The Culture Map : Cultural Orientations for National Groups

What makes “the East” different from “the West” and how? how similar and closely related are national cultures? Is there a way to measure cultural differences and investigate how cultures “behave” and interact?

In a previous post "National Cultures : Differences and similarities between East and West" I described the leading theory for national cultures suggested by one Greet Hofstede, describing 5 scales on which national cultures could be measured – Power-Distance (hierarchy), Uncertainty Avoidance (tolerance towards ambiguity), Masculinity (assertiveness and no distribution of roles), Individualism, and Long-Term Orientation, and then comparing China, Taiwan, Japan, the US, and Israel.

Hofstede theory has been in debate for almost 3 decades, but few have offered an alternative view. Luckily, I was fortunate to study in a university where a second theory was introduced, and learn about it from Dr. Sagiv who took part in the process of building it. Schwartz, an American-Israeli from the Psychology department has already gained international reputation for what is referred to as "personal values", running the personal values questionnaire in over 65 countries world-wide, so it was just a natural step forward to build a culture-map per country, build scales for national cultures and compare the countries.

Here’s the whole data in a nut-shell (click to expand full-view) :

Now, as you can see this culture map describes national cultures on 3 scales. Every country, represented as a dot, is on an axis from a scale. So, in order to see the position you imagine a straight line from the scale and then see where the country is positioned in relation to that line. For example, you can see on the map that Macedonia is closer to "Embeddedness" than it is to "Affective Autonomy". What do those scales mean? here’s a summary description from the "A New Look at National Culture: Illustrative Applications to Role Stress and Managerial Behavior" paper written by Lilach Sagiv and Shalom H. Schwartz from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (In: N. N. Ashkanasy, C. Wilderom, & M. F. Peterson (Eds.), The handbook of organizational culture and climate. Newbury Park, CA: Sage) :

• In embedded cultures, people are viewed as entities embedded in the collectivity who find meaning in life largely through social relationships, through identifying with the group, participating in its shared way of life, and striving toward its shared goals. Such values as social order, respect for tradition, security, and wisdom are especially important.
• In autonomy cultures, people are viewed as autonomous, bounded entities who find meaning in their own uniqueness and who are encouraged to express their internal attributes (preferences, traits, feelings, motives). We distinguish two types of autonomy: Intellectual autonomy encourages individuals to pursue their own ideas and intellectual directions independently (important values: curiosity, broadmindedness, creativity). Affective autonomy encourages individuals to pursue affectively positive experience for themselves (values: pleasure, exciting life, varied life). Organizations in such cultures may be relatively open to change and diversity. They are likely to treat their members as independent actors with their own interests, preferences, abilities, and allegiances.
• The polar solution we label cultural hierarchy relies on hierarchical systems of ascribed roles to insure responsible behavior. It defines the unequal distribution of power, roles, and resources as legitimate (values: social power, authority, humility, wealth).
• The polar alternative labeled cultural egalitarianism seeks to induce people to recognize one another as moral equals who share basic interests as human beings. It emphasizes transcendence of selfish interests in favor of voluntary behavior that promotes the welfare of others (values: equality, social justice, responsibility, honesty).
• The cultural orientation we label mastery encourages active self-assertion in order to master, change, and exploit the natural and social environment to attain personal or group goals (values: ambition, success, daring, competence).
• Harmony, emphasizes fitting harmoniously into the environment (values: unity with nature, protecting the environment, world at peace).

Let’s see how those same countries are on the Embedded-Autonomy ; Hierarchy-Egalitarianism ; Mastery-Harmony scales:

• China : It is quite noticeable that has the highest score on Hierarchy, being also very high on Mastery and high on Embeddedness.
• Taiwan : Being very close to Hongkong and S.Korea, Taiwan is high on Hierarchy and Mastery, but much less than China. Like China, Taiwan is considered an Embedded society.
• Japan : Japan appears as being Autonomous, and high on Mastery.
• Unites States and Israel : Israeli and American cultures are described as being very close to each other, also being quite similar to that of Japan with an Autonomous society slightly higher on Mastery.

I think that if you go deeper into the culture-map you can really see groups of cultures that can be titled as "continents", with some exceptions that can be easily explained. Consider the Middle Eastern group on the right side (Embeddedness/Hierarchy), the Northern-European countries on the left(Egalitarianism, Autonomy). East-European countries on top (Harmony), the Anglo-Saxon countries on the bottom-left (Affective Autonomy, Mastery) and the South American countries situated around the middle. Asia, so it seems, is mainly around the right side Hierarchy scale.