Abstract
The GLOBE study of national cultures identified nine dimensions of culture. These nine dimensions were measured in the form of societal practices (as things are) and societal values (as things should be). The correlations between practices and values for societies, surprisingly, were found to be significantly negative for seven dimensions. Apparently, people's values are contrary to their practices. A note, which appeared in a recent issue of this journal, proposes that these anomalous correlations result from diminishing marginal utility. The note argues that marginal utility theory applies to cultural dimensions, and that the GLOBE values measure societies’ marginal preferences for most of the dimensions, rather than total preference weights. Through close analysis of the questionnaire items used by the GLOBE team, we show that this is not the case. We demonstrate that the GLOBE questions, as asked, do not elicit marginal preferences. In fact they elicit values, as claimed by GLOBE, but recognizing that values may well be shaped, in part, by existing practices. We call for further study into the GLOBE scores, as it is likely that different explanations apply to practices/values relationships across different dimensions.
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Notes
MH state, “the questionnaire included ‘should be’ questions, each one corresponding to an ‘as is’ question” (2009: 528). Actually, the “as is” (practices) questions do not precisely correspond to the “should be” (values) questions in all cases. Wording sometimes changes and, in the case of some dimensions, there are different numbers of practices and values questions.
The dimensions with significant negative correlations (**p<0.01, *p<0.05) are assertiveness (r=−0.26*), institutional collectivism (r=−0.61**), future orientation (r=−0.41**), humane orientation (r=−0.32*), performance orientation (r=−0.28*), power distance (r=−0.43**) and uncertainty avoidance (r=−0.62**). The only dimension with a significantly positive correlation is gender egalitarianism (r=0.32*). In-group collectivism has a positive but insignificant correlation (r=0.21) (House et al., 2004: 736).
Average quartile society scores for both GLOBE practices and values for all dimensions can be found at Javidan et al. (2006: 902).
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Accepted by Alain Verbeke, Area Editor, 19 October 2009.
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Brewer, P., Venaik, S. GLOBE practices and values: A case of diminishing marginal utility?. J Int Bus Stud 41, 1316–1324 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2010.23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2010.23