael Bond later found similar dimensions in two studies of student populations (10 and 23 countries), using quite different questions. Michael Hoppe replicated my results with a population of national elites from 19 countries (Hofstede, 1991, pp. 97, 160-166). So my inputs were in no way restricted by what was in the IBM questionnaire or the IBM population. The history of the collection of the IBM (“Hermes”) survey material has been extensively described in Hofstede (1980, pp. 55-67) abridged in Hofstede (1984, pp. 40-48). I suggest Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars read this. American IBM managers counted for very little in the research initiative, which covered IBM World Trade and surprisingly excluded IBM U.S.A.; the questionnaires for the first international survey were developed by rather rebellious young European social science graduates from inside and outside the company. They did this on the basis of in-
Riding the W’aues: A Rejoindtpr
-‘KY
depth interviews with employees in six countries. Of course where possible we used questions whose viability had been proven by others. Inventories of such questions, with the express purpose of having them reused, were and still are available in the literature (e.g., Robinson, Rusk, & Head, 1968). Using existing questions is not a matter of plagiarizing as long as one acknowledges their source. Plagiarizing, gentlemen, is using the ideas of somebody else without referring to their source. About Individualism-Collectivism: I did not suggest that I introduced this scale to social science, as Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars assert. In my critique I wrote: “The term ‘Individualism vs. Collectivism’ as a cultural qualifier was introduced by the present author”. The distinction existed, but it was applied and measured to describe individuals, and political systems. I found it to be one of four key criteria distinguishing the prevailing mental programming within nations, and presented measurements of national cultures to this purpose, which correlated strongly with a host of other national indicators. In cross-cultural psychology. the introduction of I-C as a (national) cultural qualifier has been heralded as a major breakthrough, and I have been credited for starting it (see Kim, Triandis, Kagitcibasi, Choi, and Yoon (1994). Triandis (1995). and as many journal articles as Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars care to retrieve from the Social Science Citation Index). The purpose of Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars’ section on successful business practice is mysterious. What has this got to do with my critique of Trompenaars’ book? Do they believe that business success is a culture free criterion that can be used the world over? Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars’ remarks on statistics are irrelevant. I knew the book did not contain all the questions (I mention this in my critique), but I would still assume that the questions Trompenaars selected to illustrate a chapter would be the key ones to describe the chapter’s theme. Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars claim Trompenaars used weighted combinations of questions. but I find nothing about this in his book; nor what he used them for, what the weightings were, how they were determined, nor what the weighted scores were for the countries. And please show me which of the conclusions in my critique would have been different using nonparametric scales. The statistical appendix (1) in Trompenaars’ book itself uses parametric scales. like I did. Curiouser and curiouser, Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars do not refer to two journal publications that recently appeared under Trompenaars’ coauthorship: Smith, Trompenaars, and Dugan (1995) and Smith, Dugan, and Trompenaars (1996). These came to my attention when my critique of Trompenaars’ book was already in press; otherwise I would have written a different critique. Peter Smith is a professor of social psychology at the University of Sussex in the U.K.. and Shaun Dugan was his research assistant. Trompenaars has made his entire data base available
290
G. Hofstede
to Smith, who already wrote the draft for the short statistical appendix to Trompenaars’ 1993 book. Smith and Dugan did all the things to Trompenaars’ data which I suggested in my critique: clean the data, perform a multivariate analysis, extract dimensions, compute country scores, and make a start with validating the results against other studies. Using 39 questions from Trompenaars’ questionnaire, they identified three dimensions, of which two could be readily interpreted. Both combine items from several of Trompenaars’ scales, but the first has more items from “achievement” and “universalism” and the second more from “individualism”. Both correlate with my measure of Individualism vs. Collectivism (Smith, Dugan, & Trompenaars, 1996, p. 255). Thus, the conclusions from this article are quite similar to what I found in my quick-and-dirty analysis of data on 17 questions read from Trompenaars’ book, although the grouping of questions, using the full set, has changed somewhat. The one thing that remains for Trompenaars to do is to draw the consequences from the studies he coauthored. The Hampden-Turner response suggests he may not be ready for this yet.
REFERENCES Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International diflbences in wurkrelated values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Hofstede, G. (1984). Culture’s consequences: International d@rences in workrelated values, abridged paperback edition. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software qf the mind. London McGraw Hill. Kim, U., Triandis, H. C., Kagitcibasi, C., Choi, S. C., & Yoon, G. (Eds.) (1994). Indioidualism and collectivism: Theory, method, and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kluckhohn, F. R., & Strodtbeck, F. L. (1961). Variations in ealue orientations. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Robinson, J. P., Rusk, J. G., & Head, K. B. (1968). Measures of political attitudes. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research. Rocher, G. (1974). Talcott Parsons and American sociology. London: Nelson. Smith, P. B., Trompenaars, F., & Dugan, S. (1995). The Rotter locus of control scale in 43 countries: A test of cultural relativity. International Journal of’ Psychology, 30, 377400. Smith, P. B., Dugan, S., & Trompenaars, F. (1996). National culture and the values of organizational employees: A dimensional analysis across 43 nations. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 27, 231-264. Triandis, H. C. (199.5). Inditlidualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Rel. Vol. 21, No. 2. pp. 2X7 ~290. I997 t 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights remved. Printed in Great Britain 0147-1767’97 517.00+0.0(1
Pergamon
PII: SO147-1767(97)00001-l
RIDING THE WAVES: A REJOINDER
GEERT
HOFSTEDE
Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation, and Tilhurg, The Netherlands
Maastricht
Charles Hampden-Turner has rushed to the rescue of Fons Trompenaars from my critique of the latter’s book. Their joint response, however, hardly deals with the points I raised. The essence of my criticism was that Trompenaars’ own database did not support his model; that his seven criteria are conceptual categories in the researcher’s mind, but that his respondents did not show evidence of making similar distinctions in their minds. I also noted that the respondents’ answers were not summarized into country scores on the seven “dimensions”, so it was not clear where a country was supposed to be positioned on each dimension. Finally. no attempts were made to compare Trompenaars’ conclusions to those of other studies, either country-level indicators (like GNP/capita) or results of survey studies (like those of the Eurobarometer). Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars argue that the approach in Trompenaars’ book is okay; it is only different from mine. To this purpose they make statements about what they suppose my viewpoints to be. which makes one wonder how much of my work they really read. They make a straw puppet in order to burn it. For example, a main theme in my books is the cultural relativity of ideas, even scientific theories; I will be about the last person to argue that social science methodology is culture free. I nowhere argue that categories like individualism and collectivism exclude each other at the individual level; I only show that I found empirically at the country level that if a country has more of one, it generally has less of the other. In studying cultural phenomena, I do not believe in “independent” and “dependent” variables; 1 argue for circular causation and feedback loops [such as, in Hofstede (1980, p. 27) or Hofstede (1984, p.22)]. Nor do I see cultures as static, although I do believe they often have very ancient roots which are unlikely to disappear overnight. I do believe. however, in testing my ideas against my observations; if my theory states that something is A but inspection of my data shows it to be B. I believe it is time to revise my theory. Within the national culture shared 287
288
G. Hofstede
by Trompenaars and I, this approach is not a matter of preference: it is a matter of scientific integrity. Hampden-Turners and Trompenaars’ references to IBM and American social scientists are very ill-informed: about the Americans to whom they refer, the origins of my research, and about IBM in the 60s and 70s. The American social science research tradition is predominantly empiricist but precisely the scholars whom Trompenaars cites were exceptions; which is why they stood out as unique, and are still remembered. Talcott Parsons was a staunch theorist who had studied in Europe and rebelled against “the prevailing empiricism of American sociology”; he has been called “the most abstract theorist in contemporary social science” [both quotes are from Rocher (1974, p. l)]. Florence Kluckhohn’s husband Clyde was a member of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University, of which Parsons was Chairman from 1946 to 1956, and as devoted to the development of grand theory as Parsons. F. Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s categories were really developed in a field study of five small communities in the U.S.A.-neither more nor less-just read their book (Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961). Later attempts to equip their theories with a broader empirical underpinning have by my knowledge never been convincing-if anybody wants to show the opposite please give me the references. For an overview of the-mainly American-early literature related to what I called “dimensions of culture”, describing the contributions of these authors and others, see Hofstede (1980, pp. 42-50) abridged in Hofstede (1984, pp. 3437). Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars suggest that I am not sure on the shoulders of which giants I stand. Well, all those giants are referred to there. The IBM material to which I had access during my initial research was very useful-but I only started to take the results seriously after I found them to correlate with the results of other studies [for a summary of all the studies involved see Hofstede (1980, pp. 32633 1) and Hofstede (1984, pp. 2222227)]. Michael Bond later found similar dimensions in two studies of student populations (10 and 23 countries), using quite different questions. Michael Hoppe replicated my results with a population of national elites from 19 countries (Hofstede, 1991, pp. 97, 160-166). So my inputs were in no way restricted by what was in the IBM questionnaire or the IBM population. The history of the collection of the IBM (“Hermes”) survey material has been extensively described in Hofstede (1980, pp. 55-67) abridged in Hofstede (1984, pp. 40-48). I suggest Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars read this. American IBM managers counted for very little in the research initiative, which covered IBM World Trade and surprisingly excluded IBM U.S.A.; the questionnaires for the first international survey were developed by rather rebellious young European social science graduates from inside and outside the company. They did this on the basis of in-
Riding the W’aues: A Rejoindtpr
-‘KY
depth interviews with employees in six countries. Of course where possible we used questions whose viability had been proven by others. Inventories of such questions, with the express purpose of having them reused, were and still are available in the literature (e.g., Robinson, Rusk, & Head, 1968). Using existing questions is not a matter of plagiarizing as long as one acknowledges their source. Plagiarizing, gentlemen, is using the ideas of somebody else without referring to their source. About Individualism-Collectivism: I did not suggest that I introduced this scale to social science, as Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars assert. In my critique I wrote: “The term ‘Individualism vs. Collectivism’ as a cultural qualifier was introduced by the present author”. The distinction existed, but it was applied and measured to describe individuals, and political systems. I found it to be one of four key criteria distinguishing the prevailing mental programming within nations, and presented measurements of national cultures to this purpose, which correlated strongly with a host of other national indicators. In cross-cultural psychology. the introduction of I-C as a (national) cultural qualifier has been heralded as a major breakthrough, and I have been credited for starting it (see Kim, Triandis, Kagitcibasi, Choi, and Yoon (1994). Triandis (1995). and as many journal articles as Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars care to retrieve from the Social Science Citation Index). The purpose of Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars’ section on successful business practice is mysterious. What has this got to do with my critique of Trompenaars’ book? Do they believe that business success is a culture free criterion that can be used the world over? Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars’ remarks on statistics are irrelevant. I knew the book did not contain all the questions (I mention this in my critique), but I would still assume that the questions Trompenaars selected to illustrate a chapter would be the key ones to describe the chapter’s theme. Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars claim Trompenaars used weighted combinations of questions. but I find nothing about this in his book; nor what he used them for, what the weightings were, how they were determined, nor what the weighted scores were for the countries. And please show me which of the conclusions in my critique would have been different using nonparametric scales. The statistical appendix (1) in Trompenaars’ book itself uses parametric scales. like I did. Curiouser and curiouser, Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars do not refer to two journal publications that recently appeared under Trompenaars’ coauthorship: Smith, Trompenaars, and Dugan (1995) and Smith, Dugan, and Trompenaars (1996). These came to my attention when my critique of Trompenaars’ book was already in press; otherwise I would have written a different critique. Peter Smith is a professor of social psychology at the University of Sussex in the U.K.. and Shaun Dugan was his research assistant. Trompenaars has made his entire data base available
290
G. Hofstede
to Smith, who already wrote the draft for the short statistical appendix to Trompenaars’ 1993 book. Smith and Dugan did all the things to Trompenaars’ data which I suggested in my critique: clean the data, perform a multivariate analysis, extract dimensions, compute country scores, and make a start with validating the results against other studies. Using 39 questions from Trompenaars’ questionnaire, they identified three dimensions, of which two could be readily interpreted. Both combine items from several of Trompenaars’ scales, but the first has more items from “achievement” and “universalism” and the second more from “individualism”. Both correlate with my measure of Individualism vs. Collectivism (Smith, Dugan, & Trompenaars, 1996, p. 255). Thus, the conclusions from this article are quite similar to what I found in my quick-and-dirty analysis of data on 17 questions read from Trompenaars’ book, although the grouping of questions, using the full set, has changed somewhat. The one thing that remains for Trompenaars to do is to draw the consequences from the studies he coauthored. The Hampden-Turner response suggests he may not be ready for this yet.
REFERENCES Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International diflbences in wurkrelated values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Hofstede, G. (1984). Culture’s consequences: International d@rences in workrelated values, abridged paperback edition. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software qf the mind. London McGraw Hill. Kim, U., Triandis, H. C., Kagitcibasi, C., Choi, S. C., & Yoon, G. (Eds.) (1994). Indioidualism and collectivism: Theory, method, and application. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kluckhohn, F. R., & Strodtbeck, F. L. (1961). Variations in ealue orientations. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Robinson, J. P., Rusk, J. G., & Head, K. B. (1968). Measures of political attitudes. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research. Rocher, G. (1974). Talcott Parsons and American sociology. London: Nelson. Smith, P. B., Trompenaars, F., & Dugan, S. (1995). The Rotter locus of control scale in 43 countries: A test of cultural relativity. International Journal of’ Psychology, 30, 377400. Smith, P. B., Dugan, S., & Trompenaars, F. (1996). National culture and the values of organizational employees: A dimensional analysis across 43 nations. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 27, 231-264. Triandis, H. C. (199.5). Inditlidualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview.