PITFALL 1. how relevant is nationality? Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, Nancy Adler, Strodbeck & Klukhohn… all of them, each in their own way, choose nationality as a determining enough factor of cultural differences. Cultural identity and nationality are thus confused. This is the grounds on which they build their descriptions of the choices, probable behaviors and preferred values of individual members taking part in a company’s corporate life. But why? Even though these authors mean to never stigmatize cultural differences and warn against making absolutes of them, to address the kind of flexibility that is rightly expected from high-flying decision-makers, ever-traveling negotiators or trans-ocean sales representatives, still they seem to encapsulate in the one and only « nationality » all of the individual’s characteristics [1]. Surely they recognize too the existence of other factors – gender, regional (subnational) cultures, religion, industrial branch, position in the hierarchy or role in the company (a chief engineer does not reason like a marketing manager, or has concerns than the head of HR –, which remain secondary on the whole. The “backbone” of their approach really is nationality. But why? Has the nation-state, a form of organization that stabilized in the 19th century, grown so important, has become so inescapable that it shapes the minds of people way beyond any other cultural factor? Why is it that a theory aimed at explaining the behavior of men and women working in an international context, where nationalities mix and merge, where decision-makers tend to be educated in the mold of similar values and common references [2], why is it that a theory aimed at easing the global development of companies seems to be so focused on the national factor?
The authors unanimously chant “it’s all relative” and make an absolute of it, but their position is barely defendable since the so-called statistical tendency is substituted for a behavioral predictability which consists in the “essentialization” of cultural identities [3]. This is not the least of paradoxes, the kind which lingers on from one book to the other, survives the work of one author to swell in greater self-assurance in another’s, passing on this baton of good conscience that they all preach respect and tolerance for one’s “different” interlocutors, whether they be out or inside the company, on the same, higher or lower hierarchical level. But why? Let us see.
On the form. It is well understood that the decision-makers in great multinational corporations need to rely on clear notions which produce immediate effects; similarly, the researchers cannot but decide themselves on some definite answers, may they be temporary, after having indeed acknowledged the infinitely facetted, shimmering reality of “culture”. Certainly, how better can a person of reflection – the researcher – appeal to a person of action – the corporate decision-maker – than by giving their theories a definitive tone? But the fear of not being granted the credit and authority of science does not lift the obligation of intellectual intransigence commanded by the claimed search for exactitude and truthfulness.
On the substance. It is quite interesting to point out this fact: if globalization doesn’t eclipse the national dimension – “globalization” in the sense that companies expand worldwide, i.e. how they take the world into account as their playing field, how this affects their vision, and what consequences this has on our lives – management theories, on the contrary, miss the point by making it exceedingly important. The error comes from a sort of “essentialization”, or “substantialization” of culture. American (of Indian descent) sociologist A. Appadurai warns the reader in his book, “Modernity at Large – Cultural Dimensions of Globalization”: speaking of “culture” is misleading; “culture” covers no tangible reality; used as such the expression is deceptive. A. Appadurai prefers speaking of “cultural phenomena” to not only avoid falling in that trap, but also to produce a discourse adapted to the exigencies of a creative understanding of globalization and its effects on culture, or rather on cultural identity. So, if Hofstede and his disciples have it right in asserting the principle that “in culture, all is relative”, they forget that the notion of culture itself is so relative that it is impalpable, obsessed as they are by this luring notion of national belonging. “Culture” as a thing, even imaginary, is a falsity. Now how to make of it the object of a science?
Don’t get me wrong. The notion of national identity does have some substance to it and may well play a role in the way people behave (or, in the instance of cross-cultural studies, it does to some extent affect the answers of the respondents). Identity, an extremely complex concept [4], comes under the scrutiny of psycho-sociology and anthropology, as much as philosophy, fields of knowledge to which management theories owe much of their work. National belonging shapes collective choices, world views, a sharing of experiences over a long period of time, a preference for certain sets of values rather than others, a fact which it would only be vain to deny, even now in a time of crisis for the traditional idea of the nation-state. The problem rather comes from the degree of importance given to national belonging in the vast number of influencing factors of “the person who I am”. Immigration, already a major fact of today’s and still more so of tomorrow’s world, makes itself visible in many ways: resemblance and attraction with the “origins” in the world’s growing diasporas, infra-national loyalties, multiethnic diversity in most modern nations, the strong appeal of “style” and appearance (as theorized by M. Maffesoli, the French sociologist, inventor of the notion of “modern tribes”), culturally defined communities, extra and transnational consumption habits and reflexes… Choosing the national belonging criterion distorts the understanding of cultural phenomena in a globalizing world by omitting the impact of these other factors and implies, without ever putting it into question, the wrong belief that the national dimension is all-powerful. By restricting oneself to the idea of a statistical tendency, one naturally tends to never consider that an individual MUST belong to his or her country’s average, and denies all too easily the argument of inconsistency whenever the individual’s results lie too far away from the national average: that’s precisely his of her contribution to the national average! But what does that tell me of a national cultural tendency? Shouldn’t this seriously weaken the presupposed correlation between a person’s choices and his or her nationality? The choice to place an individual under a national label, prior to knowing the person’s reactions to the questions, just because s/he belongs to that national group doesn’t strike anybody as shocking: that’s plain common sense. But scientifically speaking, what does that prove?
I will venture here at suggesting a hypothesis: the motive, unfortunately, is not scientific, but financial. The focus on nationality that cross-cultural theories have is a response to the multinational companies’ obsession with nationality. The archenemy of a company’s global development, the greatest hindrance to the accomplishment of a smooth border-free market is… the inherited resistance of the nation-state. Not so much in a political sense, as many governments support the emergence of “national champions” that are in fact global giants, or in admitting to lower trade tariffs, in easing the emergence of international rules under the authority of non-governmental organizations (the WTO), but more so in the psychological sense, as individuals need to surpass their national point of view to help the company achieve its international development. Sociologists, anthropologists, linguists and communications specialists or organizational behavior consultants all have – if they mean to accompany their global clients in the adventure of the globalization of markets – to conform, in order to be duly remunerated for their work, to this premise of basic managerial thought that nations are the greatest obstacle [6].
A. Memmi’s approach to cultural identity is more likely to go along A. Appadurai’s conceptions; even though he is an observer of the impact of colonialism on people’s representations and attitudes, he refers to nationality only in an accessory way. The cultural reality makes sense as long as it remains in the mind’s world of representation – that is, the psychological dimension. Culture, as a phenomenon to describe identity processes, does exist with its causes and effects, but can hardly be measured in a systematic way (which precisely anthropologist E. T. Hall, a predecessor in his own field, keeps from doing [5]). That said, neither Memmi nor Appadurai have ever sought to serve the international strategy of global managers.
On the whole, it does not follow from this that cross-cultural studies are condemned to remain in the vagaries of approximation, the gray area of the undecided. On the contrary, a creative approach for a better understanding of globalization processes, communication and interaction among its actors (inside as well as outside the corporate world of course) is possible, desirable even, in order to surpass the traditional – and fatal – attraction of nationality.
[1] in order to obtain the statistical tendencies associated with each national culture, G. Hofstede questions a group of respondents from the same nationality who inform him with their answers about pre-defined universals (such as one’s relationship to power and hierarchy); then he calculates the average tendency on the basis of all of the answers of that group to rank the country among the other countries’ average; this should allow for objective country-to-country comparison.
[2] 60% of the existing MBA programs throughout the world are non-American, though they all function according to the same American model. The economic or general interest press and media that addresses global managers and decision-makers is predominantly American (for example: The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Fortune, NewsWeek, BusinessWeek…) or British (The Economist, The Financial Times…).
[3] Brendan MacSweeney (University of Essex, RU) formulated an extremely severe criticism of Geert Hofsetede’s stance and method, in Human Relations, pp. 89-118, vol. 55, n° 1, January 2002; the article is also available on Internet: http://geert-hofstede-internatinoal-business-center.com/mcsweeney.shtml
[4] writer Albert Memmi, as well as philosopher Jean-Toussain Desanti, both in their own way, likes speaking better of cultural identity (a subjective notion), rather nationality (an objective notion).
[5] see for example “The Hidden Dimension”, a classic; though culture is the object of anthropological studies (man is a cultural being), Edward T. Hall calls himself “a pioneer” as he aims to make of “culture” (= a paradigm of human communication) an object of science.
[6] what a remarkable irony, that the nations, being allegedly the greatest obstacle to the companies’ development, become at the same time “essentialized” and fixed in their respective characteristics as if they suddenly had become insurmountable!
