Homogenity and Hetrogenity of National Cultures

HOMOGENITY AND HETROGENITY OF NATIONAL CULTURES

Antecedents of national culture have not been widely studied in management research or in any other discipline. The disciplines like geography, anthropology, sociology, political science etc. have looked into many factors which can be described as antecedents of culture. However there is not much research which integrates these antecedents to culture described in these disciplines. Given these antecedents to culture, homogenous national culture models may not hold for a multilingual, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, geographically and economically diverse country like China, India, Russia etc. The notion of national culture itself is based on an older concept of nation state. The origin of the concept of culture lies in the ethnographic studies of anthropology, where specific tribes or societies are observed and a set of observation about their norms, rituals, language, physical structures, stories, food, festivals, social relations etc. are noted. This construct has seen its emergence in organizational studies with the movement of US and European firms outside their country of origin and with the increasing diversity of workforce in organizations owing to the increased migration of workforce and participation of people who were earlier on the fringes. The culture as a construct has been studied at many levels, but one which has been used or extended at all levels is the notion of national culture. First, in the use of multidimensional construct vs. single dimensional construct and second, in the conception of national culture as one homogenous programming vs. a heterogeneous programming. The multidimensional conceptions of national culture are in true sense the models of national culture. They are more comprehensive and suited to analysis of national culture. However the most famous work of national culture came from Hofstede (1980). He conceptualized national culture as “collective programming” of the mind that...