Laurent Cult Nat Cult Org

Jnt. Studies of Man.

76 Andre Laurent (France)

of the holy principle of the single chain of command and themanagers' recognition that this was a strong element of theirown belief system rather than a constant element in nature.

Every manager has his own management theory, his own setof representations and preferences that in some way guide hispotential behavior in organizations; and it is critical for man-agers, management researchers, and educators to identify andunderstand these implicit theories of management better. Thisconviction that every manager has his own management gospelprovided the initial ground for the research reported here, r e -search that was not originally designed to be comparative.

In order to elicit managers' implicit theories of management,I had developed a questionnaire proposing 56 different state-ments about the management of organizations. A five-pointopinion scale was attached to each statement to record the r e -spondent's degree of agreement or disagreement with thosestatements. Owing to the bilingual setting in which the surveywas to be.administered, the questionnaire was developed inboth English and French simultaneously rather than formallytranslated from one language into the other. A great deal ofcare was taken to avoid words, expressions, or sentence con-structions that could not communicate fairly equivalent mean-ing in both languages.

The questionnaire was initially administered to a group of60 upper-middle-level managers from various companies at-tending an executive development program at INSEAD, a Euro-pean management institute located in France. This first groupwas composed of 40 French managers and 20 managers fromseveral-other European countries.

The original idea was simply to use the recorded opinionsof the managers as an input in the pedagogical process. Theobjective was to explore and discuss the participants' implicit^theories of management.

Since I was aware of the work conducted by my colleagueGeert Hofstede, who was, at the time, analyzing his bank ofcomparative sxirvey data from the Hermes multinational cor-poration (Hofstede, 1980a), I decided to compare the results

Diversity in Concepts of Management 77

of the group of 40 French managers with those of the 20 non-French managers. The differences in opinion between thesetwo ad hoc cultural groups appeared to be so. great on so manyitems of the questionnaire that they could not be ignored.

These results led to the mainworkinghypothesisof this sub-sequent research study, namely, that the national origin ofEuropean managers significantly affects their views of whatproper management should be. National culture seems to actas a strong determinant of managerial ideolog>'. The objectiveof the research thus became to assess and identify some of thenational differences in concepts of management.

Research Methodology

The 56-item Management Questionnaire was systematicallyadministered to groups of upper-middle-level managers at-tending the various INSEAD executive development programsbetween 1977 and 1979. The managers came from a large num-ber of different enterprises and from a variety of Westerncountries. So as not to influence the responses, the data werealways collected before beginning a program. Most of thequestionnaires were administered in their English version torespondents of all nationalities, all of whom were fluent inEnglish. For a few French-speaking programs, the Frenchversion was used.

The first part of this report summarizes the results ob-tained with 817 respondents from 10 Western countries (9European countries and the United States). National samplesize varies from a low of 32 for Italy to a high of 219 for France. Within each national sample there is some variancein terms of function, educational background, age, types ofcompanies, etc. The only common characteristic of the re-spondents is their participation in management-education pro-grams attracting upper-middle-level managers from a large^number of business firms^ The data-collection strategy wasdesigned to randomize, as much as possible, all variables ex-cept nationality. Attempts at controlling other sources of vari-


ance in the data are presented in the second part of this report.Statistical analysis of the data was performed by computing

"ecological" correlations among country mean scores acrossthe 56 items. This approach of ecological factor analysis,which has been used and advocated by Hofstede (1980a, Chap, 2),considers the group national culture, in the present case as the unit of analysis. Thus, correlations are run among coun-try scores, not individual scores, in an attempt to identifygroups of questions in which the distribution of scores for thevarious countries shows similar patterns from low to highagreement across the clustered questions. These groups ofquestions or indices suggest factors or dimensions that maymeaningfully differentiate national cultures in terms of theirmanagerial ideologies.

Four indices or dimensions emerged from the statisticalanalysis. Three of them cluster three questions each; one ofthem clusters four questions. The four dimensions have beenlabeled: organizations as political systems (Table 1), organi-zations as authority systems (Table 2), organizations as role-formalizatioh systems (Table 3), and organizations as hier-archical-relationship systems (Table 4), Ecological correla-tions among country mean scores computed across the 56items and leading toward the selection of these four dimen-sions are presented in Table 5,

The four dimensions or indices do not pretend to be exhaus-tive. They have been selected strictly on the basis of the highlevel of statistical association among countries, the number of items they cluster, and the conceptual meaning of the clus-tered items.

The indices represent attempts to capture a structure ofcollective managerial ideologies that meaningfully differen-tiates national cultures. They do not account for individual ways of thinking within a given culture. Indeed, whereas cor-relations among country scores are very high across the clus-tered items within a given index, correlations among individualscores for a given country within the same index have provedto be remarkably low, (1) Once again, the purpose here is not


to analyze the structure of individual opinions, but to comparecountries.

Although statistical analysis was performed initially on coun-try mean scores from five-point opinion scales, the resultsare presented here in terms of percent average agreementscores ("strongly agree" and "tend to agree" responses) andpercent average disagreement scores ("strongly disagree" and"tend to disagree" responses) for ease of reading and interpre-tation. Each table thus presents the percentage of managersagreeing or disagreeing with each statement and their percentaverage score across the clustered questions (last row of thetable) for each country. This last measure indicates the coun-try score or position on the index. In each table, countriesare ordered from left to right according to their increasingdegree of identification with the measured dimension.

Results

Organizations as Political Systems (Table 1)

The dimension "organizations as political systems" clustersthree items dealing, respectively, with the political role playedby managers in society (item No. 40), their perception of powermotivation within the organization (item No. 49), and an assess-ment of the degree to which organizational structures areclearly defined in the minds of the individuals involved (itemNo. 33). In countries such as France and Italy, where manag-ers report a stronger perception of their political role in so-ciety, they also emphasize the importance of power motivationwithin the organization and report a fairly hazy notion of or-ganizational structure. Danish and British managers, on theother hand, express a significantly lower political orientation,both within and outside the organization, and a clearer notionof organizational structure.

These results may provide some insight into the extent towhich managers from different countries tend to interprettheir organizational experience in power terms. Clearly, the

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political orientation of Italian (index score 66) and French man-agers (index score 62) appears much stronger than the politicalorientation of Danish (index score 26) and British managers(index score 32). Furthermore, these findings indicate an in-teresting association at the country level between a lower in-clination toward political behavior and a greater perceivedclarity of structure (in Denmark and Great Britain) versus agreater inclination toward political behavior and a greater per-ceived haziness of structure (in Italy and France).

I should like to suggest at this point that it may not be by ac-cident that the contrasting results demonstrated by the Britishand the French managers seem to parallel to a considerableextent the contrasting perspectives on organizations taken adecade ago by mainstream schools of organizational sociologyon each side of the Channel. While the British Aston Schoolresearchers were conducting their rational analyses of struc-tural characteristics of organizations, French sociologistswere describing organizations as sets of games and powerstrategies played by actors seeking to maintain some uncer-tainty around their function so as to play even more powergames. Organizations were certainly perceived and definedfar more as political systems by the latter than by the former.Thus, cultural differentiation may affect not only managers'implicit concepts of organizations but also researchers' ex-plicit theories. Organization and management theory may beas much culturally bounded as the actual processes of organiz-ing and managing (Brossard and Maurice, 1974; Derossi, 1978;Hofstede, 1980b, 1981).

In summary, this index suggests some important effects onorganizational behavior of cultural differences in the politicaloutlook of managers in neighboring Western countries.

Organizations as Authority Systems (Table 2)

"Organizations as authority systems" groups three ques-tions dealing with a conception of hierarchical structure asbeing designed to specify authority relationships (item No. 14),

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a perception of authority crisis in organizations (item No. 52),and an image of the manager as a negotiator (item No. 43). Itdifferentiates three country clusters of managers' perceptionof organizations as authority systems. Latin countries suchas Belgium, Italy, and France, at the upper end of the con-tinuum (index score 61 to 65), present a sharp contrast to coun-tries such as the United States, Switzerland, and Germany atthe lower end (index score 30 to 34), and the remaining fourcountries fall in the middle (index score 46 to 49).

The belief that "The main reason for having a hierarchicalstructure is so that everyone knows who has authority overwhom" is associated across countries with the perception that"Today there seems to be an authority crisis in organizations"'and the expectation that "The manager of tomorrow will be, inthe main, a negotiator." However, national culture stronglyaffects the popularity of such conceptions. For instance, or-ganizations are seen significantly more frequently as authoritysystems by French managers (65 percent average agreementrate across items) than by American managers (30 percentaverage agreement rate).

French, Italian, and Belgian managers report a more per-sonal and social concept of authority that regulates relation-ships among individuals in organizations. American, Swiss,and German managers seem to report a more rational and in-strumental view of authority that regulates interaction amongtasks or functions. For the former, authority appears to bemore a property of the individual; for the latter, it appears tobe more an attribute of the role or function.

This index reveals important national variations in man-agers' views of authority in organizations that are likely toinfluence their behavior.

Organizations as Role-Fornialization Systems (Table 3)

The three items clustered in "organizations as role-formali-zation systems" all focus on the relative importance of defin-ing and specifying the functions and roles of organizational

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Diversitj- in Concepts of Management 85members. 'They stress the values of clarity and efficiencythat can be obtained by implementing such organizational de-vices as detailed job descriptions, well-defined functions, andprecisely defined roles. Here the results seem essentially toindicate a relatively lower insistence on the need for roleformalization in Sweden, the United States, and the Netherlands(index score 57 to 67) than in the remaining seven countries(index score 80 to 85).

Hence, there may be national variations in the degree offormalization, often considered an important structural char-acteristic of organizations, that is judged desirable.

Organizations as Hierarchical-Relationship Systems (Table 4)

The last index, "organizations as hierarchical-relationshipsystems," which groups four questions, shows sharp differ-ences in management attitudes toward organizational relation-ships as one moves from Northern Europe and the United Stateson the lower end of the continuum to the Latin countries ofEurope on the higher end.

Across countries, the dream of eliminating conflict from or-ganizations is associated with the belief that a manager shoulddefinitely know more than his subordinates and that organiza-tions should not be upset by such practices as bypassing orhaving to report to two bosses.

As suggested elsewhere (Laurent, 1981), an index such asthis one can provide some assessment of the feasibility of neworganizational arrangements such as the matrix structure that deviate from more classic hierarchical forms. Indeed,in matrix-type organizations, as opposed to more classic hier-archies, potential conflicts of interest about resources tend tosurface more, bosses can no longer pretend to have answersto most of their subordinates' questions, bypassing of authoritylines becomes more of a way of life, and, obviously, some man-agers have to report to two or more bosses.

Thus, the contrasting results obtained from Swedish man-agers (index score 25) and Italian managers (index score 66)

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Table 5

Ecological Correlations*

Items4049

Index I(politics)

490.73

Index III

33-0.85-0.89

(formalization)Items

113

130.95

38-0.91-0.83

Index II(authority)

Items1452

Items1924

2

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Index IV(hierarchy)

24 2 80.88 -0.90 0.82

-0.87 0.80-0.64

*Pearson r among country mean scores. Coun-try mean scores per item were computed for eachof the ten national samples on the basis of the man-agers' responses to the five-point opinion scale at-tached to every questionnaire item.

suggest that matrix-type organizational arrangements mighthave better prospects in Sweden than in Italy. National varia-tions in conceiving organizations as hierarchical relationshipsystems may affect the structuring of organizations in differentcountries and have implications for the transfer of organiza-tional forms across cultures.

Limitations of the Findings

The four dimensions reported above that seem to differen-tiate national cultures in terms of their managerial ideologiesrepresent one attempt at mapping some of the cultural differ-ences in concepts of management and organization within theWestern world. Looking at organizations as symbolic systems


of social representation, this research elicits findings that em-phasize the need to recognize and identify cultural specificityas a critical element in the texture of organizations. Further-more, the reported cultural diversity poses significant chal-lenges for both management theory and practice and seriouslyquestions claims of universality in both.

These findings have important limitations, however.'. First, they reflect the limitations of the questionnaire itself.Another researcher with different interests would have deviseddifferent questions and would have obtained other dimensionsof differentiation among cultures.

Second, these findings probably reflect the French culturalidentity of the author through the questions he thought of andincluded in the list in the first place. Indeed, it may not be ac-cidental that whereas the positions of other countries tend tovary from index to index, the position of the Latin countries,including France, is on the high-score side on all four indices.Thus, the research findings indicate that French managers,more than managers from non-Latin countries, tend to vieworganizations as political, authority, role-formalization, and hierarchical-relationship systems.

From this perspective, the findings provide clearer indica-tions about Latin countries such as France than about othersin the sample. They reveal the widest gap in conceptions ofmanagement between the Latin cluster (France, Belgium, Italy)and the Nordic cluster of America and Europe (United Statesand Sweden). Would a British questionnaire designer have -eli-cited dimensions illustrating the same gap? Even though Hof-stede's work (1980a) partly eliminates such questions by inter-correlating the results of various independent comparativestudies, and in spite of attempts by multicultural teams of r e -searchers to design research tools jointly, the methodologicalchallenge persists.

A third limitation of the findings stems from the limitednumber of countries represented in the sample. Similar datasubsequently collected from Japan and Indonesia do indicatethe Western bias of some of the dimensions. For instance.


Japanese managers obtain both high and low scores on ques;-tionnaire items regrouped in the same Western index, thuschallenging the validity of the ecological factor. The validityof the four dimensions is therefore restricted to the ten West-ern countries represented in the initial sample.

Finally, one may seriously wonder whether the ad hoc sam-pling method of surveying relatively small groups of managersattending executive development programs at INSEAD is validfor making inferences about national cultures. Since .legitimatequestions could be raised concerning the representativenessof the population surveyed in the initial study, several subse-quent studies were conducted to assess the validity of the pre-liminary results.

Replications of the Study

A partial replication of the original survey was initially ob-tained by administering the same Management Questionnaireto a much younger population of British and French MBA stu-dents at INSEAD. The results, reported elsewhere (Laurent,1981), confirmed, on a preliminary index, the differences ob-served between British and French experienced managers.

Another partial replication was performed with a group of55 French MBA students from ISA, a French business school.Their index scores are reported in Table 6, along with the in-dex scores of the experienced French managers from the ini-tial survey. The scores of these French MBA students runparallel to the scores of the experienced French managers,with a tendency toward perceiving organizations even more asrole-formalization and hierarchical-relationship systems thanthe managers.

Fuller replication was then obtained in two, large, U.S.-based, multinational companies. Since the initial results hadbeen obtained from ad hoc samples of managers in executiveprograms, the question arose of whether similar differencesin management and organizational concepts would persist with-in the potentially homogenizing, corporate culture of a single


Table 6

Index Scores of French MBA Studentsand French Experienced Managers

Subjects55 French

MBA students(ISA)

219 Frenchexperiencedmanagers(INSEAD)

Index I(politics)

61

62

Index II(authority)

64

65

Index III(formali-

zation)

90

81

Index IV(hierarchy)

66

50

multinational company, or whether the multinational culture wouldbe sufficiently strong and pervasive to swamp national differences.

National versus Multinational Cultures

The MNC-A Study

In order to test the above hypothesis, carefully matched na-tional samples of managers were selected from a large, U.S.-based, multinational, chemical firm (MNC-A) with subsidiariesin France, Germany, and Great Britain. Every attempt wasmade through sampling to control for all conceivable sourcesof variance other than nationality. A description of samplecharacteristics is presented in Table 7.

Index scores are reported for the three national groups inTable 8, along with the index scores obtained by the ad hocINSEAD national samples from the original study. Althougha few variations perhaps due to corporate culture did ap-pear, the results clearly indicated the consistent and pervasive


Table 7

MNC-A Study Survey Sample Characteristics

Characteristics France488042

Germany399143

GreatBritain

569740

Sample sizePercentage of response rateAverage ageAverage number of years of

work experience 17 18 18Average number of years of

service with company 15 15 14Average number of years

lived abroad 2.5 1 1.5Percentage of respondents work-

ing in prunarily_line_osition^ 70 65 59Percentage of respondents work-

ing in prijnarUy_staff_^oition 30 35 41Percentage of respondents with

higher education at universitylevel 91 81 85

Percentage of respondents withmajor professional experiencein technical fields (production,engineering, maintenance, etc.) 60 58 59

Percentage of respondents withmajor professional experiencein marketing 18 25 23

Percentage of respondents withmajor professional experiencein administration 22 17 18

effects of national cultures for the three countries involved.The average distance among the three countries' scores acrossthe four indices remained essentially the same (INSEAD sam-ple = 13.3; MNC-A sample = 13.0), as did the average range

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