Adversity Diversity

The mantra of the American worker may well be “Change is the one constant we can count on.” From reorganizing and downsizing to expanding and diversifying, many U.S. companies find they need to better equip their employees to deal with this ever-present force--change--be it through brainstorming, team-building or adversity-skills training.

But how people deal with adversity is not simply determined on a personal level, according to social psychologist Geert Hofstede. We tend to approach conflict according to the norms of our society. From our families and in our schools, we learn what is socially acceptable, and it’s further enforced by our surroundings and interactions as we mature. Different groups have historically embraced very different attitudes about conflict and created their own rules for its resolution.

In his book “Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values” (Sage Publications, 1984), Hofstede wrote that culture is to a collective what personality is to an individual. It serves as the glasses through which people see the world.

Some say most cultures peer through “spectacles” that create a sort of societal nearsightedness, with a clear vision of the realm in which they live but a hazier view of the worlds beyond.

Through analysis of data from 40 countries, Hofstede boiled down the “mental programs,” or fundamental value dimensions, to four areas: “power distance,” tolerance of uncertainty, gender roles and the role of the individual.

Societies such as Japan with high power distances “will tend not to question people in positions of power,” said Jose de la Torre, director of the Center for International Business Education and Research at UCLA’s Anderson School.

De la Torre cited the crash of a Taiwanese plane that killed all 203 people aboard, saying that analysts attributed the tragedy, in part, to adherence to the separation of superiors and subordinates.

“The co-pilots saw the problem but were very respectful of the pilot and unwilling to contradict him,” he said.

However, in the U.S., a country with a lower power distance, “we don’t particularly sit in awe of bosses, and [we] tell them when they’re wrong.”

Ed Winder agrees. He spent a total of 30 months in Japan, much of the time as vice president of Japan operations for Menlo Park, Calif.-based software company Informix.

“Structure is very important in Japan,” he said. “You don’t have insubordination.”

Although Winder, now senior vice president of marketing and sales worldwide at Active Software, said he observed a distinct hierarchy, everyone in the company was involved when it came to decisions.

“When a decision is made in Japan, there is little chance of it not happening,” because it has the support of the employees, from the lowliest to the loftiest post, he said.

Planning represents an attempt to reduce uncertainty, Hofstede wrote. According to him, among the characteristics of countries with high “uncertainty avoidance” are having a strong need for consensus, nationalism, concern with security in life and the belief that the uncertainty inherent in life is a continuous threat that must be fought.

“Change is what’s difficult for the Japanese,” Winder said. “We [in the U.S.] change on a dime.”

Change is also a rarity in India, said Sidanand Singh, a former professor and founder of Singular Publishing. “The [government] system is tied to tradition, maintaining the status quo,” Singh said. “The system protects everybody.”

Both Winder and Singh stressed the important role employment plays in Japan and India.

“It’s a way of life that what you do defines you,” Winder said. “When you sign on with a company, it’s for life.”

In fact, an employee’s right to lifetime employment is written into Japan’s labor laws, said Gwen Hanna, a Silicon Graphics senior human resources manager who was born in Japan and often travels there on business. Some Japanese companies, however, are trying to move from that model and the age-based pay scale to a performance-based system, she said.

In India, there is a faith in the long term, bolstered by the cultural belief in the afterlife, he said.

“In the face of adversity, the Indian attitude is that it must be God’s will,” Singh said.

Hofstede wrote that although the rituals and rules cultures devise to limit ambiguity don’t make the future more predictable, they relieve some of the stress of uncertainty.

Countries that ranked among the high-uncertainty-avoidance group include Austria and Germany, Hofstede wrote. Those among the low end are Britain, the Netherlands and the U.S. By definition, he wrote, a low uncertainty avoidance means a greater willingness to take risks.

These days, such differences are important to note, with the growing interest in international mergers, such as the recently announced union of Chrysler and Germany’s Daimler-Benz.

Often, Americans view continents (Africa, Europe, Asia) as countries, ascribing monolithic responses and rituals to a geographic collection of diverse peoples, Hofstede wrote. But oceans don’t have to separate countries for differences to be discernible. Actually, neighboring countries might differ significantly in personality. Haiti and the Dominican Republic, for example, share the island of Hispaniola, but their citizens speak different languages and have different cultures.

The same is true for U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico, which seem to place less emphasis on the individual. Mexicans, meanwhile, tend to place a great deal of importance on the family, said Judith Larsen, a former kindergarten teacher in Mexico. Seven years ago, she left her native Tepoctlan, about 90 minutes from Mexico City. She now is a coordinator for an art program for abused children at the Monterey Park courthouse.

“Something that happens with you, it happens with all the members of the family,” Larsen said. In the U.S., “everyone is living in their own small world.”

In Canada, the nation tends to be more nurturing, more concerned with the collective, more feminine than the U.S., said Martin Rutte, president of Livelihood, a Santa Fe-based management-consulting firm. “It began as a resource-based economy,” he said. “So you had to work together” to gather food and prepare for the harsh winters. “The U.S. was born on individual rights.”

“The U.S. is like the son who had to go out and find his own way; Canada is like the daughter who didn’t break from her mother,” Rutte, a Canadian, said of the two countries’ relationships with Britain.

That tie to Mother Britain affects the way Canadians live, he said. “Traditions are relatively important, because we kept tradition with the queen [of England]; we kept the French tradition,” Rutte said. “Our society is more transparent [than the U.S.]. You can’t fool around.”

Because Canada is a much smaller nation, he said, it is easier for people to hold others accountable for their actions should they violate mores.

Similarly, in Mexican culture, tradition and social responsibility motivate the society, Larsen said.

“Most of the people [in Mexico] act according to our society,” Larsen said. “They pay close attention to what people are going to say.”

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One way tradition manifests itself is in gender roles. Latin American countries Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia scored far to the masculine end of the spectrum, Hofstede writes. Argentina and Brazil scored in the middle, while Peru and Chile were more feminine.

“The father is the one who says it, but the mother has the last word,” Larsen said of her homeland. Her uncles and male cousins rule the roost, but behind closed doors, the women lay down the law. “It’s really kind of contradictory.”

But social roles in Mexico, have been evolving, she said. Women encourage and bolster one another through this transformation, she said. “It’s changing. . . . Now women are working, and they’re taking their lives in their hands.”

Discussing the attributes of various cultures is no less daunting than mapping a land mass based on a few grains of sand. And as cultures continue to cross-pollinate one another, there will be many shades of gray among the ostensibly black-and-white characteristics--more questions than answers, more observations than absolutes.