Spring 2001 IMQ by Intercultural Management Institute

Integrating Culture and Management in Global Organizations

INSIDE 2 IMQ Update -

New

Perspectives

3 Culture Matters by Lawrence E. Harrison

6 When Cultural

Differences Become Management Problems by Richard G. Linowes

Review - Culture 8 Book Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress

Volume 2, Number 2

Spring 2 0 0 1 E dit i o n A quarterly publication produced by the Intercultural Management Quarterly and the Intercultural Management Institute, School of International Service at American University

A Strategic Role for IHR Professionals by Tsila Zalcman With the rapid pace of globalization and the phenomenal expansion in the number of expatriates worldwide, international human resource (IHR) professionals are facing unprecedented challenges. They need to assist their organizations in selecting and preparing employees for international assignments, facilitate their relocation, provide them with ongoing support and repatriate them effectively at the end of their assignments. IHR professionals must accomplish all of this in a climate of cost containment, dire shortage of talent, and fierce competition for qualified employees. Currently, the primary goal of IHR professionals is to facilitate and expedite the relocation of employees and to ensure ongoing support throughout their assignment period. As the global marketplace continues to expand, IHR must shift

its role from these immediate needs to a more strategic, long-term focus. IHR professionals should play a proactive role in helping their organizations set global deployment strategies and assist in maintaining and nurturing a pool of valuable global employees. To fulfill this strategic mandate, IHR professionals should be prepared to deal with deployment challenges and the conditions that impede assignment success. They must therefore establish an ongoing dialog with expatriates. This will allow them to develop an awareness and knowledge about expatriates’ experiences, needs and concerns. The lack of feedback may create a disparity between IHR’s per Continued on page 4

Women Hit Another Glass Ceiling by Sarah Schafer In an increasingly global business climate, companies have underestimated female wanderlust, according to a report released by the research firm Catalyst. The New York-based organization, which studies workplace issues affecting women, said misperceptions about women – that they prefer to stay in one place for example – have kept female middle managers out of career-enhancing international assignments. The report polled human resource executives, as well as male and female frequent fliers who were based in the United States but frequently travel overseas. The survey found that women were indeed less willing to relocate overseas in the coming year than men but were more willing than men to do so in the future, and far more willing to do so than their numbers in such jobs indicate. Of the frequent fliers

surveyed, 47 percent of women said they would be willing to relocate overseas within the year, compared with 51 percent of men. But 45 percent of the women, compared with 32 percent of the men, said they would relocate sometime later. And 17 percent of the men said they would never relocate, compared with only 8 percent of women. Yet only 13 percent of middle managers posted overseas by U.S. corporations are women, even though women make up nearly half the middle managers at these companies the report said. At the same time, 80 percent of human resources executives polled said that global experience is more a must for advancement in large corporations. The result: a global glass ceiling. “There is an assumption that women don’t want Continued on page 7

IMQ Update

New Perspectives

Welcome to the Spring 2001 edition of the Intercultural Management Quarterly (IMQ). In this edition, we shift our focus from training to management. We ask what strategic roles international human resource professionals can play in their organizations. Also, what can managers do to distinguish between operational and culture-based problems? We continue to look at the obstacles faced by female international managers. On a macro level, Lawrence E. Harrison investigates what role culture plays in national socio-economic development. We at IMQ agree with Harrison that, “Globalization is a force for cultural change. Workplace encounters with people from other cultures present an opportunity not only to learn what values and attitudes underlie their behavior but also to assess the relevance and utility of those values and attitudes to one’s own life.” IMQ continues to offer cutting-edge research in the field of intercultural management. Our reach is growing, with thousands of readers from dozens of countries visiting our web site at www.imquarterly.com. We hope to become your knowledge source for intercultural management and are proud to bring you the Spring 2001 edition of the IMQ.

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Correction - The Winter 2001 IMQ’s Index of Cultural Assessment Tools should have listed the Overseas Assignment Inventory (OAI) as having been developed by Tucker International, www.tuckerintl.com. We apologize for any confusion.

Sincerely, Hamilton Bean The Intercultural Management Quarterly is a student-run, founded, and managed publication. It was established by the International Communication Student Forum at the School of International Service at American University. It combines new and original research being conducted in the field of intercultural management with the applied perspectives of industry experts. The IMQ integrates the experience of students from various areas of concentration at American University. Due to this interdisciplinary approach, the IMQ is a unique knowledge source for professionals. If you are interested in sponsoring an issue of IMQ or contributing an article, please contact the Managing Editor at editor@imquarterly.com.

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Contributing Writers Lawrence E. Harrison Richard G. Linowes Jacqueline Lirtzman Sarah Schafer Tsila Zalcman

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Culture Matters

by Lawrence E. Harrison

Reprinted with permission © The National Interest, No. 60, Summer 2000, Washington D.C. - Parts excerpted

Of the six billion people who inhabit the world today, fewer than one billion are to be found in the advanced democracies. Half or more of the adult population of 23 countries, mostly in Africa, is illiterate. Half or more of the women in 35 countries are illiterate. Furthermore, the most inequitable income distribution patterns are found in the poorer countries, particularly in Latin America and Africa. What explains this persistence of poverty and authoritarianism? The conventional diagnoses offered during the past half century — exploitation, imperialism, lack of opportunity, lack of capital, weak institutions — are inadequate. The crucial element that has been largely ignored is the cultural: that is to say, values and attitudes that stand in the way of progress. The conclusion that culture matters goes down hard. It clashes with cultural relativism, widely subscribed to in the academic world, which argues that cultures can be assessed only on their own terms and that value judgments by outsiders are taboo. But a growing number of academics, journalists and politicians are talking about culture as a crucial factor in societal development. Alan Greenspan captured the shift recently when he said, in the context of economic conditions in Russia, that he had theretofore assumed that capitalism was “human nature.” But in the wake of the collapse of the Russian economy, he concluded that “it was not human nature at all, but culture.” Over the almost two decades that I have been studying and writing about the relationship between cultural values and human progress, I have identified ten values that distinguish progressive cultures from static cultures: 1. The progressive culture emphasizes the future, the static culture the present or past. Future orientation implies a progressive world-view: influence over one’s destiny, rewards in this life for virtue, and

positive-sum economics in which wealth expands — in contrast to the zero-sum psychology commonly found in poor countries. 2. Work and achievement are central to the good life in the progressive culture, but are of lesser importance in the static culture. In the former, diligence, creativity and achievement are rewarded not only financially but also with prestige. 3. Frugality is the mother of investment and financial security in progressive cultures. 4. Education is the key to advancement in progressive cultures but is of marginal importance except for the elites in static cultures. 5. Merit is central to advancement in the progressive culture; connections and family are what count in the static culture. 6. Community: The radius of identification and trust extends beyond the family in the progressive culture, whereas the family circumscribes community in the static culture. 7. The societal ethical code tends to be more rigorous in the progressive culture. Every advanced democracy except Belgium, Taiwan, Italy and South Korea appears among the 25 least corrupt countries on Transparency International’s “Corruption Perceptions Index.” 8. Justice and fair play are universal, impersonal expectations in the progressive culture. In the static culture, justice is often a function of whom you know or how much you can pay. 9. Authority tends toward dispersion and horizontality in progressive cultures, which encourage dissent; toward concentration and verticality in static cultures, which encourage orthodoxy. 10. Secularism: The influence of religious institutions on civic life is small in the progressive culture; their influence in static cultures is often substantial. Heterodoxy and dissent are encouraged in the former, orthodoxy and conformity are encouraged in the latter.

The ten factors I have suggested are not definitive. But they do at least suggest which elements in the vastness of “culture” may influence the way societies evolve. Changing the Traditional Culture Recently, Latin America has taken the lead in contriving initiatives designed to accelerate economic growth, fortify democratic institutions and promote social justice. Claudio Veliz’s 1994 book, The New World of the Gothic Fox, contrasts the Anglo-Protestant and Ibero-Catholic legacies in the New World. Veliz defines the cultural current with the words of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, “the economic, educational and judicial reforms necessary to Latin America’s modernization cannot be effected unless they are preceded or accompanied by a reform of our customs and ideas.” One American of Mexican descent, Texas businessman Lionel Sosa, has also contributed to the new paradigm in his book, The Americano Dream. Sosa catalogues a series of Hispanic values and attitudes that present obstacles to achieving the upward mobility of mainstream America: 1. The resignation of the poor — “To be poor is to deserve heaven. To be rich is to deserve hell.” 2. The low priority given to education — “The girls don’t really need it, they’ll get married anyway. And the boys? It’s better that they go to work, to help the family.” 3. Fatalism — “Individual initiative, achievement, self-reliance, ambition, aggressiveness-all these are useless in the face of an attitude that says, ‘We must not challenge the will of God.’” 4. Mistrust of those outside the family, which contributes to the generally small size of Hispanic businesses. The gender issue has also come to the fore, challenging the traditional machismo culture. Latin American women are increasingly aware of the gender democratization Continued on page 8

Strategic Role for IHR Continued from page 1 ceptions of required services and the true pertise, most, as would be expected, also needs of expatriates. This disparity may consider the employee’s overall interest not only result in a loss of productivity, in the assignment. It is surprising, therebut ultimately in fore, that only costly mistakes and 22 percent of 72 percent of expatriates assignment failure. organizations With s u r proper veyed feedback, quesconsider international assignments IHR protioned fessionals a n can then employee’s willserve the imporingness to acessential to their careers. tant role of liaison cept an internabetween their tional transfer organization’s business objectives and ex- during the initial hiring process. patriates’ goals and expectations. They DSD’s database shows that an overcan help establish and maintain enhanced whelming majority (85 percent) of expatriinternational assignment programs that ates are willing to accept future positions. have realistic goals with respect to the se- Yet, most of these expatriates are not aclection, preparation, destination support tively encouraged to reapply for future and career management of expatriates. international assignments or to become In facilitating these goals we rely on mentors for the employees accepting two sources of research data, survey data these assignments. Many of these repaof international managers (The Employee triated employees indicate a willingness Relocation Council’s Center for Interna- to mentor future candidates. Unfortutional Assignment Management – 2000 In- nately, as one expatriate put it: “We are ternational Survey) and the proprietary overlooked as a resource for mentoring long-term database of expatriate feedback, and our unique experience is not recogcollected over the past six years, by Dy- nized and not used to benefit the comnamic Systems Design (DSD), a relocation pany.” research firm. Clearly IHR professionals can help to shape a strategy that utilizes the skills Selection of Expatriates and experiences of these repatriated emThe difficulty in staffing international ployees. IHR professionals are in a strong positions is common knowledge. Accord- position to help their companies develop ing to the ERC report, 80 percent of man- a pool of prospective candidates. They agers surveyed indicated that recruiting can influence hiring practices by maintainfor international assignments is a chal- ing a roster of qualified employees interlenge for their firms. Despite this, very ested in these postings. few organizations have established a systematic approach for identifying prospec- Cross-cultural Preparation tive candidates for international assignAccording to the ERC survey, 80 perments. The majority of companies, 78 percent of organizations offer at least some cent, typically wait until the need for staff- type of cross-cultural preparation to eming arises before attempting to locate suit- ployees departing for international assignable candidates. ments. Even though these cross-cultural While the vast majority of multina- programs are pervasive, their utilization tional organizations base their international by the expatriate population tends to be selection on the candidate’s technical ex- very low. Managers estimate that, on av-

erage, 47 percent of the expatriates take advantage of cross-cultural programs. However, DSD’s data, based on expatriates’ responses, reveal a much lower participation of only 18 percent. When DSD inquired about the low participation in cross-cultural programs, the three most typical reasons given by expatriates were: 1) “I found out about these programs too late” 2) “I had no time to participate before I left for the assignment” 3) “My manager was not supportive of my participation in the program” A major resistance to these programs often comes from the business unit managers who do not appreciate the value of cross-cultural training and discourage employees from taking time out to participate in them. Yet those expatriates who have participated in cross-cultural programs, tend to value them and to report that they have helped them overcome cultural shock by better preparing them to live and work in foreign cultures. IHR professionals can provide the data to educate business managers and to demonstrate the corporate benefits of these training programs. They also need to advocate the use of these programs as a tool for preparing employees to succeed on international assignments. But IHR needs, through feedback obtained from expatriates, to ensure the quality of the crosscultural programs available to employees. Destination Support The majority of organizations now offer extensive destination services to their expatriates. These services typically help expatriates locate suitable neighborhoods, provide general area familiarization and offer assistance with day-to-day settling-in issues. While expatriates generally rate their companies’ financial assistance favorably, they give poor ratings to the so-called “soft” services, including destination support. For example, in the DSD database, the following are typical average expatriate ratings (on a scale of 1-5, where 1

represents “very poor” and 5, “very good”) for several services provided: move of household goods (4.3); temporary living allowance (4.0); spouse employment assistance (2.4); and destination support (2.2). After being transferred, it takes the average expatriate nine weeks to resume full productivity. Expatriates feel that this adjustment period could be shortened with better-coordinated support. Said one expatriate, “Our post arrival daily living was very difficult and only minimally supported by the company. The most difficult aspect was the sheer length of time it took to get organized and the number of people we had to deal with. It would have helped immensely and could have saved valuable time to know in advance what to do and whom to contact. ” Many expatriates regard destination services as “insufficient”. Moreover, a large number of expatriates claim that they were not properly notified about the availability of many destination services being offered. Clearly a better means of communication between expatriates and IHR professionals is essential to the effective utilization and success of these important support services. Career Management Expatriates generally face more obstacles in their career development than their domestic counterparts. Prior to their departure, many expatriates feel optimistic about their international assignment as a step toward career growth. Over the course of the assignment, many come to feel “out of sight, out of mind” — disconnected from the organizational culture and left out of consideration for career advancement. Only 26 percent of expatriates said they had the opportunity to learn about other job openings while on assignment. A distinct gap exists between expatriates’ perceptions of their international assignments and how managers view these same assignments. For example, 72 percent of expatriates consider international assignments essential to their careers. Only 19 percent of the IHR managers from the ERC survey view these assignments as essential to career advancement in their firms. The widely quoted industry two-year, post assignment attrition rate of 12 percent

triates. To do this, IHR needs to establish effective communication mechanisms with expatriates to fully understand their needs and concerns. An ongoing dialogue with expatriates will help companies keep abreast of issues that, if not handled properly, could jeopardize the global agenda. IHR professionals need to keep in touch and be responsive to expatriated employees and convert these expatriates into compelling advocates for international assignments.

is underestimated, as companies do not typically track attrition of repatriated employees. Nevertheless, as IHR expands its focus from the immediate need of relocating employees to retaining a talent pool, this 12 percent attrition rate can be improved. It is clear that an important strategic consideration would be the enhancement of a company’s ability to recruit new candidates for international assignments and that career development is very important to these candidates. Currently, the disparity between expatriates’ expectations and IHR practices weakens the company’s ability to optimize its international assignment program. IHR professionals are in a unique position to provide their companies with credible data and procedures that can enhance expatriates’ career satisfaction and performance. IHR professionals can and should serve a pivotal role in establishing and nurturing an international workforce. They can and should be a liaison between expatriates and their business-unit managers and mediate between their companies’ immediate objectives and the long-range goals of the expa-

Readers can obtain copies of the full report through the Employee Relocation Council at: www.erc.org. Tsila Zalcman, Ph.D., is a partner and Executive Vice President in Dynamic Systems Design (DSD), an independent research and consulting firm specializing in relocation.

Expatriate ratings for employer provided services in the following categories (5 = “very good”):

Move of Household Goods (4.3)

Temporary Living Allowance (4.0)

Spouse Employment Assistance (2.4)

Destination Support (2.2) 1

When

Cultural Differences Become Management Problems

Cross-cultural encounters are now regular ingredients of life inside multinational organizations. Inherent to any organization operating internationally is the regular contact between people of different national and cultural backgrounds, people who come together on a daily basis to share ideas, make deals, exchange goods and/or achieve goals. This is aptly demonstrated by the fact that the world’s largest financial institution, Deutsche Bank, has 68 percent of its assets outside Germany. There are today 1,100 American firms operating in Hong Kong. Worldwide, the total foreign direct investment in 1999 was over $800 billion, substantially more than the year before. These cross-cultural dealings have become commonplace, but they can be problematic for any internationally engaged firm, often in unexpected ways. Management teams – even those well versed in international encounters – sporadically face cultural flare ups that demand their attention and prove quite costly to the bottom line. The crisis facing Mitsubishi Motors in the U.S. a few years back is a dramatic case in point. There, Japanese managers faced a multimillion dollar sexual harassment law suit because they blithely assumed that “what blue-eyed men do to blue-eyed women is none of our business,” overlooking behavior that later in court threatened to bankrupt the entire firm. When do cultural differences become management problems? When do misunderstandings and miscues felt on the shop floor reach managements’ radar screen, becoming so important that even the most business-minded executive acknowledges there is a cultural problem to be reckoned with? Too often that awareness comes painfully late – after cross-cultural counselors have been brought in as “Monday morning quarterbacks” to address problems that might have been avoided from

by Richard G. Linowes

the start. Why does management wait for things to blow up before beginning serious examination and defensive scrutiny of cultural issues? They do so largely because they are busy with demanding, performance-oriented jobs and they face many challenges getting them done. Managing directors of overseas subsidiaries, for example, set performance objectives with headquarters and then strive to achieve them by grappling with local business conditions that are largely noncultural in nature. Management depends on infrastructures to run the business – be they power, communications, banking, transportation or other services – which may be incomplete or erratic and therefore disruptive to smooth operations. Managers must learn local demographics to become familiar with ethnic and social groups to gauge political forces, identify market segments and assess employee needs. They must feel the pulse of the economy, scouting for business opportunities, hedging against financial downturns and positioning the firm to compete well against local competition. And finally, they must monitor government policy, seeking to influence it on occasion, to remove bottlenecks and smooth the flow of business transactions. Attending to all these factors is essential for getting the job done. Beyond these, there are cultural factors that are always at play, and sometimes these become paramount, especially when they impact the organization’s achievement of management objectives. International firms must work across a cultural interface to translate management objectives into organizational performance in each culture of operation. Sometimes the cultural interface is well managed and effectively bridged, at other times it is not, and management falters by offending some cultural artifacts, beliefs, values or symbols, and performance suffers.

Implementing management objectives in another cultural setting requires accommodating cultural differences and/or navigating around them. Anticipating these differences and addressing them as part of routine problem-solving can dispel festering misunderstandings. In the process, management may discover unexpected strengths in local ways and then share them with other parts of the firm. All too often, however, cultural differences surface only when management attempts to explain away some disappointing performance. Management would be well advised to work through cultural interfaces proactively rather than urgently trying to straddle them when crises erupt. Consider three arenas where cultural differences are felt by management: impacting the effectiveness of (a) the individual, (b) the business function, and (c) the entire organization: Individual effectiveness - Executives must learn to work effectively across cultural divides when living and working overseas. Key players strive to gain their footing and struggle through their family’s adjustment. They must build trusted relationships inside the organization and with key people outside. Adjustment has two dimensions: impression shock, weathering confusion over unanticipated local behavior and values encountered in the new setting, and integration shock, overcoming frustration with surprising local reaction to their own behavior and values once they join the team. Adaptation along both dimensions is required to perform effectively in cross-cultural endeavors. Functional effectiveness - Executives should be alert to the impact of culture on their business function. In marketing, cultural issues appear in product design and promotion [e.g. an American food manufacturer in Europe chooses a container size for tomato paste to serve a varied set of cuisines]. Continued on page 7

In production, cultural issues appear in plant operations and office management [e.g. an American manufacturer ponders how to recognize outstanding individual performance in a collectivist society, or a British firm in Africa wrestles with organizational structures that run counter to traditional social hierarchies]. In finance, cultural issues appear in managing costs and assessing investments [e.g. Latin American financial institutions assess their customers’ financial discipline and ability to take on credit]. In research and development, cultural issues appear in the zest to innovate and address unmet needs [e.g. stimulating a Southeast Asian research team to direct itself and take new risks]. In human resources, cultural issues pervade everything from recruiting to compensation to promotion. Managers from

every business function would be wise to recognize and scrutinize cultural elements that can influence their areas of responsibility. Organizational effectiveness - Management is now widely counseled to boost productivity by leading organizational change. Baldrige-like quality award programs encourage improving organizational performance by enriching supplier links, boosting customer responsiveness and inspiring employee motivation. Such organizational transformation should extend to all locations of the firm, regardless of national culture. Translating quality initiatives to overseas settings requires an artful blending of cultural ways. When do cultural differences become management problems? When cultural issues impact the implementation of management objectives. Management objec-

Glass Ceiling

these jobs,” said Catalyst President Sheila Wellington, adding that even those women who work abroad share this assumption. The good news for women, say some experts, is that the growth of such jobs comes during the tightest U.S. labor market in decades. “In a tight labor market, companies can’t afford to ignore their in-house reserves,” said Ellen Bayer, an expert on human resource issues at the American Management Association in New York. Finding talented managers to send overseas could be as simple as asking, she said. And the key is to ask more than once, said one former expatriate. “Companies need to be willing to ask and ask again,” said Lori Roland, a Gillette Co. program director who did a stint in London in 1998 and returned to headquarters in Boston this June. Roland, 38, has worked at Gillette since 1989, and early in her career she declined the chance to take an overseas assignment. But she made it clear to her managers – in formal review sessions as well as informal conversations – that she

would like the chance to go abroad in the future. In August 1997, eight months pregnant and on bed rest, Roland’s managers – much to her surprise – asked if she would consider a position in London. She initially refused but changed her mind three months later with the support of her husband. “He was at a point where he wanted to make a change himself,” Roland said. ‘Plus, with a young child, we didn’t have issues with school.” Women working overseas are more likely than their male counterparts to see the challenge of balancing work and personal priorities as an obstacle to their success, according to the Catalyst report. Sixty seven percent of female expatriates believed women are at a disadvantage when it comes to balancing work and family responsibilities, compared with 45 percent of men. That could explain why female expatriates were more likely to be single – although it’s not clear from the survey whether that’s because single women are more likely to choose a foreign assignment or more likely to be chosen. Despite the survey’s focus on

Continued from page1

tives may directly challenge local traditions, such as Renault and Ford’s downsizing to cut costs in Japan, but it is better to anticipate cultural issues and plan for them than be caught off guard by local reactions. Mindful of culture’s impact on individual, functional and organizational effectiveness, management is wise to nurture their human resources to reliably bridge their firm’s cultural interfaces. Richard Linowes is a faculty member at the Kogod School of Business at American University. He has previously been an executive with Goldman Sachs in New York and an examiner with the Baldrige National Quality Award.

women’s issues, it touched on several questions for all those who work abroad, Wellington said, including what happens when they come home. Only 10 percent of expatriates who had returned to the United States felt that their companies had handled their reentry well. “Companies spend an immense amount sending people overseas – on training, relocation assistance, supplemental salaries,” Wellington said, but some expats return home to find the company does not even have an office or assignment for them. Bayer of the Management Association agreed. “There’s …danger when one goes abroad that one loses visibility in the company,” she said. “That, I think, is a real emerging issue.” And one that companies cannot afford. Increasingly, overseas experience is honey to headhunters. “Companies are losing their investment that they made in preparing and sending people overseas,” Wellington said. When these employees return, she said, “headhunters are all over them.” Sarah Schafer is a Staff Writer for The Washington Post.

7 5

BOOK REVIEW by Jacqueline Lirtzman Why have the economies of South Korea and Ghana—countries with similar per capita GDPs in the 1950’s— developed so differently? Why hasn’t Mexico kept up with the development of the United States? How did the United States become the most powerful country in the world? In Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington present an explanation to these questions and many others regarding the status of global development. Their compilation of essays from prominent academics such as Francis Fukuyama, Mariano Grondona, Seymour Martin Lipset, Orlando Patterson and Jeffrey Sachs examine why countries develop at different rates, and whether there is hope that underdeveloped countries can catch up. The authors stress how human progress is affected by factors ranging

Cultur Culturee Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, eds. from economic to geographical advantages, successful, such as an unusually strong but the primary factor that the book returns family support system. to is culture, or the social institutions that Harrison and Huntington’s book alshape the course of development. Most of ludes to a permanently stratified society the authors claim that people must have cer- thus providing a pessimistic view of the tain cultural characteristics, or the “proper” state of the world. Although their assessvalues and beliefs that favor economic de- ment of culture is worthwhile, critics may velopment, to achieve a type of prosperity counter that there are many examples of that the United States has experienced. In “success” in non-Western societies and what some consider a throwback to the ideas measures of “development” other than of Max Weber and David McClelland, the GDP. authors embrace Calvinist values such as The values discussed in this book hard work and delayed gratification that are important because they define the atseem to define the most advanced success- titudes and practices that influence ecoful countries. nomic, political, or social development. Many of the authors downplay the im- However, in the end we are left to specuportance of non-Western cultural patterns. late to what extent the analysis is sympHarrison offers an exception when he states tomatic of the authors’ own cultural bithat the Far Eastern Confucian values of ases. hard work and education are similar to that of Western societies, yet he de-emphasizes Jacqueline Lirtzman is graduate student the fundamental importance of other char- at American University. acteristics that make Confucian societies

Harrison - Cultural Values

Continued from page 3 that has occurred, particularly in First World countries, in recent decades, and they are increasingly organizing and taking initiatives to rectify the sexism that has traditionally kept them in secondclass status. To be sure, Latin American values and attitudes are changing, as the transition to democratic politics and market economics of the past fifteen years suggests. Several forces are modifying the region’s culture, among them the new intellectual current, the globalization of communications and economics, and the surge in evangelical/Pentecostal Protestantism. At least one African has come to similar conclusions about progress on his continent. Cameroonian Daniel Etounga-Manguelle’s analysis of African culture highlights the highly centralized, vertical traditions of authority; a focus on the past and present, not the future; a distaste for work; the suppression of individual initiative, achievement

and saving; and a belief in sorcery that nurtures irrationality and fatalism. Etounga-Manguelle concludes that Africa must “change or perish.” A cultural “adjustment” is not enough. What is needed is a cultural revolution that transforms traditional authoritarian child-rearing practices; transforms education through emphasis on the individual, independent judgment and creativity; produces free individuals working together for the progress of the community; produces an elite concerned with the well-being of the society; and promotes a healthy economy based on the work ethic, the profit motive and individual initiative. This is not to say that addressing culture will solve all problems. Culture is one of several factors that influence progress. But particularly as we view the longer run, culture’s power becomes more apparent. Nathan Glazer observed that people are made uncomfortable or are offended by cultural explanations of why some countries and some ethnic groups do better

than others. But the alternative — to view oneself or one’s group as a victim — is worse. Bernard Lewis recently observed in a Foreign Affairs article that when people realize that things are going wrong, there are two questions they can ask. One is, ‘What did we do wrong?’ and the other is ‘Who did this to us?’ The latter leads to conspiracy theories and paranoia. The first question leads to another line of thinking: ‘How do we put it right?’ Yet the role of cultural values and attitudes as obstacles to or facilitators of progress has been largely ignored by governments and aid agencies. Integrating value and attitude change into policies and programs will assure that, in the next fifty years, the world does not relive the poverty and injustice in which most poor countries have been mired during the past half century’s “decades of development.” Lawrence E. Harrison is an Associate at Harvard’s Academy for International Area Studies.