National Culture and the Values of Organizational Employees

Abstract

The values of 8,841 managers and organization employees from 43 countries were surveyed. The range of nations included paralleled many of those surveyed by Hofstede (1980) but added also substantial samples from ex-communist nations. Questionnaire items focused primarily on measures of universalism-particularism, achievement-ascription, and individualism-collectivism. Multidimensional scaling of country means revealed three interpretable dimensions. The relation of these dimensions to the results of earlier large-scale surveys and to a variety of demographic indexes is explored. It is found that there are continuing substantial differences in modal cultural values of organization employees and that these are largely consistent with differences reported by others. The present results suggest that the dimensions defined by Hofstede as individualism-collectivism and power distance may be better defined as representing varying orientations toward continuity of group membership (loyal involvement/ utilitarian involvement) and varying orientations toward the obligations of social relationship (conservatism/egalitarian commitment).