  |
|
|
|
Power Distance Trade CulturesHigh Status Countries Have Tall Organizational Structures
Malaysia, Guatemala, Panama & Philippines rank as the highest power distance nations while Israel, Denmark, Ireland & Norway prefer flatter organizational power setups.
Based on detailed analyses of international employee values that IBM collected from 1967 to 1973 and subsequent validation studies, Professor Geert Hofstede® has engineered a model with five dimensions that differentiate cultural values and behaviors. These cultural dimensions are key to understanding how to more effectively negotiate international trade deals with people in other countries. Even large multinationals like Starbucks and Wal-Mart make billion dollar trade bloopers when they assume that people in foreign lands will share the same cultural negotiating and decision-making behaviors as in their home country America. Power Distance DefinedOne of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions is called power distance. This dimension measures the extent to which lower-level members of organizations and institutions expect, accept and follow the authority and power that their upper-level leaders hold. Status is a strong determining force in these cultures, with the ruling elite insulated from the masses. In lower power distance societies like Canada and America, lower-level members share in decision-making responsibilities and often call their superiors by their first names – something unheard of in high power distance cultures. Based on Hofstede’s statistics, the world average power distance score is 55 points per country. High Power Distance CountriesSocieties with high power distance scores are more comfortable with taller, centralized organization structures with a large proportion of supervisory employees. Below is a list of countries with the highest power distance scores.
*Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates **Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone Low Power Distance CountriesCultures with low power distance scores prefer flatter, decentralized organizational structures and therefore a smaller proportion of supervisors. The following shows the countries with the lowest power distance scores from Hofstede’s study.
Other Country Power Distance ScoresShown below are the power distance scores for other countries in Professor Hofstede’s study.
*Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia ReferencesThis article presents independent calculations and insights based on geert-hofstede.com and research from International Management, Culture, Strategy and Behavior (6th edition, Hodgetts-Luthans-DOH).
The copyright of the article Power Distance Trade Cultures in International Trade is owned by Daniel Workman. Permission to republish Power Distance Trade Cultures in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
|
|
|
|
