45 percent of the seats in Parliament, and in its 2013 election, Norway saw 40 per-
cent of parliamentary seats won by women.^74
The impact of masculinity/femininity on a culture can also be observed in the
“gender gap”survey. To determine the gender gap in countries, the World Economic
Forum conducts a yearly survey to measure these four categories: (1) economic partic-
ipation and opportunity, (2) educational attainment, (3) health and survival, and
(4) political empowerment. In the political empowerment category of the 2013 report
(which assessed 136 nations), Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden were ranked as
the top four; the United States was twenty-three, Mexico sixty-eight, Italy seventy-
one, and Japan 105.^75 These rankings generally parallel Hofstede’s findings.Long- and Short-Term Orientation
Over the years, Hofstede’s study has been widely critiqued, and one major complaint
concerns the Western bias that influenced data collection. To resolve the problem,
Hofstede offered a new dimension called long- versus short-term orientation, also
referred to as“Confucian work dynamism.”^76 Identification of this dimension came
from a study of twenty-three countries using an assessment called the Chinese Value
Survey (CVS), developed from values suggested by Chinese scholars.^77 While admit-
ting that westerners might find this fifth orientation perplexing, Hofstede originally
linked the dimension to Confucianism, because it appeared“to be based on items
reminiscent of the teachings of Confucius, on both poles.”^78
Recognizing the inherent weakness of basing the dimension on data from only
twenty-three nations, Minkov and Hofstede drew on World Values Survey (WVS)
data to replicate and extend the study to thirty-eight nations.^79 Reporting the results
of their analysis in late 2010, the two researchers disclosed,“China and other East
Asian countries tended to score high on the dimension, suggesting a long-term orien-
tation. Continental European countries had average scores, whereas Anglo, African,
and South Asian countries had low scores, suggestive of a short-term orientation.”^80
The research was subsequently extended to encompass ninety-three countries, and the
dimension was most recently defined as follows:“Long-term orientation stands for the
fostering of virtues oriented toward future rewards—in particular, perseverance and
thrift. Its opposite pole, short-term orientation, stands for the fostering of virtues
related to the past and present—in particular, respect for tradition, preservation of
‘face,’and fulfilling social obligations.”^81 After identifying high scores among some
East European nations, Hofstede and his colleagues no longer consider the dimen-
sion’s association with Confucianism to be appropriate. Rather, they now see the
long-term/short-term orientation to be“a universal dimension of national culture,
underpinned by concepts that are meaningful across the whole world.”^82
For a practical application of the values, you might easily envision how the patterns
could influence communication in a business context. Corporate organizations in cul-
tures that rank high on the long-term orientation scale, such as in China and South
Korea, would be characterized by a focus on obtaining market share, rewarding employees
based on organizational loyalty, strong interpersonal connections, situational ethics,
adaptability, and self-discipline. Leisure time would not be a central concern. In contrast,
organizations possessing a short-term orientation, like those in Mexico, the United
States, and Egypt, would emphasize short-term profits, use merit to reward employees,
experience transient organizational loyalty, and consider ethics to be based on a set of
universal principles. Personal freedom and leisure time would be significant values.^83230 CHAPTER 6•Cultural Values: Road Maps for Behavior
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