Kenyan and Korean Management Orientations on Hofstede's Cultural Values

Considerable attention has focused on the relationship of Hofstede's national cultural values to the skills of managers, management practices and industrial and entrepreneurial development. Hofstede's cultural values consider orientations toward authority, uncertainty avoidance, individualism collectivism and masculinity - femininity as relevant attributes. This research applies logistic regression analysis to responses of Kenyan and Korean university graduates to test the ability of Hofstede's cultural value dimensions to distinguish between managerial workers in countries at different levels of industrial development. Findings hold implications for management practices of multinational firms. INTRODUCTION Considerable attention has been paid to the relationship of national cultural values to the skills of managers, management practices (Hofstede 1975; 1980; 1991; Schneider, 1989; Jaeger, 1990; Schneider & DeMeyer, 1991; Peterson et al, 1995) and industrial and entrepreneurial development (Franke, Hofstede & Bond, 1991; Hofstede & Bond, 1988; Shane, 1994; Yeh & Lawrence, 1995). Hofstede's work measuring cultural values associated with relationship to authority, uncertainty avoidance, individualism- collectivism, and masculinity femininity orientations has been particularly influential (Hofstede 1975; 1980; 1991; Hope, 1990). However, research in this area has not been integrated with sociological literature on industrial development and changes in core values. This research applies logistic regression analysis to responses of Kenyan and Korean university graduates to test the ability of Hofstede's cultural value dimensions distinguish between managerial workers in two nations at different levels of industrial development. The findings have implications for managerial practices of multinational firms. Theoretical and Research Background The current interest in the implications of national cultural values for management practice, and Hofstede's approach in particular, have roots in two fundamental themes of late l9th century social science: functionalism and social evolution. Influenced by Darwin's theories of biological evolution that stirred intellectual thought in the late 1800's, and by the cultural exposure of western Europe to non-western societies in Africa, South America, and the Pacific rim (through mercantilism, economic imperialism, and colonial development), Western European sociologists and anthropologists developed theories of cultural and social evolution (Martindale, 1960). Under the cultural blinders of enthnocentrism, a view of social evolution developed that implicitly cast western style societies such as England, France, and Belgium as examples of the "progress" of social evolution. Never mind that Darwin's theory of natural selection did not depend on a value - or self-serving laden - concept of progress. The intellectual climate of western Europe at that time embraced a form of social and cultural "Darwinism" that cast comparisons of western Europe and less industrial nations as polar opposites, while seeking a view of culture in which social and cultural traits were seen as functional for the maintenance of the society as a whole. Today, a more enlightened view may forego the implicit notion of "progress" in social development, but may still benefit from the polar typologies derived in that intellectual period of western thought. Two influential social theories of the last half of the 19th century were the GemeinschaftGesellschaft theory of Ferdinand Tonnies ( 1887; Parsons et al. 1961) and the mechanical versus organic solidarity theory of Emile Durkheim (1893; Parsons et al. 1961). While we now recognize that social systems are more complex and cannot be explained by simplistic notions of natural evolutionary progress, these concepts may still help today's international managers anticipate how cultural values that motivate individual behavior may vary with differences in social structures and with industrialization in particular. …