mirror mirror on the wall-cultures consequences in a value test of its own design
Academy of Management Review
2008, Vol. 33, No. 4, 885–904.
MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL: CULTURE’S
CONSEQUENCES IN A VALUE TEST OF ITS
OWN DESIGN
GALIT AILON
Bar-Ilan University
The paper offers a critical reading of Geert Hofstede’s (1980) Culture’s Consequences using an analytical strategy where the book is mirrored against itself and analyzed in terms of its own proposed value dimensions. “Mirroring” unravels the book’s normative viewpoint and political subtext and exposes discursive interests in its research process. Making all this evident in the canonical book’s own terms, this paper communicates critical concerns across paradigm boundaries. It indicates the need to reconsider concepts and convictions that predominate cross-cultural research and to adopt norms of reflexivity that transcend existing notions of “cultural relativism.”
globalization, there seems to be a need to further these attempts at reevaluating its foundations. To a great extent, the knowledge produced in this field is still firmly rooted in the orthodoxy of functionalist, “normal” science—its positivist epistemology and objectivist rhetoric (see Burrell & Morgan, 1979). While there are a few interpretive, emically oriented case studies (e.g.,
Ahrens, 1996; Brannen, 2004), these generally remain a marginalized pursuit (MarschanPiekkari & Welch, 2004); studies are usually nomothetic and quantitative, with researchers posing themselves as discoverers of universal regularities and systematic causal relationships. Cultural relativism, when admitted, is seen to relate to the scientist—not to science itself—and is accordingly “corrected” by rituals of confession, (rare) attempts to create crosscultural research teams, or various “bias control” techniques. In this vein, international management thought is evolving into quite a large body of thought— one that, despite its name, underrepresents many regions of the world in terms of authorship and topics of analysis
2008, Vol. 33, No. 4, 885–904.
MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL: CULTURE’S
CONSEQUENCES IN A VALUE TEST OF ITS
OWN DESIGN
GALIT AILON
Bar-Ilan University
The paper offers a critical reading of Geert Hofstede’s (1980) Culture’s Consequences using an analytical strategy where the book is mirrored against itself and analyzed in terms of its own proposed value dimensions. “Mirroring” unravels the book’s normative viewpoint and political subtext and exposes discursive interests in its research process. Making all this evident in the canonical book’s own terms, this paper communicates critical concerns across paradigm boundaries. It indicates the need to reconsider concepts and convictions that predominate cross-cultural research and to adopt norms of reflexivity that transcend existing notions of “cultural relativism.”
globalization, there seems to be a need to further these attempts at reevaluating its foundations. To a great extent, the knowledge produced in this field is still firmly rooted in the orthodoxy of functionalist, “normal” science—its positivist epistemology and objectivist rhetoric (see Burrell & Morgan, 1979). While there are a few interpretive, emically oriented case studies (e.g.,
Ahrens, 1996; Brannen, 2004), these generally remain a marginalized pursuit (MarschanPiekkari & Welch, 2004); studies are usually nomothetic and quantitative, with researchers posing themselves as discoverers of universal regularities and systematic causal relationships. Cultural relativism, when admitted, is seen to relate to the scientist—not to science itself—and is accordingly “corrected” by rituals of confession, (rare) attempts to create crosscultural research teams, or various “bias control” techniques. In this vein, international management thought is evolving into quite a large body of thought— one that, despite its name, underrepresents many regions of the world in terms of authorship and topics of analysis
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