A Linguistic-Based Measure of Cultural Distance and Its Relationship to Managerial Values1

Zusammenfassung

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Measuring culture is a central issue in international management research and is traditionally accomplished using indices of cultural values. Herein the researchers present a new linguistic-based measure of cultural distance (based on linguistic genealogical classification) that is both more fundamental and more widely applicable than values surveys. Structural equation modeling techniques are used to show links to the cultural values dimensions delineated by Hofstede (1980) to show the key results of this study. The researchers also demonstrate relationships between linguistic distance and other measures of managerial values using three additional data sets. The analyses provides strong support for the association between language spoken and managerial values. Differences in managerial values across countries are consistently and in large degree explained by differences in languages spoken.

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Auszug

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A Linguistic-Based Measure of Cultural Distance and Its Relationship to Managerial Values1

It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

George Orwell, 1984

Language carries with it patterns of seeing, knowing, talking, and acting ... patterns that mark the easier trails for thought and perception and action.

Michael Agar, Language Shock

Although written almost fifty years apart, Orwell (1949) and Agar (1994) succinctly anticipate the fundamental issue addressed in this paper: to what extent is management thought dependent on language spoken? Our purposes here are twofold. First we propose a new measure of cultural distance - linguistic distance - that can be readily applied in the broadest array of cross-cultural research circumstances. second we test hypotheses about the influence of language spoken on managerial values in the international context. Toward these ends we specifically determine the relationship between our measure of linguistic distance (based on linguistic genealogical classification) and Hofstede's (1980) four dimensions of culture using two separate sets of data. The relationships between linguistic distance and other multi-cultural measures of management values are also explored using two other data sets.

From the early study of Haire, Ghiselli, and Porter (1966), empirical work on managerially relevant differences in culture has tended to focus on values. The recent emphasis of this approach can be directly attributed to Triandis (1977) and Hofstede (1980). The latter provided numerical values for four measures of culture, allowing cultural differences to be directly used as independent (or moderating) variables to explain differences in behaviors in business settings across cultures. Such differences have included, for example, reward allocation, human resource practices, strategic choice, and negotiation styles.

There are limits to usability of these values-based measures of culture, however. Because of cost, researchers have generally been constrained in the breadth of their work, limiting comparisons of Hofstede's indices (to take one example) to ar...

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