PITFALL 2. the Anglo-Saxon prevalence. If national character had absolutely no importance, I would not be writing this paragraph. The “Anglo-Saxon prevalence” in management theories is to be understood as a result or a symptom of the pre-1945 economic dominance of Great Britain, relayed by that of the USA after 1945. As a simple fact, that is not problematic; the problem comes with those (management teachers, consultants) pretending to defend, in order to ensure long-lasting business relationships, mutual understanding in the name of a presumed equality of all cultures.
I suspect that some theories are inescapably the products of the culture where they stem from. So this article itself, being the point of view of a French-educated author, might well be the very example of what I mean to criticize in others. What remains however is that the Anglo-Saxon prevalence in management theories implies some views which are typical of some Anglo-Saxon cultural biases and which are therefore worth pointing to.
Two examples: first, in the light of a comparison between sociologist and cross-cultural management specialist G. Hofstede and French demographer and historian E. Todd, one understands that the terms “particularism” and “universalism” can be reversed in their respective meanings. For Todd, “universalism” is a quality that applies to cultures that are correspondingly described by Hofstede (Dutch) [1] as “particularist”. If, from one author to the other, the notions do not cover exactly the same realities, still the cultural bias appears clearly when applied consistently to the same cultural areas, i.e. North America and northern Europe and South America and southern Europe. The Latin cultures, heirs to the legacy of the Roman empire, are “universalist”, in Todd’s sense, as they do not conceive differences as being essential – that is, in the nature of men stemming from another group than mine. For Todd, the cultures of northern Europe (the Netherlands is a special case), including the UK and its cultural avatars (the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand… which the French call the “Anglo-Saxons”) correspond to the “essentialist” tendency, thus meaning that they believe in the essentiality of differences among peoples. This is how Todd explains that as Latin countries, Mexico and Brazil for example let their “minorities” (yet not considered as such) mix, whereas the “Anglo-Saxons” practice a communitarian sort of integration and see inter-racial mixing reluctantly [2]. The perspective changes completely with Hofstede, whose theses were influential in the managerial literature for some time at least [3] and had a determining impact (even among French management theorists). Brazil and Mexico are described by him as “particularist”, whereas northern European and Anglo-Saxon cultures are qualified as “universalist”. While the two theorists’ respective notions do not match absolutely, they nonetheless are the vehicles of value judgment. People from a “universalist” culture, in Hofstede’s word, express a preference for the FUNCTION over the PERSON (tasks come before relationships, which allows them to deal with an interlocutor independently of personal or affective attachment) and people from a “particularist” culture are generally more traditionalist, more distrustful or fearful of anything new or different, less keen to change, whereas these are precisely the “universalist” people in Todd’s word, who means by this that they are more indifferent to visible markers of difference in their social INTEGRATION systems.
The reason why this hypothesis, that national belonging plays a major role in determining cultural behavior, is so successful not only comes from the fact that it flatters common sense, but also because it seems to be quite operational. In management, the preference given to what works over what is true is more than an imperative in the profession; it also is well a characteristic – isn’t it? – of the Anglo-Saxon culture of pragmatism [4]. Favoring Efficiency over Truth, however, is quite normal for decision-makers. Cross-cultural management theories are as much instrumental to their practical successes as a source of revenue for their inventors. If one leaves the field of purely academic sociological research to enter into the service of the corporate interest, the ultimate goal shifts from Truth to economic success [5]. Can profit serve as the measure of a discourse bound to remain scientific in nature? The outcome of this is two orientations: a reverence for the values of the corporate world whenever the theorist has declared his allegiance to business, and therefore a marked preference for cultures that facilitate economic success – or even where economic success in itself is a value. It appears quite obviously, especially with G. Hofstede and F. Trompenaars, despite all the relativist precautions and the contention that there can be given no absolute and no final recipe – in fact, maybe that is all the more convincing –, that the most successful countries, economically speaking, are generally individualist rather than collectivist, universalist rather than particularist and, in the end, more likely to be “occidental”, or more western than eastern, more northern than southern. One cannot contest a mere fact, but our concern is the contained danger in a discourse that combines the ambition to rely on neutral “universals” [6] and claims that there are no absolutes, that no system is better than any other, on the one hand, and draws the attention on the correlation between some cultural traits and economic success. Of course, these authors keep insisting that there is room for learning from each other, and that cultures are adaptive, not immutable entities. G. Hofstede himself raises the question very pointedly: it is not possible to determine which of the two, between economic performance and culture, is the cause or the consequence of the other. The only established fact is that economic wealth seems to go along with the individualist tendency. Individualism is not a rule of human societies, more so an exception – but an exception whose occurrence increases as the wealth of nations grows [7].
There is another way to explain the “Anglo-Saxon” prevalence in these theories [8]. Here is where it comes from: global companies think in global terms as they try to make come true the ideal of a unified world market to allow the circulation of their slogans, ad campaigns and goods, whereas the reality of cultural differences that they observe on the field constitute, in their view, an obstruction to the easy flow of their goods and hence their cost-effective production and distribution. To do so, they have found ways to deal with differences that stand in contrast with the former views as defined in the mid-20th century. For over 15 years now, companies with an international dimension have attempted to incorporate the notion of difference in their strategies; they have done so in accordance with the growing influence of multiculturalism as an integration system in Anglo-Saxon societies [9] and which is still foreign to the French “ideology” of republican unitarianism (or anti-communitarianism). In contrast, multiculturalism, as an expression of left-wing North American humanism, promotes not only the respect of all differences, but considers Difference a supreme good in itself, a treasure that every organization must welcome, nurture and develop. However improbable the alliance of global capitalism with left-wing ideas may seem, the integration of difference in the normal functioning of the company appears today as a necessary ingredient in the modern recipe for success. To such an extreme that the term “glocal”, a contraction of the famous slogan “think global, act local”, operates as an imperative in many business-oriented English-language articles and henceforth prescribes the way to the best strategy. In the wake of such a movement, companies go through considerable changes by opting for an “organic” type of organization to the detriment of the “mechanistic” model. IBM’s structure, after a long crisis ended with the world-famous turnaround book “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance” (Louis V. Gerstner – head of worldwide giant GE Jack Welch, in comparably troubled times, has also made himself known for similar ideas), has become a state-of-the-art model for the matrix organization (small interdependent units), thus showing how to draw the most advantage from cutting down the number of layers in the hierarchy, knocking down the walls between departments, allowing more transparency, creativity and “synergy”… so that all competences, all differences are decompartmentalized and can express themselves (and increase the adaptation capacity of the company to an ever-changing environment).
The modern recipe for success therefore contains no objective solution, and is no savor-free, odorless scientific tool that anyone can universally, neutrally apply. On the contrary, it well is ideologically marked. Whether that tool be “Anglo-Saxon” cannot in itself be a problem, especially when it consists for itself in an attempt to overcome its own belief in the possibility of a purely tool-like, functional universality. The mistake comes with the illusion or the omission that the model is not culture-free and hence should not be blindly applied or taught in all of the MBAs in the world as if it were without cultural side-effects or consequences. Such a mistake, neither profit nor economic performance can measure it – because neither of them tells me anything about the unconscious of cultural theories, i.e. the Anglo-Saxon prevalence.
[1] I reckon this is a major flaw in my reasoning. The representatives of the “Anglo-Saxon prevalence” here are not “Anglo-Saxon” – they both are Dutch – in fact, Trompenaars being Dutch by his father and French by his mother. Either the term “Anglo-Saxon” is plainly inappropriate or I should refer to the broader notion of “Linear Actives”, a notion later discovered in the powerful books of (British!) author Richard D. Lewis, and which refers to mainly the Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, Dutch and Germans. I will here not deny that Todd himself could be said to suffer from cultural bias too – but that is my point: cultural theories are not exempt of cultural bias. That is all the more problematic when these theories are “prevailing”.
[2] “racial” is a term that was banished from the French language after the publication of Claude Lévi-Strauss’ “Race et Histoire”. Here, we also want to notice that Todd is not without cultural bias – but that bias precisely sets the relativity of cultural theories forward.
[3] his disciple and critic, Fons Trompenaars, is more nuanced and yet he uses the exact same notions as his predecessor. In Hofstede’s 5-dimensions system, “universalism” and “particularism” are subcategories of the dimension “individualist-collectivist”, whereas in Trompenaars’ 7-dimensions system, they are the two ends of a dimension.
[4] here, both Todd and Hofstede tend to “essentialize” the cultural characteristics of cultural groups – the Latin, the Anglo-Saxons, etc. So I am referring to the Anglo-Saxon preference for pragmatism – well, ain’t I “essentializing” too?
[5] I am not unaware that “the purely academic field of sociological research” is quite a naïve projection of reality; no human work, especially led within the instances of a highly organized and ritualized context such as the University is immune to subjectivity, competition, personal interest, etc. I would however like to draw the attention of reader on the importance of context, in any case, in which research – be it for academic reasons or for the “corporate interest” impacts on the nature of the findings. Also, I reckon that denying the possibility that economic success might be a good test of the truthfulness of a theory’s findings – but not only it is not necessarily enough, but also economic success is not a “scientific” guarantee of truthfulness!
[6] by this we mean elements by which cross-cultural comparison is possible. The universal of TIME is present in all cultures for example, but each has a specific way to experience and represent it.
[7] it is very tempting here to quote Adam Smith’s individualist equation: the sum of individual interests is the general interest. Smith’s position as a moralist, rather than an economist, is all the more meaningful here, as if his book “The Wealth of Nations” was a double prescription: be individualist, and be rich (for your nation’s GOOD, which, I reckon, is not necessarily equivalent to being RICH)!
Another remark can be made here to further the discussion: the sort of capitalism, as practiced in its Asian versions (Japanese, Chinese for example), certainly appears as a challenge to the preconceived idea that Western cultures possess the key to economic success but also an occasion to renovate the options made available to companies greedy of new solutions. If one considers capitalism as a pure instrument allowing the production and distribution of riches, it is not inconceivable to think of any culture as being capable of adopting it; one could even go as far as to think that every culture has it in its heart to find the necessary resources to appropriate it, to produce its own version of it, without needing to import whatever Western precept to make it a successful socio-economic organization system. Finally, it can be said of the Western economic success that it is not owed to a fundamental difference but that it can be, preferably, attributed to Britain’s, its European neighbors’ and colonial avatars’ (Canada, the US…) historical advance which, once cemented, ensures them an unassailable position in the world division of labor.
[8] I must once more hand it to the vigilant reader that the expression “Anglo-Saxon prevalence” is criticisable; the term “Anglo-Saxon” could well reveal in me a dubious, partial orientation; as for the “prevalence”, the term suggests a subjective measure of an allegedly “too Anglo-Saxon” coloration or even a usurped status of the Anglo-Saxon culture by secretly dispensing Anglo-Saxon values in cross-cultural management theories… which could legitimately be deemed expressive of a value judgment on my part which disqualifies its object before giving it fair consideration. Maybe I shouldn’t write this… but that certainly shows how personal implication and point of view in cultural matters cannot easily be shrugged off; and that is my point, after all.
[9] theorized in Canada by Charles Taylor and referred to by many organizations in North America, “multiculturalism” is not incompatible with the pervading individualism in these societies. In a way, one could say it is a regulator and moderator of the strong individualism in North America; in countries as vast as Canada or the USA, the « community » one identifies with within the mainstream society is a traditional intermediary of the individual’s integration in the greater nation and hence plays as a ferment of national identity, that anyone can experience through the physical reality of the “community”.
