Global Shippers, Inc Case File Discussion

DIALOGUE

Who Is the Fairest of Them All? Galit Ailon’s Mirror

As a reviewer, I saw two earlier versions of Galit Ailon’s “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Cul- ture’s Consequences in a Value Test of its Own Design” (Ailon, 2008). I made myself known in my comments—in this case, playing the anony- mous reviewer would have been hypocritical. I limited my reviews to correcting factual errors; I didn’t believe it to be my reviewer role to argue with her. Now that the article has been pub- lished, I feel free to do so.

Ailon’s mirror, I think, is a distorting mirror. Her value test is not, as she claims, of my de- sign; rather, it is of hers. She draws conclusions from my dimensions of national culture that cannot be based on what I have written. Ailon uses an old debater’s trick: building a straw man and then burning it. In addition, she com- mits the classic ecological fallacy: my dimen- sions are about differences between national societies (and, as such, they belong to anthropol- ogy); she applies them at the level of personality psychology and even to the psychology of a sin- gle individual (me as an author). In view of her concern about racial prejudice, I remind the reader that the classic case of the ecological fallacy as described by Robinson (1950) was about the use of regional and state-level differ- ences to conclude that most blacks in the United States were illiterate! She could have found it described in Hofstede (2001: 16).

Here are some examples of misinterpreta- tions:

1. The dimension of power distance as I mea- sured it is defined as follows: “The extent to which the less powerful members of institu- tions and organizations within a country ex- pect and accept that power is distributed unequally” (see the Glossary in Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005: 402). This is something other than racial separation. While Ailon has read and cites my disclaimer on this point (Ailon, 2008: 890), she continues to apply the power distance dimension to the former apartheid system in South Africa.

2. The dimension of uncertainty avoidance is defined as follows: “The extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by am- biguous or unknown situations” (Hofstede &

Hofstede, 2005: 403). Ailon applies it to my “positivist” use of the scientific method. There is no evidence whatsoever that mem- bers of more uncertainty avoiding societies use scientific reasoning more often than members of less uncertainty avoiding soci- eties. But the scientific method does imply that one searches for evidence before draw- ing conclusions!

3. Individualism and collectivism are defined as follows: “Individualism stands for a so- ciety in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family only” (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005: 401), and “Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onward are inte- grated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestion- ing loyalty” (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005: 399). Ailon applies the dimension to my meta- phor of culture as collective programming of the mind to argue I am a collectivist. That sounds like the old joke, “Why can’t you be a nonconformist like everybody else?”

4. Masculinity and femininity are defined as follows: “Masculinity stands for a society in which emotional gender roles are clearly distinct: men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on material success; women are supposed to be more modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life” (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005: 402), and “Femininity stands for a society in which emotional gender roles overlap: both men and women are supposed to be modest, ten- der, and concerned with the quality of life” (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005: 401). Ailon sig- nals that my statements about this dimen- sion, as well as the general tone of my book, sound very assertive and that this is incon- sistent for an author coming from an alleg- edly feminine culture. Again, she confuses culture and personality; besides, I wonder whether my books sound more assertive than the rest of the social science and man- agement literature.

5. Long- and short-term orientation are de- fined as follows: “Long-Term Orientation stands for the fostering of virtues oriented toward future rewards, in particular perse- verance and thrift” (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005: 401), and “Short-Term Orientation stands for the fostering of virtues related to the past and present—in particular, respect for tradition, preservation of ‘face,’ and ful- filling social obligations” (Hofstede & Hof-

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stede, 2005: 403). Ailon writes, “A global hi- erarchy is enacted and different societies are mapped within it according to the de- gree to which they acknowledge, manifest, or put to use Western technology and West- ern conception of knowledge” (2008: 898). I don’t know which global hierarchy Ailon means—one where China (high LTO) or where the United States (low LTO) comes on top?

At times, Ailon’s arguments turn into insinua- tions—for example, where she writes that “while questionnaires were distributed in sixty- six countries, only forty countries were used for analyses ‘for reasons of stability of data’” (2008: 893). Did she read my book or didn’t she? The other countries had too few respondents.

What I don’t understand is why, of all the literature in culture and management, Ailon has particularly chosen my work for her mirroring exercise. First, compared to that of most of my colleague writers, my style is unusually reflex- ive—I have always argued explicitly that there is no value-free science, and my 1980 book was and still is exceptional in containing an appen- dix about “the author’s values” (from which Ailon happily cites). Second, I don’t stem from the U.S. academic mainstream tradition. I am Dutch; when I wrote the 1980 book, I had traveled a lot in Europe and Asia, but I had neither stud- ied nor taught in the United States; my sources were British, Dutch, French, and German, in ad- dition to American; and I have often used my own findings to emphasize that there is no such thing as “the West.” In fact, I have always had trouble getting my articles published in “inter- national” (read: U.S.) journals because I don’t follow the conventions their reviewers expect. So, why me?

The rhyme from the story of Snow White and her evil stepmother comes in two versions. The titles of Ailon’s article and my reply constitute one version. The other is “Mirror, mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?” and I recommend it to Galit Ailon for her next critical exercise. What are her values? She uses trendy words for the things she dislikes— hegemony, racism, colonialism, positivism, trapping re- spondents, alleged neutrality, conveniently ob- scuring, normative assumptions— but what are her own normative assumptions? I don’t like to be measured by an invisible yardstick. Although at the end of her diatribe Ailon tries to mitigate

her arguments a bit, her own values remain unclear.

REFERENCES

Ailon, G. 2008. Mirror, mirror on the wall: Culture’s conse- quences in a value test of its own design. Academy of Management Review, 33: 885–904.

Hofstede, G. 1980. Culture’s consequences: International dif- ferences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Hofstede, G. 2001. Culture’s consequences: Comparing val- ues, behaviors, institutions and organizations across na- tions (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hofstede, G., & Hofstede, G. J. 2005. Cultures and organiza- tions: Software of the mind (revised and expanded 2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Robinson, W. S. 1950. Ecological correlations and the behav- ior of individuals. American Sociological Review, 15: 351–357.

Geert Hofstede University of Maastricht

University of Tilburg

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A Reply to Geert Hofstede

My paper (Ailon, 2008) offers a critical analysis of an influential scientific text. It analyzes Cul- ture’s Consequences (Hofstede, 1980)—the book, not the psychology of its author—treating this text as a cultural artifact representing a power- ful social scientific tradition of producing knowledge and constructing meaning. More specifically, the paper takes the definitions of- fered in Culture’s Consequences for each “value dimension,” word for word, and uses them to identify and analyze the normative assumptions underlying the book’s own arguments and sci- ence. My paper explains this as it lays out the theoretical rationale of its analytic strategy in a section titled “The Logic of the Mirroring Strat- egy.” In this section I also explain why the use of the value dimensions for an analysis of a single artifact is consistent with the book’s own claims and with the way it uses the dimensions in its discussions of foreign cultures. The point that mirroring is designed for a critical analysis of a landmark text and not of its author is further emphasized by the editors of the Special Topic Forum on International Management where the paper appeared, in their introductory piece (Jack, Calás, Nkmomo, & Peltonen, 2008: 878).

2009 571Dialogue