First, there is a sociological and anthropological discussion of the notion of culture

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IIM/LMP 83 - 29

Culture’s Consequences for Management and Organization

Arndt Sorge

November 1983

To appear in: C.K. Elliott and P.L. Lawrence (Eds.), Introducing Management. Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1984. I wish to thank Peter Lawrence, Fritz W. Scharpf, Wolfgang Streeck and Paul Windolf for comments on the draft of this paper.

ISSN Nr. O722-673X

Platz der Luftbrücke 1 - 3 1000 Berlin 42

(030) 69041 Telefon

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ably between Germany and Great Britain. First, there is a sociological and anthropological discussion of the notion of culture. The relevance of this concept is then discussed in a fictional comparison of managerial constraints and choices in the two countries mentioned. Theoretical and research ap

proaches for the study of cultural differences are described;

their links, relative advantages and draw-backs are analysed.

Finally, seme orientations for managerial practice are derived from cross-cultural comparisons. - The paper is based on

comparative "research about manpower organisation, vocational training and internal labour markets which the author has been engaged in.

Zusammenfassung

Der Aufsatz soll eine einfache Darstellung der Verbindung

zwischen Kultur, Leitungstätigkeiten und Organisation liefern.

Dies geschieht durch eine theoretische Analyse des Themas und eine illustrierende Darstellung von Forschungsergebnissen zu Unterschieden zwischen Nationen, besonders zwischen Deutsch

land und Großbritannien. Zunächst wird der Begriff der Kultur soziologisch und anthropologisch diskutiert. Die Bedeutung dieses Konzeptes wird dann anhand einer erfundenen Geschichte über Zwänge und Möglichkeiten der Leitungstätigkeit in den beiden Ländern diskutiert. Theoretische und Forschungsansätze zur Unterschuchung kultureller Unterschiede werden beschrie

ben; ihre Verbindungen, relative Vorteile und Nachteile werden analysiert. Zum Schluß werden einige Hinweise für die Aus

richtung der Leitungspraxis aus interkulturellen Vergleichen hergeleitet. Der Aufsatz beruht auf den vergleichenden For

schungen des Autors über Arbeitsorganisation, Berufsbildung und interne Arbeitsmärkte.

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Introduction

Most people do not think of management when they hear the word

"culture". They would think of operas, the theatre, museums, art, language and parts of scientific or scholarly work. The notion of culture seems to fit the liberal education of a

gentleman rather than the down-to-earth, hard-nosed and efficency- minded concerns of management. A complication is added by the

fact that prevalent notions of culture are ambiguous and different from each other. It is therefore necessary, first, to clarify

the meaning of culture. This will be done, in the first section of this paper, on "what culture is all about". The relevance of this concept for management is then shown, in a section entitled

"the predicament of production manager Baker". This illustrates a theoretical concept in concrete terms, by analysing the cul

tural significance of an everyday activity of an ordinary manger.

The cultural significance of management can be seen to take

effect under two different thematic headings. One is "institutions"

and the other "values and preferences”. These are the headings of subsequent sections. They serve to show some selected cultural

differences and their links with managerial behaviour and structure, as reflected by research findings and their theoretical inter

pretations. A final section then deals with "culture's lessons";

it is suggested that the insight into culture's consequences is not a purely academic achievement but holds practical lessons for

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practising managers, particularly by giving him a firmer and more independent orientation within the jungle of management

theories and concepts.

What culture is all about

The word is derived from the Latin colere = to plant, grow. Its roots are thus in agriculture, but it has come to denote a much larger area of phenomena increasingly removed from planting and growing. But the roots of the word are suggestive in a more ab

stract way. It is helpful to remember the following shades of meaning:

(1) It implies a manipulative interference with nature; human skills are brought to bear on natural objects which can only be partly influenced, and they are "cultivated" in the pro

cess, at the same time of "cultivating" the object of a work process. There is thus interaction between human beings and the objects with which they are concerned in work processes:

Man cultivates his skills whilst cultivating plants and other objects.

(2) On the one hand, nature is partly controlled, shaped, changed or, in the extreme, suppressed or substituted by cultural activity. Culture brings about artificial arrangements which would otherwise not have been found in nature, at least not

in the same place or pattern.

(3) On the other hand, there are limits to the manipulation of the environment. These are set since outcomes are beyond hu

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man control collectively or individually, because of com

plexity, levels of available skills and knowledge, or social customs, norms and taboos.

We thus find a dialectic interplay of artifacts and nature, which not only brings about conflict between them, but also an inter

penetration by which people try to assimilate them. In most of cen

tral Europe, what we call nature consists of plants which were planted or "allowed" to grow. Artifacts are, on the other hand, particularly appreciated for being "natural" or-blending into

"natural" arrangements. This goes for houses, gardens, social

norms of behaviour as well as modes of thinking. Such a conception of culture as distinct from nature, with their manifold inter

penetrations, implies a wide definition. This follows from a particular anthropological approach which can only be summarised here. The analysis follows Berger and Luckmann (1971: 63 - 99). As a species, man is particularly undetermined by naturally in

herited instincts and schematic forms of behaviour. Instincts are not absent or weak, but they hardly give clear impulses to behaviour. At the time of birth, man is particularly dependent on physical and social nurture for a long time, by comparison with other species. Forms of behaviour and thinking are slowly

learnt. In the course of this, man receives a behavioural re

pertoire from his intimate and wider social environment. This is not transmitted in a mechanical way, like moulding a tinplate into the designed shape by a press. Instead, man cultivates his repertoire in an active way. He is presented with stimuli by

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his environment, and he grapples with them, learning their meaning but also modifying it step by step. Such stimuli may be toys, other physical artifacts, cuddling, inducement to do somethink, reprimands, pictures, stories, and forms of behaviour perceived at random.

People experience different stimuli according to the social collectivity they live in. Such collectivities may be families, parts of town, ethnic groups, linguistic groups, school forms, play groups, factory or office workforces, regional populations or nations. All these collectivities cultivate particular be

havioural repertoires and modes of thinking. This cultivation happens through day-to-day practice: Individuals pragmatically acquire the meaning of stimuli, modify their meaning and trans

mit it to others. As they grow up, they select stimuli to which they want to be exposed actively, rather than waiting for them to occur. Hence, the repertoire is constantly in flux in two senses: It is transmitted, from one individual to another, and it slowly changes and evolves in the course of transmission.

This implies active experimentation and modification rather than passive absorption or replication.

Man thus receives, modifies and transmits a broad range of artifacts, all of which form the cultural heritage in constant transition. This is basically the Marxian concept of man as the species which is most distinctive for the transformation of its natural and cultural environment through work, and

which is caught in a historically dialectic process of stability

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and change: Man strives to survive in a hazardous environment by mediating his contact with nature through the development and use of more and more, increasingly sophisticated, technical tools, lodgings, forms of communication and transport - a vast range of physical artifacts. Human behaviour is both stimulated and stabilised by social institutions, which have a similar function as tools, machines, etc. on the technical side of

collectivities. Institutions are not just what everyday language means by them; they are more thdn the Royal Lifeboat Insti

tution or the Lord Mayor's Banquet. "Institutionalization occurs when ever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualised actions by types of actors" (Berger and Luckmann, 1971: 72).

This means that through social interaction, humans habitualise behavioural and symbolic patterns and give them a typical pro

file and meaning which makes them visible, adoptable and legi

timate - or illegitimate! - to the members of a collectivity.

Institutionalised patterns are thus accepted, used, and rejected as well, above and beyond narrow, well-defined factual- purposes.

Their institional quality lies in their degree of relative functional autonomy against such narrow factual purposes. Al

though we are drawing the circle of institutions much wider than the Lord Mayor's Banquet, they are thus very similar to it, in this respect.

This is a very important point to remember: technical and so

cial artifacts are cultural in character because they are cultivated as objects which are to a large extent independent

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of known and immediately visible purposes and reasons. This is not to say that institutions are largely irrational. In prin

ciple »the existence of such patterns is a functional necessity for human existence and, particularly, social coherence. More specifically, concrete institutions may not be looked at as rational for achieving some important specific goals; to this extent, they may be called irrational. However, institutions are not designed to serve specific and known purposes only.

Their original purpose and rationale, at the moment when they were pragmatically conceived, are usually forgotten in history or only very imperfectly reconstructible. Hence derives the characteristic ambiguity of institutions: They are ambiguous because they are generalised patterns, above and beyond the original rationale. Their ambiguity now is particularly func

tional for human creativity to occur. It stimulates and en

riches choice. Thus, problem-solving in concrete instances re

quires the existence of institutional patterns stabilised without regard for concrete instances, possibly against them.

Culture is the backbone of human life in social collectivities, but it is different from the natural backbone of an individual because it is man-made, artificial, and has come to evolve faster than properties of human "natural nature". Much as culture, as a "second nature", is man-made, it is certainly not a largely self-made thing. The individual does constantly contribute to its evolution in piecemeal steps, but at the same time he cannot extricate himself from its influence.

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Institutions thus imply something like a "mental programming"

(Hofstede, 1980: 14 - 19) of individuals. This notion should, however, be used extremely carefully since human behaviour is not like that of computers or machines, however sophisticated they may be (Sorge and Fores, 1979). Humans typically select institutionalised behavioural patterns; there is thus an

element of choice (Child, 1972). This choice is not only stra

tegic, but can be seen to operate in day-to-day-action, so that humans constantly modify and re-construct their technical and social environment (Schreyögg, 1980).

On the other hand, action is not independent of institutions or tools, which are not subjective in character, but inter

subjective. Some describe the process in which choice and in

stitutional influence are intertwined in the form of interative steps, in the "garbage can" model of organisational and mana

gerial behaviour (March and Olsen, 1976). This may sound a bit negative because it deemphasizes the value of institutionalised patterns which are found, selected, combined and modified. But it brings out another very important point: Humans select in

stitutionalised patterns wherever they originate from or are to be found. The style of management in a company may be most

marked by the fact that preferably, ex-soldiers, former boy scouts, or graduates of red-brick college sandwich courses are hired. Through this or similar kinds of cultural osmosis, in

stitutional patterns are transmitted across functionally dif

ferentiated spheres of society.

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The cultivation of institutional patterns thus does not mean that culture disintegrates into fragmented sub-cultures as

functional specialisation in a society increases. To the extent that people live in different spheres at the same time, or come from one sphere and go to another, they will transmit patterns across spheres and maintain the cultural coherence of larger collectivities. Management is never just management per s e , but the management of social units in particular domains (hospi tals, schools, engineering, job-shops, chemical plants, banks, etc.) with people from particular social classes, ethnic back

grounds, work or educational careers, in particular areas of the world or a country.

Institutions are, on the other hand, never precisely or rigidly fixed. This statement is not to be blamed on "soft” sociology and social research. Instead, institutions have to be ambi

guous, and the "mental programming" of individuals has to be imprecise and even contradictory, for otherwise they would not trigger the inventive spark of the human mind which is ne

cessary for the species' psychic sanity and material and bio

logical survival. What, then, does this analysis imply for the day-to-day practice of management? Let us turn to a ’concrete example.

The predicament of production manager Baker

John Baker runs the works of the Pipework & Vessels Division of a large engineering group. He is responsible for two shops:

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One "heavy" shop with the foundry, presses, cold-rolling, welding and heat treatment activities, and one "light" shop with pipe-bending, turning, milling, drilling, grinding and light assembly. The plant is situated close to Newcastle, and it used to produce primarily for the ship-building industry and the Central Electricity Generating Board. With the demise of ship-building and stagnating investment in the CEGB, because of stagnant energy consumption, protests against nuclear power stations, and government policy of cutting back on spending of all sorts, this had to change. The Division had to try hard

to win new customers, primarily in the chemical industry and North Sea oil exploration. At the same time, the owning group reinforced

cost controls and brought management changes. It was put to ma

nagement and the workforce that if they did not pull their

socks up, increased productivity, met delivery dates better than in the past, and were able to win contracts from new customers, the group would be forced to close or sell the place.

Faced with gloomy prospects in December, the Divisional Board and the General Manager, in particular, speedily agreed to signing a contract which the Sales Manager was lining up. The Production Manager agreed very reluctantly, grumbling to him

self that "people in sales always rush things through without giving me the time to check whether it's feasible, and the General Manager always agrees in order to look good to Head Office, without giving me the resources because they want to reduce costs and d o n ’t like buying new machines if they don't have fantastic and certified pay-back periods."

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John Baker has endless discussions with the Engineering Manager and the Production Engineering Superintendent about choice and justification of investment into production plant« He thinks Production Engineering should be responsible to himself, but group Head Office do not think so. In his view, they have

become "technical college boffins without a real grasp of things like likely down-time,malfunctioning, reaction of operators, all sorts of hiccups in the organisation and with the unions which cost a lot and everybody expects me to sort out.” In the eyes of production engineers, Baker is old-fashinoned, does not know much about technology and has not learnt much since he took his Diploma in Industrial Administration ten years ago, which did not increase his technical strength. He had served

an apprenticeship and acquired an H.N.C. previously, but then worked in production control and plant management.

Relations with the unions are none too glorious, either. The boilermakers' union is strong in the heavy shop, which is at

least partly explained by its implantation in a traditionally ship-building area and marine engineering production site. It reacts sharply against infringements of demarcation rules,

"Dilution of skills", and organisational or training changes.

The Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers is stronger in the light shop, but it is more divided into shop stewards groups from the pipe-bending section, the machinists and the tool

room. Foremen and technicians are represented in bargaining by TASS which does not always get on easily with the rest of the AUEW.

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Now, the contract which had recently been won creates more work in the light shop, but hardly any in the heavy shop. To add to Baker's headaches, the Division budget for the next year provides for the acquisition of bright and shining nume

rically controlled (NC) lathes and mills, to increase pro

ductivity and quality performance. Baker has doubts whether they come at the right time because he fears grave running-in and training-up problems. These would jeopardise the achieve

ment of delivery dates in the new contract. Additional quali

fied and reliable manpower, for an extra shift, is hard to come by, and possibilities of internal transfer and re-training,

from the heavy to the light shop, are very precarious in view - of the attitude of the boilermakers' union and AUEW shop

stewards. It would threaten carefully negotiated pay scales and job evaluation criteria; the Personnel Manager is developing his own headaches and looks in every day to warn Baker not to do something hasty. Baker thinks, however, that he himself should carry responsibility for industrial relations.

John Baker's predicament, expressed in terms of cultural anthro

pology and sociology, thus is that everybody expects him to do something whilst he is hemmed in by institutional patterns which he can only modify marginally. The organisational culture of the owning group keeps him locked into formal profitability, pro

ductivity, and accounting routines. The Division allocates re

sponsibility in fragmented form; he has no authority over pro

duction engineering and an unclear authority over industrial

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relationso The division of responsibility between production management and production engineering, linked with separate careers, is not an individual event but strongly rooted in his country's heritage of managerial careers, education, training and organisation practice. Workforce representation in unions, job demarcation, bargaining arrangements, and methods of pay

ment are also rooted in national traditions and carefully cultivated company collective agreements.

Baker often wonders whether his colleague Hans Bäcker in Germany is not much better off. He had met him two years ago, at a con

ference, and had found that Bäcker ran works very similar to his own, in terms of technology, products and size. Baker had heard, to his surprise, that Bäcker had all that he himself was

longing for. Bäcker was firmly in control of production engi

neering and did not have much trouble with non-production people about choice and acquisition of equipment. After his apprentice

ship, he had worked as a fitter for five years and taken a part-time course in works study. He had then studied for a

college degree in production engineering, worked as a production engineer, work planner and production controller, and eventually as a production manager. He had only one union to contend with, and the works council represented the whole workforce, whether unionised or not. There were more skilled people in the works

since, as Bäcker had explained, "someone who has not at least served an apprenticeship is at least nowadays considered a lay-about", apprenticeship is- not longer than three or three-

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and-a-half years, apprentice wages are comparatively lower than in Britain, and the unions demand more apprenticeship places rather than less. The foremen are better trained, have more authority and relieve Bäcker of a lot of trouble-shooting on the shop floor, with adjacent departments and workers' repre

sentatives. Bäcker*s working day is thus calmer, less conflict- ridden and more conducive to a consistent production policy with a more long-term perspective. It is much easier for him to retrain and transfer labour internally, not only because of the union structure, but also because people respond to training opportunities more quickly and apprenticeship is less con

sidered as the initiation ritual to a demarcated job territory.

On the other hand, Bäcker was rightfully daunted by the huge amount of social policy, industrial democracy, work protection and other legislation and court rulings which had to be con

sidered, not to speak of complex collective agreements with unions and the works council. Bäcker commented: "If people in Britain believe that their legislation has become difficult to bear in mind, they ought to come and see ours. You need your own lawyer by your side to run a place. But then, I think that's what the personnel department is there for. And I suppose all this negotiation and legislation business makes the place cal

culable for all concerned. Everybody knows what he is up against and what he has to do. If you have that, then you can make

people move together, in the direction which keeps all of us in business."

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John Baker was convinced that there was a cultural difference between his works and those of colleague Bäcker. The difference ran across company organisation, manpower training and education, the structure of occupational careers, industrial relations, and other fields. It was located in the society-at-large as well as in the microcosm of the company and in the minds of people.

Upon reflection, he concluded that this was what made it so

difficult to pinpoint, get hold of and exchange, like a worn-out cutting-tip on a tool. Baker knew in which direction he would ideally like to go, in his company, but he also had to think of the old Irish joke: "If I were you, I would not start from here."

There was no systematic, well-planned solution to his predica

ment, as in management textbooks. The last thing he was able to bring off was a cultural revolution before completion of the contract, and he did not want it, either. So what did he do?

At first, nothing besides urging the Personnel Manager to say that redundancies in the heavy shop were probably imminent, be

cause of a lack of orders. The next thing to happen was the arrival of the new NC machines. As he had predicted, their rate of utilisation was abysmally low to start with, because of all the factors production engineering had not taken into account.

This brought up fears that deadlines would again not be met.

With the unions in despair because of the recession and pos

sible redundancies, and the divisional board because of the threat of contractual penalties, loss of further orders, and possibly worse to come from group head office, John Baker felt

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that the time was ripe and told the divisional board and shop stewards that there were two alternatives, either to "go to the wall" or accept his plan. This plan implied internal trans

fer of workers from the heavy to the light shop, more training, particularly for machinists in NC operation and programming, more shiftwork to increase machine utilisation and integrate transferred workers in the light shop, integrated bargaining and wage scales for all shop floor workers, and his own direct influence on production engineering. The plan was agreed.

What Baker had done in sociological terms, was the following:

He had changed the culture of the factory substantially, by weakening job territory demarcation, altering payment systems, training arrangements, worktime patterns and organisation

structure, with long term implications for union organisation and possibly career paths. He had brought this change about in relying on the traditional cultural resources of his country:

improvisation at the right moment when intense pressure brought received cultural patterns into an impasse. The dialectics of culture can be seen to operate: Cultural change takes place because action is orientated by culturally stable patterns.

Compared with Bäcker's factory in Germany, there is conver

gence in some respects, such as in the greater uniformity of shop floor workers and pay scales, and closer links between production management and engineering. But other industrial re

lations differences remain as they were, and to some extent they become larger; Baker's factory now emphasizes company-

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specific training and skills utilisation more than in the past, more so than Bäcker 's.

It is characteristic that cultural change as well as assertion of stability did not take place because the actors behaved in a self-consciously cultural way, like artists keen to cultivate their artistic individuality. John Baker tried to find a prac

ticable solution under intense economic pressure and power in

fluences; he used power at the time when it came to him, and his tacit experience and intuition, to bring the solution about.

This story has been invented in the manner of a Weberian "thought experiment", but it is hoped that it is not too unrealistic. It shows that cultural contrasts are particularly notable between nation states, at least in Europe. A great deal of research has focussed on such national differences. The question now is how to relate different managerial practices and structures to pro

perties of the wider culture in a collectivity. We will look at cultures of national societies and show how different approaches arrive at different concepts of culture and explain the link between culture and management in different ways. It had already been mentioned that there are basically two ways of approaching the issue. One is to look at the institutional artifacts in a society and see how these relate to management. The other is to explore the mental "programming" of individuals and estab

lish the link from here. A similar distinction, between in

stitutional and "ideational" approaches, was introduced into

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the organisation and management literature by Child and Tayeb (1982/83), following an anthropological distinction suggested by Keesing (1974). The two perspectives are, however, not mutually exclusive or contradictory. Nor does the order of treatment in the subsequent sections imply that one comes first and the other follows from i t . That would be to try to solve a chicken-and- egg problem; it would be futile to claim that one comes before the other.

The model suggested here to integrate the two perspectives con

siders organisation and management behaviour and structure as part of the institutional world of collectivities; this influen

ces the mental programming of actors, which shapes institutions in turn. Influences are not deterministic either way; non

determination is rooted in the ambiguity of institutions and the creativeness of actor’s mental processes. More academic dis

cussions about the quality of more refined models such as be

tween Child and Tayeb (1982/83) and Sorge (1982/83) are not taken up, in this introductory text.

In the sense indicated here, institutions cover a very wide ground. They consist of:

- statute or unwritten law,

- other social norms whose infringement will provoke sanctions, - custom and practice in occupations, associations, organisa

tions, kinship groups or larger collectivities.

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Social collectivities - such, as the Royal Lifeboat Institution - may also be called institutions, but it is understood this is

so because they are distinctive for specific cultural regula

rities of behaviour. A selection of different.institutions at the level of national collectivities had already been mentioned.

A number of studies have explored these more systematically, for instance Maurice et al. (1982, 1980). A vivid analysis of management in a specific cultural setting was provided by

Lawrence (1980), with a detailed description of cultural rami

fications throughout the different spheres of society. These show how enterprises both absorb and contribute to generating the culture of organisation, industrial relations, remuneration, education and vocational training.

Institutions may be looked at, at different levels of abstraction□

The studies mentioned above have dealt with more concrete in

stitutional arrangements in different functional speres of so

ciety and shown how they are linked. There have also been

attempts to isolate cultural specificity at a higher level of ab

straction. In a classic study of bureaucratic organisation in France, Crozier (1964) singled out the precariousness of face- to-face relationship, as a long-term cultural trait. This ex

plained the tendency to adopt bureaucratic patterns. Their rationale was to achieve a form of central coordination and management

which protected the autonomy of actors in the bureaucracy against face-to-face exercise of authority by instituting impersonal

formal mechanisms and norms. This is one of the more ambitious and successful attempts to single out and state explicitly a dominant cultural factor.

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On the other hand, this is by no means a procedure which is always congenial to institutional approaches. It may be asked whether cultural variety is best pictured by a dominant-factor

approach. A closer focus on concrete arrangements leads away from generalisations and moves us closer to historical-des

criptive studies and results. Let us consider the problem in the cases of John Baker and his German colleague. Both of them act within their respective institutional contexts which they cannot change overnight. The difficulty of change arises in particular because institutions in different spheres are

linked. Trade union.organisation is for instance, linked with remuneration systems, vocational training practices, shop-floor organisation, personnel policy, and other factors. Their links follow a social logic whose cultural specificity was explored by the quoted contributions of Maurice et al., for France, Germany and Britain. Difficulty does not mean impossibility of change, however; John Baker did bring about cultural change at the level of concrete institutional arrangements in different functional spheres. But it did require pressure or a critical situation to do this.

So far we have looked at constraint and choice under concrete institutional arrangements of great complexity and variety. We have found that cultural change is quite noticeable at this level. What now if we consider what happened from a more ab

stract perspective? Then we see that change was possible be

cause John Baker1s action was compatible with abstracted in

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stitutional patterns. These are company individualismn in

personnel policy and training arrangements, confrontation with some trade union representatives in a less consensual system of industrial relations, the precarious authority of production management and ambivalence around the production management -

engineering divide which does not exist in Hans Bäcker's case.

Here, we have a more dominant factor which is shown, for Ger

many from a British perspective, by Hutton and Lawrence (1981) and Lawrence (1980). Again, we see the dialectics of culture at work: Change not only conflicts with stability, but is rendered possible because of it. Cultural change at the level of concrete arrangements works because social actors are

stabilised in terms of more general, abstract and ambiguous patterns.

Thus, the consideration of cultural influences in and on ma

nagement requires the combination of both a dominant factor and a concrete institutions approach. The implication is that the suitability of an approach depends on what is to be

stressed: A dominant factor approach underlines the stable side of culture, whilst a focus on concrete arrangements is better suited to describe change. The latter finds it more

difficult to isolate dominant factors, but it is not necessarily devoid of general theory. As far as the specification of a

general conceptual framework for the explanation of collec

tive action from a societal perspective is concerned, Maurice at al. (1982) have, for instance, made an important contri-

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button. But the specification of cultural factors is cul

turally relative; their definition follows the selection of collectivities which are compared. Needless to explain much further, comparisons of management between India and the United States of America will yield pertinent cultural dimensions which can be expected to differ from those in a comparison between Britain and the Netherlands.

The dilemma is that, first, theoretical arguments about how factors in different social spheres connect are necessary in order to make sensible statements. Otherwise, we would not know how to tell whether plant bargaining in Britain is re

lated to gambling or not. Then, we need generalisations on the basis of cross-cultural comparisons. Generalisations may be more generally valid if the number of cultures compared is larger. But as the number of countries compared increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to find generally applicable operational definitions of variables. Even the measurement of skills levels between Britain and Germany is something like

opening Pandora's box. This leads to a questioning of concepts in view of the relative social meaning of the variable one is trying to get at, and to an evaporation of general concepts of variables. This throws us back on the qualitatively rich

comparison of fewer countries. This, in turn, can only be done if we have suggestive concepts about cross-culturally significant variables. Here, the dilemma is complete because we are back to square one.

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Cross-cultural comparisons of institutions are. thus a constant pragmatic compromise between generalisation and the richness of phenomena captured. Again we have a dialectic circle: One is a requirement for the other to occur, but they also detract from each other. Bringing together the "nomothetic" and the

"ideographic" approach, as they are called by Lammers (1976) and as demanded by him, is therefore logically necessary as well as linked with the emergence of conceptual inconsisten

cies. The reader should beware of one-sided arguments for the merits of either approach. They logically require each other;

but this is so because they are not logically compatible. The ultimate approach which solves all the problems is not in sight, and it really cannot be since, like any other cultural activity, scientific study progresses through contradictions.

The research methods which are particularly geared to the study of institutions are processual participant observation, qualitative interviews according to a loose guide-line rather than fixed questionnaire, analysis of written documents and other available data (organisation charts, wage statistics, collective agreements, standard operating procedures, personnel data, files),, comparative analysis of case monographs, histories or biographies. Such methods of data collection are often

linked with "qualitative" forms of data analysis and inter

pretation, but not necessarily. Quantification is often to be found, and sometimes, this is even extended to the analysis of qualitative information from case histories and descriptions

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in monographs (IDE, 1981). Thus, it may be said that in

stitutional approaches of different kinds are characterised by particular methods of data collection and theoretical in

terpretation, and less by methods of data analysis.

Values and preferences

"Mental programming" approaches logically require the indi

vidual human being as a unit of analysis. They are thus linked with different methods of data collection which permit the

identification of "mental programs." in the form of values, beliefs, preferences or other .attitudinal data. The most con

genial instrument to elicit this kind of information is the more standardised questionnaire applied in..impersonal or face-

to-face interviews. This allows more or less representative sampling of individuals in larger collectivities, the identi

fication of typical response patterns, and relating them to other characteristics of a collectivity.

"Mental programs? may be more or less explicit, rigid or

changeable, consequential for actual behaviour or only vaguely relevant. They have consequences for actual behaviour insofar as they are not ex-post-facto rationalisations of behaviour, but imply principles which guide the search for behavioural or, more specifically, managerial practice. Studies which show the implications of "mental programs" for management have

usually developed and applied the concept of values, to

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describe various kinds of mental "programming”. In a very large part of cross-cultural research on management and or

ganisation, values have become almost synonymous with expres

sions of cultural diversity. This concept can be found in, for instance, Child (1981) and in what is probably the most important comparative study on culture's consequences for work- related values, Hofstede (1980). Its theoretical concept

follows Clyde Kluckhohn, A.I,. Kroeber, Talcott Parsons and Milton Rokeach. Values are taken to be "mental programs that are relatively unspecific" and which "are programmed early in our lives" through childhood socialisation of the individual

(Hofstede, 1980, p. 19). Earlier studies in this veneer, by Haire, Ghiselli and Porter, and Heller and Porter, can be found reported in Weinshall (1977), and by England (1975).

The tendency to isolate dominant cultural factors is even more pronounced, here, than in the institutional approach. Such factors are extracted from a variety of attitudinal responses to questionnaire items and are interpreted as reflecting the ideational background of responses. In terms of research method and interpretation, they serve to reduce the variety of responses to a battery of questions much as happens in fac

tor analysis, by inferring factors which determine a response set.

Hofstede (1980) isolated four dimensions of culture as. dominant factors: Power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity. National cultures were shown to vary along

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these dimensions in the extent to which such values were adhered to. According to this pattern, we would interpret John Baker’s behaviour and values in his social environment, compared to those of Hans Bäcker, in the following way: Both regarding individual behaviour and organisational segments, there is a higher degree of individualism in Britain, whilst in Germany, management and technical careers, training and organisation patterns, as well as trade union organisation, emphasize collective coherence to a greater extent. John Baker has to play an individual power game, whereas Hans Bäcker de

ploys his strategy within a social framework which tends to legitimise individual activity more on the basis of adequacy in view of a collectively expressed will.

Another notable difference concerns uncertainty avoidance.

In our story, this is documented by the legalistic character of industrial relations in Germany whose function is to anti

cipate and regulate, at least in principle, as many occurrences in working life as possible. It is also brought out' by Hans Bäcker's acceptance of a complicated legal framework because it makes life calculable, increases the allegiance of the work

force, and generally makes his work calmer and easier to do.

Baker's social environment is less keen to avoid uncertainty;

conflicting constraints on his behaviour and the management structure rather increase it, although authority is formally laid down.

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Paradoxical as it may sound, Baker's conduct of business is geared to creating a collectively better result for the com

pany and reducing uncertainty over its future, by acting in

dividually and not avoiding uncertainty in the organisation.

He waits for something to go wrong, acts against co-managers at least in part, and increases the ambiguity of the formal organisation. The uncertainty from the union side is reduced for the time being, but this is due to emerging power differ

ences in a cycle of the economy and the company. Long-term effects, possibly in the form of a kind of "back-lash” are

hard to predict but not unlikely; a predictable but conflictual workforce representation was turned into an unpredictable but momentarily quiescent one.

This interpretation of our story illustrates Hofstede1s

findings for Britain and Germany. In this way, one may see the sense in the explanation of culture’s consequences on the ba

sis of values. A caution has to be added, however. The notion of values does not necessarily have the very wide meaning im

plied in cross-cultural studies of management. A current defi

nition in sociology takes values to be "the generalised moral beliefs to which the members of a group subscribe" (Lenski and Lenski, 1974, p. 498, italics mine). This is a more restrictive definition than one in terms of mental programming which may be evaluatively neutral. A great deal of suggested value differences between cultures do not imply differences in moral beliefs. The notion of values has apparently suffered

from devaluation through inflationary use.

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This has to be understood in view of the very indirect linkage between moral values and actual practice. The intervening

variable might be described as responsible choice, and it is natural that similar value sets should be linked with radically different concrete views and practice. A further, theoretical problem is that evaluative statements may be ex-post-facto rationalisations of behaviour. When this is so, the explana

tory power of the notion of values should not be overstressed.

In the extreme, it is a research artifact because values do not play a role in behavioural choice. A related difficulty is that values or other forms of "mental programming" may apply to

different social spheres to different degrees. Uncertainty avoidance, for instance, is not always more emphasized in Germany them in Britain. In shops, at bus-stops and in other similar public places, the tendency to avoid uncertainty by orderly queueing is much stronger in Britain. _

Here, then, are the limits of the "mental programming" approach.

It does not distinguish well enough between values or simple preferences, the generality of values over a range of social

spheres may be less than postulated, and in case of misuse, the predictive and explanatory power is annihilated if values are used to short-circuit the link with concrete preferences and behaviour, neglecting intervening choices and their underlying rationale.

Nevertheless, this does not detract from the general usefulness of the approach if skilfully used and developed with some

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amount of reflection and first-hand knowledge of societies com

pared. It should not be considered as competing with an in

stitutional approach, but as complementary within the frame

work of..culture developed at the beginning. The two approaches should be considered as representing different points of entry, rather than different research results. The reader should thus re-interpret explanations of cultural differences in management when they only use mental programming factors as explanatory variables. This is not wrong, but one-sided. The same thing applies if institutional differences are adduced as privileged factors.

Culture1s lessons

The realisation that management is not the same universal

activity everywhere has a number of lessons to offer. They follow an analysis of management as a "cultured" activity which is

governed by similar underlying principles as art, agriculture, engineering, research, handicrafts, indeed any other human activity including all forms of social behaviour. Not only are the general principles the same; managerial diversity is linked with social-institutional diversity in other functional spheres of society and the microcosm of an enterprise.

A first lesson is that there is never a "natural" way of

manageing, or one most appropriate to achieve a result, except in terms of a prevalent social definition or under particular conditions of the prevailing social environment of management.

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This is, however, not autonomously given but can be influenced.

Answers about good or best managerial practice are therefore always culturally relative. Managerial recipes.cannot ne

cessarily be used outside the cultural context in which they originated. This lesson is particularly well brought out by Hofstede (1980; Chapter 9).

This point should not be understood as an attack against the transfer of managerial practice in principle. However, with the rise of multi-national companies, fast increase of inter

national trade and communication, and the overwhelming in

fluence of an American management ethos and practice in the period after World War II, there has emerged an unprecedented tacit belief in universally valid best practice. This has been declining more recently, in a world-wide recession where the performance of the American economy has raised concern as least as great as in Europe, and some would rightfully say more (Sorge and Fores, 1981). The time has come to abandon certain

management fads and examine recipes much more carefully

whether they fit into cultural patterns relating to social in

stitutions and the mental "programming" of social actors.

Some studies and books mentioned above may be helpful by pointing out how management is culturally conditioned and re

lative, under varying national or other contexts. They in

dicate the pre-conditions and consequences of managerial differences so that the reader can start thinking about se-

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lecting managerial alternatives to fit into a cultural en

vironment, or what would have to change in other functional spheres of society or the enterprise if a certain type of management is desired, or what would be the likely conse

quences of managerial change in such spheres.

However, there has to be a warning that there is no hard-and- fast, precise general theory about the working of these inter

dependencies. There never will be. The reason for this is not the incompetence of social scientists, however great that may be. Instead, it lies in the nature of the human species. This is a potentially even more important lesson than insight into the cultural relativity of management. The culturing and

cultured activity of humans, as described in the first section, as the precondition for human material and mental existence and well-being, is rooted in a pattern which brings together dialectic contradictions and creativeness. Social and ma

terial artifacts are not the mere application of general theories; creations prove theories wrong or absolescent.

Creativeness is linked with the non-determination a priori of any solution to a practical working problem. Inprovement and change are always possible. Social institutions and mental

"programs” are typically ambiguous and conflicting so as to permit, stimulate, enrich and possibly provoke change, whilst at the same time stabilising social actors and institutions.

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This is the link between creativeness and dialectic contra

dictions as its social and mental prerequisites. Dialectic con tradictions are distinctive for opposites which conflict and support each other at the same time. They are the spice of hu

man life in society which keeps it going, much as the plus and minus poles needed to keep electricity flowing. We have dealt with the following dialectics:

- stability and change

- institutional constraints and choice

- consideration of general relationships between a limited number of variables and qualitatively rich cases

Within a dialectic perspective, a manager would not ask if changes have to be made or not, or whether he has a choice or is constrained. Insteadr he would ask: What has to change to assure stability? What has to remain stable to make change viable? Which constraints do I choose in making a choice? This questioning does not occur in oncesand-for-all questions and answers, but iteratively in successive steps.

This is the appropriate way of transferring experience and re

cipes from one culture to another. It does not involve imi

tation but ingenious and judicious tinkering. The concept, recipe or mental "program" has to change at least marginally in order to fit into a different context. But even marginal changes are crucial, require a great deal of reflection and dedication, and are in no way inferior to supposedly radical

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changes. They require intuition at least as much as factual knowledge. If this lesson from culture is well learnt, the manager is not puzzled either by the variety of culturally relative concepts or' the difficulty to adopt and realise ge nerally valid experience.

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