‘national culture’ shapes the behaviour | My Assignment Tutor

Published in Yvette Sáchez and Claudia Franziska Brühwiller (2015)(Eds.) Transculturalism and Business in the BRIC States, Gower, 13-58. GLOBE, HALL, HOFSTEDE, HUNTINGTON, TROMPENAARS: COMMON FOUNDATIONS, COMMON FLAWS Brendan McSweeney Introduction The notion that ‘national culture’ shapes the behaviour of the populations of discrete national territories (countries) both within and outside of organizations (e.g. the decisions and actions of managers and consumers) has extensive support within both the academic and management consultancy communities (Breidenbach and Nyiri, 2009). Research, teaching and training which attribute such causal power to national culture relies heavily on the conceptions and descriptions of such cultures by Geert Hofstede; the multi-authored Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project (GLOBE); or Fons Trompenaarsi. An indication of the popularity of their work and of ‘national culture’ as an explanatory variable within the academic (overwhelmingly management) arena is that Hofstede’s research is one of the most cited in the entire Social Science Citation Index (Parboteeah, Hoegel and Cullen, 2008). Those citations include critiques, but largely they are supportive. His magnum opus – ‘Cultures’ Consequences’ – has become an almost emblematic citation in a number of management disciplines. Both GLOBE’s and Trompenaars’ research is also very widely cited (Tung and Verbeke, 2010). The popularity in management of the Trio’s claims – despite the theoretical, empirical and practical limitations of their research – is, perhaps, not surprising, given the increasing pressures on academics and others to be instantly and visibly “relevant” (March & Sutton, 1997) during an era of enormous acceleration of the inter/trans-nationalisation of business and markets. Their views about the characteristics and consequences of ‘national culture’ receive legitimacy from deeply entrenched belief in national primordiality and uniqueness (Willman, 2014; McSweeney, 2009). Although the Trio have at times engaged in intense criticisms of each others’ research they have much in common. Their differences are, as Earley states, only “minor variants on one another’s styles” (2006: 923). The postulates they share include – national cultures are: (1) values – defined as invariant transituational preferences;(2) universally shared by the population of a country; (3) coherent (contradiction-free/integrated); (4) the fundamental cause/source of behavior and artefacts; (5) stable; (6) identifiable from the mean scores of answers to self-response survey questions from a minute portion of a national population; (7) depicable in league (ranking) tables (indices) of ‘dimensions’ (quantifiable comparators)(Taras and Steel, 2009; McSweeney, 2002a). In short, each national population location is conceived of as a container of an undifferentiated measurable culture which moulds the social in its supposed geographical domain. Each of the seven postulates (above), but 6 and 7 especially, have been critiqued (see Bock 1999, 2000; Breidenbach and Nyíri, 2009; Brewer and Venaik, 2010; Duncan 1980; Earley, 2009; Fang, 2005, 2012; Gerhard and Fang, 2005; Harzing, 2006; Johnson, et al., 2005; Kitayama, 2002; Kuper 1999; Maseland and van Horn, 2010; Magala, 2009; McSweeney, 2002a,b, 2009; Moore, 2012; Schwartz, S. H. 1994; Willman, 2014 for instance). Space does not permit a review of the commentary on all of the postulates. Instead, the chapter considers some aspects which have received comparatively less attention in the management literature. These are: downward conflation (the belief or assumption that the macro (in this instance the national) is replicated at, indeed creates, lower hierarchical levels (organization, individuals, or whatever). More specifically it discusses a crucial methodological error (the ecological fallacy) which characterises an extraordinarily large number of papers which purport to apply the findings of one or other aspect of the Trio’s work. This section also considers the cultural generalizations of Samuel P. Huntington who shares Postulates 1 to 5 with the Trio and those of Edward T. Hall who shares Postulates 2 to 5. However, his primary focus is on the populations in or from multinational/regional locations which he calls “civilizations”. Although the Trio also make general claims about such large populations, they do so to a lesser extent than Huntington. The chapter then considers the implied, and sometimes explicit assumption, in the their work and the work of their followers that national cultures are coherent, that is, integrated and non-contradictory. National culture cannot logically be said to have uniform and enduring national “consequences” without that invalid assumption. Following that it discusses the assumption of the fixity of national boundaries within which unique and stable national cultures are said to be located. Finally, it considers a misleading, representation of intra-national variation – the view that countries are composites of multiple mono-cultures. The discussion of these matters is preceded by a commentary on the notion of culture employed by the GLOBE, Hofstede, Huntington and Trompenaars (but not by Hall). A brief overview of the ‘dimensions’ employed by the GLOBE, Hofstede and Trompenaars to depict ‘national cultures’ or national cultural differences is provided in an annex located at the end of this chapter. Culture as Values What is, or is meant by, ‘culture’ – national or other? As early as the 1950s, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn estimated – in a survey of English language sources only – that there were already over 160 definitions of culture (“and its near-synonym civilization”) in use (1952). One can distinguish between at least five types of cultural theories: psychological (culture as subjective values); mentalism (or cognition); textualism; intersubjectivism; and practise theory. On a very basic level these schools offer opposing locations and conceptions of culture. However, as Michael Hechter observes, few concepts of culture “are bandied about more liberally in popular, normative, and explanatory scholarly discourse than that of values” (1993: 1)(emphasis in original) – defined as enduring transituational preferences. Taras, Rowney and Steel’s analysis of 136 publically available instruments for measuring culture revealed that almost all existing instruments and their underlying models of culture are focused on values and overlook other attributes of culture (2009). Within many sub-fields of management, it is the bedrock definition of culture. It is this notion of culture that the Trio rely on. GLOBE might seem to have also compared countries on the basis of “practices” and thus produced two different sets of cultural indices. But both are espoused value indices as what GLOBE labels ‘practices’ are not practices in the sense of the actions of individuals or collectivities but merely respondents’ views about existing social values “in my society” (Earley, 2006). But in any event, the identification of culture defined by GLOBE, Hofstede, Trompenaars and Huntington – as causal transituational preferences – confronts a variety of impediments. These include: their unobservability; the possible roles of a host of other psychological constructs (desires, goals, motives, needs, traits, aversions, tastes, valences, sentiments, and so forth); the multiplicity of definitions of values – as early as 1963 Campbell listed 76 uses of the term- and the opaque link between values and actions. In contrast, Swidler (1986: 273), for instance, states that the values “model used to understand culture’s effects on action is fundamentally misleading”. John Meyer and his colleagues state that “[a] notion of ‘abstract values internalized by individuals through socialization simply leaves out too much’ and is given ‘too much reified inevitability’. They describe as ‘primitive’ the notion of culture as ‘a cluster of consensual general values’ (Meyer et al. 1994: 11–12, 17) and they explicitly reject the Parsonian idea (which the Trio heavily draw on) of a general value system into which individuals are socialized (ibid.: 12)(See also, Joas, 2000; Rohan, 2000). Ailon, 2008; Bock 1999; Breidenbach and Nyíri 2009; Cooper 1982; Gerhart and Fang 2005; Maseland and van Hoorn, 2010). Furthermore, the assumption that values are unaffected by context – that they are invariant transituational preferences – is also at odds with an immense amount of contrary evidence (Ewing, 1990; Shweder, 1999). Culture As Determinate ‘National culture’ (hereafter ‘culture’) – if it is assumed to exist – can be theorized on a range from the scarcely significant to the dominant driver. The view that culture has “affects”, “effects”, “influence”, “consequences”, “manifestations”; “impacts”, or “outcomes” whether deemed weak or strong, are distinguishable from claims that merely point to possible statistical relationships, associations or correlations. At one causal pole, culture is represented as the foundation for just about everything social. Culture supposedly orchestrates behaviour. An important, perhaps the most influential, attraction of the Trio’s depictions of culture is the breathtaking claim that it shapes the social action of defined populations enduringly and predictably. It “affect[s] human thinking, feeling, and acting, as well as organizations and institutions” Hofstede & Hofstede, state, “in predictable ways” (2005: 31)(emphasis added). “[L]anguage, food, buildings, houses, monuments, agriculture, shrines, markets, fashions and art”, are Trompenaars states, “symbols of a deeper [subjective] level culture” (1997: 21). Subjective values are treated as the incontestable causal core. The ontological status of the ‘inner’ is distinguished from the ‘outer’ (institutions, practices, and so forth) but at the same time national culture is their cause. “Values”, Allport states, are “the dominating force in life” (1961: 543). “Culture” Etounga-Manguelle states, “is the mother, institutions are the children” (2000). Johns (2006) describes culture’ as “a contextual imperative”. In the tradition of early to middle Parsons (1951: 37), culture is conceived of as “normative pattern-structuring values” which act as a hierarchically superordinated control system (Schmid 1992). Beneath, or behind, the “luxuriant variety, even apparent randomness” (Ortner, 1984: 136) of life is posited a causal psychoculture. The basic idea, as Clifford Geertz critically observes, is that culture is “a set of control mechanisms – plans, recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engineers call ‘programs’) – for governing behavior” (1973: 44). It is held to be as Hofstede described it “the software of the mind”. In contrast, Geertz states, “culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed” (1973: 14). GLOBE, Hofstede and Trompenaars occasionally, and inconsistently, mention the possible causal influences in addition to national culture. But mere acknowledgement of other cultures or non-cultural factors without incorporating them into their dimensional models of causally determinate values is an empty gesture (McSweeney, 2009). What evidence do the Trio provide of the power of culture? There is zero empirical evidence derived or derivable from their questionnaire and/or interview based depictions of national cultures or statistical representations of those cultures, of an influence on individuals’ behaviour (Gerhard & Fang, 2005). The asserted link between the descriptions of a national culture and national action is not extracted from, and is not extractable from, respondents’ answers. It is presupposed. Societal level models of all types, not just the cultural, often lack clarity about causality (Oyserman and Uskul, 2008). A ‘cause’ is described (well or badly) as is the outcome(s). But the causal process, the linkages between cause and outcome is too often not unfolded for the reader at least. Instead of descriptions of situated causal mechanisms, the mere fact that two conditions exist, or are supposed to exist, in the same time and space is, together with a general causal theory, treated as sufficient evidence that one caused the other. There is an inverse relationship between the compoundness of a concept and the number of cases attributable to, or covered by, it (Mahoney, 2004; Sartori, 1970). Sub-national analysis will often demonstrate the information poverty of national averages and reveal considerable heterogeneity within countries (Smith, McSweeney and Fitzgerald, 2008). Even if we suppose that (a) the Trio’s mean values scores are accurate national averages; and (b) that values are causal – both highly contested notions – deducing the subnational from anyone of the Trio’s averages and rankings is at best wholly speculative. As Starbuck states: “comparisons between averages may say nothing about specific situations” (2004: 1245). National level data obscures considerable within-country variation. Of course, there are some national uniformities, for instance, most cars are driven on the right-hand side of the road in Brazil; in India many drive on the left-hand side – because of legal requirements a legacy of British colonial rule. The claim that national uniformities are a consequence of ‘national culture’ is a mere assertion that ignores other possible explanations. In any event, there is a vast body of empirical data depicting considerable behavioural variation within countries (see, for example, Au, 1999; Camelo et al., 2004; Crouch, 2005; Goold and Campbell, 1987; Huo and Randall, 1991; Kondo, 1990; Lenartowicz et al., 2003; O’Sullivan, 2000; Streeck and Thelen, 2005; Tsurumi, 1988; Weiss and Delbecq, 1987; Yanagisako, 2002). In short, as Peterson, Arregle and Martin (2012) state, there is an increasingly documented variability in cultural, institutional, and economic characteristics within nations. Examples of positive correlations between one or other of the Trio’s measurements and a practice (organizational or other) are sometimes held out to be evidence of a causal relationship between the former and the latter. But a correlation, of itself, is not evidence of causality and almost any causal theory will generate some correct predictions. Thus, identification of confirming examples is not proof that a theory is correct (Starbuck, 2004). Positive examples can be found for almost any theory. For example, table salt dissolves in warm water every time someone utters a ‘magic word’ before immersing the salt in the water. Looking only at positive examples fails to reveal a vital falsification. The salt is, of course, equally likely to dissolve without the ‘spell’, as the spell has no influence, but a positive test strategy will only identify instances of dissolving when a spell is uttered (Lieberson, 1992). It will not look at what happens when there is no spell. Cultural Conflation Social phenomena are complex not merely because they are almost always the outcome of multiple variables but also because those variables can combine in a variety of ways, at different times and at different levels or strata in society. The combinatorial, and often complexly, nature of social causation makes identification of causation or prediction highly challenging and far beyond the capability of unilevel analysis even when the latter is well executed. Relationships identified at one level of analysis may be stronger or weaker at a different level of analysis, or may even reverse direction (Klein and Kozlowski 2000; Ostroff 1993). Making direct translations of properties or relations from one level to another, by projecting from a higher level to a lower (from the national to organizational or individual) – is unwarranted even it we suppose that the depiction of the national level is accurate. That methodological crime is a reliance on the ecological fallacyii (Selvin, 1958): the fallacious inference that the characteristics (concepts and/or metrics) of an aggregate (historically called ‘ecological’) level also describe those at a lower hierarchical level or levels. The fallacy is also sometimes called the “disaggregation error” (Van de Vijver & Poortinga, 2002); the “fallacy of unwarranted subsumption” (Knorr-Cetina, 1988); or “the fallacy of division” (Aristotle, 350BC in Axinn, 1958). In short, each part is assumed to have the same characteristic or characteristics of the wholeiii and thus that extrapolation from a higher level to lower ones accurately describes the lower. An illustrative example is: the false derivation that any Japanese individual is collectivist because Japan, it is supposed, is culturally a collectivist country (cf. Ryang, 2004). A completed jig-saw is usually a rectangle, but the individual pieces of the jig-saw are not rectangles. The colour green is a composite of blue and yellow. Employment of the fallacy usually leads to false results. As Robinson observes, whilst it is theoretically possible for ecological and individual correlations to be equal, the conditions under which this can happen are far removed from those ordinarily encountered in data (Robinson, 1950)(cf. Steel & Ones, 2002). An implicit and usually false assumption made when relying on the ecological fallacy is that the population being described is homogeneous. Clearly, downward conflation leads to misrepresentation whenever populations are not wholly homogeneous. Rather belatedly the heterogeneity of national populations is being acknowledged in management. Intra-national diversity makes national representations invalid for sub-national analysis but that inconvenient truth is widely ignored by many of the Trio’s followers. But error may also occur when a property at one level is attributed to a homogeneous group at a lower level. Schwartz (1994), citing, Zito (1975), gives the illustrative example of the discrepancy between a hung jury at two levels. As a group, a hung jury is an indecisive jury, unable to decide the guilt or innocence of the accused. However, attributing that characteristic to the individual members of the jury would be incorrect as the jury is hung because its individual members have very strong views. They are not indecisive. The ecological fallacy has been addressed quite extensively in studies of epidemiology and electoral behaviour. It has not been widely considered in the management and business literature. And it appears to have been largely ignored in popular research methods textbooks in that arena. The view that every individual in a country has identical values/attitudes/dispositions is often called stereotyping in everyday parlance. Fortunately, the attribution of supposed or observed uniformity to ‘genes’,iv that is racism, is a view now repugnant to most people. But is attributing such similarity to ‘culture’ fundamentally different? The architect of apartheid in South Africa, Werner Eiselen, stated that culture, not race, was the true basis of difference (Giliomee, 2003). Gelfand, Erez and Aycan (2007: 496) point out that “level of analysis confusion also continues to abound … research continues to blindly apply culture-level theory to the individual level …”. Nancy Adler, for instance, states that a national “cultural orientation describes the attitude of most people most of the time” (2002: 19). And yet, Daphna Oyserman, Heather Coon and Markus Kemmelmeier’s analysis of all cross-national empirical research studies published in English on individualism and/or collectivism (the ‘dimension’ of national culture which has received the most empirical attention) found that country explains only 1.2 per cent of the variance in individual-level individualism scores, that is 98.8% of variance in individualism is unexplained by country (2002). Reviewing Hofstede’s own data, Barry Gerhart and Meiyu Fang point out that: “somewhere between 2 and 4 percent [only of individual-level answers to questionnaire questions upon which Hofstede built his national cultural descriptions] is explained by country” (2005: 977)v. Individuals, groups, and organizations engage with sub-national levels and not with abstract national level representations (real or mythical). For instance, in dealing with a company even if staffed by employees of a single nationality, say Russians, one does not negotiate with Rusia or with Russians as a unity, or with some representation of Russians but with one or a handful of people from Russia. Whilst there may be widely accepted ways of behaving the attitudes/values/actions of these people is not predictable on the basis of any of the Trio’s depiction of Russian culture. The notion that each Russian person has the characteristics of ‘Russia’ as represented by GLOBE, Hofstede, Trompenaars, or whoever else is stereotyping. An extraordinary number of papers which claim to rely on one or other of the subjective culturalist’s work come close to resurrecting the concept of ‘national character’ – a much criticised notion long abandoned in disciplines such as anthropology (Bock, 1999). As Max Weber stated: “the appeal to national character [Volkscharakter] is generally a mere confession of ignorance’ (1930: 89). But without the widespread reliance on the fallacy – which sustains the illusion that the Trio’s national-level aggregations also describe individuals and groups of individuals – it is very unlikely that their work would have attracted the current level of academic and practitioner interest (Brewer & Vanaik, 2012, 2014; McSweeney, 2009, 2013).vi At times the Trio have strongly condemned the drawing of spurious cross level inference – advice however often ignored by their followers. Hofstede and his collaborator Minkov, for example, state that: “Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture were constructed at the national level. They were underpinned by variables that correlated across nations, not across individuals or organizations. In fact, his dimensions are meaningless as descriptors of individuals or as predictors of individual differences because the variables that define them do not correlate meaningfully across individuals” (Minkov & Hofstede, 2011: 12)(see also Hofstede, 2001: 16, 463). House & Hanges (2004: 99)[GLOBE] say that it is inappropriate to assume that “cultural-level characterizations and relationships apply to individuals within those cultures”. Hanges & Dickon [also GLOBE] emphasise: ‘Finally, it cannot be repeated enough: …They [the scales] were not specifically designed to measure differences within cultures or between individuals’ (Hanges & Dickson, 2004: 146). Trompenaars states that “individuals in the same culture do not necessarily behave according to cultural norms” (Trompenaars, 1997: 26). But the Trio themselves do not always ‘walk-the-talk’. As Brewer & Vanaik state: the “confounding of the levels of analysis permeates through the Hofstede and GLOBE [and Trompenaars] books and publications on national culture dimensions. Both Hofstede and GLOBE commit the error themselves, both in the definitions of their dimensions and the discussion of their findings” (Brewer & Vanaik, 2012: 678)(see also Earley, 2006; McSweeney, 2002b). Thus the “confounding of levels” is not merely the result of “misinterpretations” or “reification and improper extensions” (Taras and Steel, 2009) of the Trio’s work. The Trio themselves bear some of the responsibility. Attempts to define something human which uniquely characterizes a specific country and no other country always fail (Cubitt 1998; Gellner 1983; Kahn, 1989; Sen 2007; Zimmer 1998). Claims to have identified the unique quality of ‘Americanness’, ‘Brazilianness’, ‘Chineseness’ ‘Englishness’, Frenchness’, ‘Germanness’, Indianness, Russianness, or whatever-nationality-ness, always flounder in essentialist impressionism relying on: groundless stereotypes (for instance, all English people are emotionally repressed); features that are not unique (every English person likes an ‘English breakfast’); historical myths (the English have always been distinguished by their tolerance); or national generalizations based on the preferences or dislikes of a sub-national group (the English prefer sweet sherry). These practices are neither shared by all English people nor are they unique to (some) English people. Anderson, Connor, Breuilly, Hobsbawn, Gellner, Weber, and others, have identified numerous ways in which apparently definite markers of national ancientness are in fact of recent origin – “invented traditions” (Hobsbawn and Ranger, 1983). The Scottish tartan is a famous example. It was devised as workgear – for safety purposes – in the eighteenth century by an English ironmaster for his Scottish employees. The notion that it is a primal manifestation of the essence of ‘Scottishness’ is a ‘marketing’ product of nineteenth century nationalist Romanticism (Trevor-Roper, 2008). It is now a symbol of Scottish identity which should not be confused with the Trio’s notion of culture.vii Cavour’s famous dictum that “We have made Italy now we must make the Italians” aptly illustrates the chronic actions by states to create and reinforce the myth of countries as essential unities. Countries are, as Benedict Anderson states, “imagined communities” rather than unities founded on and sustained by primordial ties or values (1991). In recent years, a number of governments, for a variety of motives, including national branding and encouragement of within-country cohesion have sought to identify distinctive national values. None have succeeded and instead have trumpeted banalities that in any event are not nationally distinct such as “tolerance” (UK), “democratic” (Australia). In every arena (however small in terms of population or geographical territory) whilst some patterns may be identifiable there is always evidence of diversity in values descriptions and in practices. For example, homicide rates vary not only between countries (and over time), but they also differ immensely across national locations and between intra-national socio-economic, gender, and ethnic groups (Nisbett and Cohen, 1996); Katz and Darbishire (2000) identified increasing variation in “employment systems” within countries; Tempura, often represented as a quintessentially Japanese dish, was in fact introduced by Portuguese missionaries and was until recently popular only in Southern Japan; there is a wide variation in corporate governance requirements between many US states, for example, the legal protection for shareholders of limited liability was introduced in New York State in 1830 but more than a hundred years later in California in 1931; and so forth. Because of the scale of diversity empirically identified in defined locations, Tung and Verbeke state: “due consideration should be given to intra-national differences” (2010: 1266). Example of such “consideration” are the various studies by Renato Meirelles CEO of Data Popular based in São Paulo of differences in Brazil – including responses to advertising images – not only between different ‘class’ layers but also within each class, especially within the heterogeneous middle class(es)viii (see also Au, 1999; Balbinot, 2012; Brockner, 2005; Fearon, 2003; Gaines and Kappeler 2003; Gerhart, 2008; Gong, et al., 2011; Goold and Campbell, 1987; Gouveia, 2013; Hofstede et al., 2010; Kaasa et al., 2014; Martin, 2014; McSweeney, 2009; Smith, McSweeney and Fitzgerald, 2008; Steel and Taras, 2010). The notion that national populations have been collectively programmed is sometimes extended to multinational, regional or cross regional populations, for example, Anglo/Arab/Asian/East Asian/Eastern/Latin American/Middle Eastern/Western culture/thinking/values/view/mind/epistemologies/systems of knowledge (Dorfman et al., 2012; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta, 2004; Hofstede and Bond, 1988; Kuperman, 2008; Metcalfe, 2007; Minkov and Hofstede, 2012; Özkazanc-Pan, 2008; Roberston, 2000; Trompenaars, 1997, for instance). An infatuation with the cultural notion of ‘Asianness’ was reinvigorated by business school led explanations for the “economic miracles” first of Japan, then more widely of the “Asian tiger economies”, and now especially of China (See Dorfman et al., 2012; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta, 2004; Hofstede and Bond, 1988; Metcalfe, 2007; Minkov and Hofstede, 2012; Özkazanc-Pan, 2008; Trompenaars, 1997, for instance). The idea that super-national and international entities have unique and shared cultures has a long pedigree. Nineteenth-century France and England saw themselves as the vanguard of “universal civilization” (liberté, fraternité, egalité for the former, the ‘white man’s burden’ for the latter). The notion of ‘civilization’ became more pluralized in the first half of the twentieth century (Fischer, 2007).ix Later, in the first half of the twentieth century the list was extended – more civilizations were ‘identified’ – but the notion fell out of fashion. Post the ‘9/11’ (11 September 2001) destruction of the Twin Towers in New York the essentialist notion of multi or transnational “civilizations” as integrated cultural wholes was reinvigorated. Sales and citations of works of cultural civilizationists such as Samuel P. Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations), Raphael Patai (The Arab Mind), and Bernard Lewis (who first coined the term ‘the clash of civilizations’) rose dramatically and some became required reading in US and other military training programmes and on a range of university courses. Lewis’s civilization “wisdom” was, US Vice President Dick Cheney said, “sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media” (2006). In some arenas Samuel Huntington’s stark views about fault-lines between “civilizations” (1993; 1996), and derivative literature, has shaped much of the debate about inter-cultural conflict and understanding (Turner 2005). Overstating the case, but nonetheless indicative of its importance, this notion has, according to Kalevi Holsti become the “master explanatory variable” in world politics (in Henderson and Tucker, 2001: 317). Huntington uses the term ‘civilization’ interchangeably with ‘culture’ which he defined, as the Trio do, as subjective “values” (1996; 2000). According to Huntington, in his hugely cited article – The Clash of Civilizations? (1993) – and his subsequent ‘best-seller’: The Clash of Civilizations (1996), each civilization is constituted and motivated by a unique culture so that the “major differences in political and economic development among civilizations are clearly rooted in their different cultures” (1993, 22; 1996a, 29). This, he argues, creates incompatibilities between individuals from different “civilizations” and the inevitability of “clashes” between those cultural civilizations. He identifies “seven or eight major civilizations” (1996: 21), namely, Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western, and Latin American (he is unclear about whether Africa constitutes a “civilization”). In common with all coherent culture theories, each civilization is regarded as a coherent and self-sustaining system. Each civilization is, Huntington states, a cultural “totality” (1996: 42). In effect, the population of each civilization is culturally predestined. Generalizations about civilizations, like generalizations about countries, appeal to established prejudices but they are analytically misleading. Huntington’s work, for example, is inconsistent. Just as the Trio do, it ignores internal diversity, disregards change and is at odds with historical and contemporary realities. The basis of Huntington’s categorization is inconsistent (Henderson and Tucker 2001; Magala 2005). For instance, he separates Latin American civilization from Western civilization on the basis of the former’s Catholic majority. Thus, his notion of a Latin American civilization relies on the implausible assumption that all Catholics share the same culture and that the large non-Catholic minority in Latin America has the same culture as the Catholic majority but that this Catholic Latin American culture somehow is not the same culture as that of Catholic majority countries in “Western” Europe which Huntington treats as identical to that in “Protestant-majority countries” such as Australia. With yet further inconsistency and confusion, in a paper fearful of what he calls the “Hispanic challenge”, Huntington describes “U.S. culture” – supposedly part of “Western” civilization – as “Anglo-Protestant” which he states is gravely threatened by Catholic Mexicans (2004, 32). In their study of American Mainline Religion, McKinney and Roof did “not find a lot of evidence of unity and coherence in Protestantism or elsewhere” (1994: 753) and Sullins states that “Protestantism” is a residual category – “a convenient collection of groups that are essentially unrelated” (1993: 399). Relying on the illusion of singularity within civilizations Huntington disregards diversity within the spaces he supposes to be distinguished by a mono-culture. For instance, from within his viewpoint the Muslim Kemel Atatürk who destroyed the Ottoman caliphate and the central religious authority of the Muslim faith in Turkey was culturally the same as the Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini who moved Iran in exactly the opposite direction coercively imposing intense religious control on almost every aspect of life; a Swedish pacifist vegetarian is supposed to share the same socially constituting ‘Western’ culture as a carnivorous Spanish bull-fighting supporter as s/he does with an Andalucian politician who wants to preserve bull-fighting and a Catalan politician who wants to ban it. Although at the time of publication of The Clash of Civilizations, the prime minister of India was a Sikh, the president of the country’ largest party a Christian, and with approximately 150 million Muslim citizens (nearly as many as in Pakistan) Huntington depicts India purely as a Hindu civilization. With regard to the latter, there are multiple varieties of Hinduism – the notion that it is a single religion is a colonially constructed myth (Bloch, Keppens and Hegde, 2010; Inden, 1986). There are at least 36,000 different Hindu gods and goddesses (Adiga, 2008). In India, as well as Hindus and Muslims, there are also Sikhs, Parsis, Jews, Jains, Christians, Buddhists, Atheists, and Agnostics (Pandey, 1999). The extent to which and ways in which religion influences social action vary enormously, and there are many other influences. Implausibly, the millions of Muslims who fled from the newly territorially defined India to Pakistan in 1947 were, in Huntington’s depiction, part of a “Hindu civilization” before they fled but part of an ‘Islamic civilization’ afterwards. The reverse is supposedly true of the millions of Hindus who hastily moved or were driven out of Pakistan to India. In Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, one in every ten persons is Hindu (CIA, 2012), but they are defined as part of the “Islamic civilization”. Although Christianity is, according to Huntington, the basis of “Western civilization”, the millions of members of the lowest castes and classes in India who embraced Christianity are deemed to be constituted by a “Hindu civilization”. Huntington disregards diversity within space which he defines as culturally uniform. He ignores change or temporal diversity. In common with the Trio and all other cultural essentialists, Huntington regards the common culture which defines a civilization as enduring for centuries. His theory supposes, for instance, that “successive generations” (1996: 41) of Chinese have been and continue to characterized by the same single “Chinese” culture. In doing so he posits that Chinese people of today, have been unaffected by experiences – direct or indirect – such as the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, the Korean War, the reproachmant with the US, and the immense economic growth which has affected different sections of the population and different regions in diverse ways. Huntington’s claims are at odds with historical and contemporary evidence of conflict within “civilizations”. For instance, the hugely destructive Thirty Years’ War which pitted Catholic powers in Europe against Protestant powers; the Hundred Years’ War which was part of the even longer enmity between England and France; the lengthy conflict in Northern Ireland between largely Catholic and Protestant groups; and the bloody Rwandan massacre in 1994 of Christians by Christians are but a few examples of the multiple instances of conflicts within “civilizations”. Lewis Richardson’s study of conflicts between 1820 and 1929 found that in the main, common religion did not have a dampening effect on the incidence of war – nor did common language (1960). Conflicts are more common between states belonging to the same “civilization” than between those of different “civilizations”. Errol Henderson and Richard Tucker’s study of the pre-Cold War period (1816-1945) demonstrated that “states of similar civilization were more likely to fight each other that those of different civilizations” and that in the post-Cold war period (1989-1992) “civilization membership was not significantly associated with the probability of interstate war” (2001: 317). Almost all civil wars have been within “civilizations” including those in China, England, Iraq, Ireland, Rwanda, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka, the Congo, and the US. And Huntington’s claims are at odds with the record of cross “civilization” alliances. For example, during the Second World War Japan (one of Huntington’s civilizations) was allied with Germany against other members of the same “Western civilization” as Germany. In Kosovo it was countries from within Western “civilization” which came to the rescue of the Islamic “civilization”. The “Islamic” Libyan government, supplied arms and funds to the “Western” IRA in Northern Ireland. Huntington claims that “Confucianism” is the source of a uniform “Sinic [Chinese] civilization”. The Confucian influence on contemporary Chinese, and wider Asian, life is claimed in a range of scholarly literature (See Chan, 2012, Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005; House et al., 2004; Hwang, 2001 Kahn, 1979, for instance). The idea is vividly represented by the term “Confucian Asia” (see Pillai et al., 2011 and Tan, 2011, for example), “Confucian Dynamism” (Hofstede and Bond, 1988) and “Confucian Asian Cluster” (House et al., 2004). Bartlett, Ghoshal and Beamish state that “a recent study of Chinese entrepreneurs found the Confucian tradition of patriarchial authority to be remarkably persistent” (2008: 163). Their evidence? A paper by Kao (1993). To validly attribute ideas/attitudes to a particular tradition requires that: (a) it is unified body of work; (b) the specific aspect/rule, said to be causal, must be unambiguous; (c) the said-to-be resultant ideas/attitudes must be explicitly matched with relevant content of an authoritative source of that tradition; (d) no other traditions or circumstances can reasonably be said to have been an additional or alternative source of the ideas/attitudes; and (e) the ideas/attitudes said to have been generated and maintained by a tradition must not be present in areas where that tradition has not existed. Kao’s paper fails all five tests. In short, “Confucianism” – a term invented by Jesuit missionaries – consists of a large body of diverse and fragmented work, in effect there is no “Confucianism” as a holistic framework, unified ideology, or as a set of cohesive rules; Kao cites none of Confucius’ work; notwithstanding the absence of an overall unity in Confucius’s work his attitude to authority is consistent – it is not absolute as Kao (and others) imply – instead obedience is due only to leaders who are just, indeed there is an obligation to resist unjust leaders; China’s late industrialisation, predominance of agriculture, prolonged history of internal war are but some of the alternative explanations unexplored by Kao; and patriarchal authority may be unusual in large public corporations in the Anglo-American world, but it is not unique to Chinese businesses. Explaining the values of the 4 billion Asians on the basis of one person’s writings is as absurd as claiming to explain the behaviour of three quarters of a billion Europeans from the bible (Breidenbach and Nyíri 2009; Walzer, 1985). To make religion the source of uniform and persistent ‘civilizations’ presupposes that religion is the primary or exclusive influence and that each religion is a coherent totality (Roy, 2005). There is no Christianity, Islam, Hinduism but rather Christianities, Islams, and Hinduisms. For instance, in Wasilia (population of less than 8,000), the Alaskan home town of former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Pallin, there are no fewer than 102 different Christian churches or chapels. In her study of the US Nation of Islam movement, McCloud identified at least seventeen distinct communities of Islamic expression (1995). As Joana Breidenbach and Pál Nyíri state: “There are many different ways of being more or less Christian, or more or less Confucian, or more or less Muslim” (2009: 73) and likewise with other religious or secular bodies of work. As Al-Azmeh, states: “there are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain it” (1993: 1). The Muslims who destroyed the Sufi shrines in Timbuktu in 2012 had very little in common with the Muslims who sought to protect the shrines. Huntington’s depiction of each civilization as a monolithic cultural unity is largely built on anecdotal evidence (Fox, 2002). His research is strongly shaped by confirmatory bias – the selection of supportive data and blindness (wilfull or not) about data which contradicts his monopolistic civilizations claim. As Edward Said (2001), referring directly and disparagingly to Huntington’s work states: “a great deal of demagoguery and downright ignorance is involved in presuming to speak for whole religions or civilizations”. Another depicter of the supposed common cultures of super-national populations – such as “Arabs”; Central Americans” – is Edward T. Hall. Additionally, his work includes descriptions of some national cultures. Like Huntington he shares some of the postulates common to GLOBE, Hofstede and Tromenaars. Specifically he sees culture as enduring, coherent, determining and identifiable from small numbers (Postulates 2,3, 4, 5) albeit neither Hall or Huntington derive their data from answers to self-response survey questions. As a result Hall or Huntington, in contrast with the others, do not attempt to construct league tables of quantified cultural dimensions (Postulate 7). Hall alone does not conceive of cultures as ‘values’ (Postulate 1), Hall defines ‘culture’ as a something primarily social and objective. In short, he describes culture as “communication” (Hall and Hall, 1987: 3). Culture was for him “primarily a system of creating, sending, storing and processing information.” “Communication”, he states, “underlies everything” (Hall and Hall, 1987: 4). He employed three ‘dimensions’ of communication: high/low context, time, and physical space. A high context communication or message is one in which most of the information is implicit – very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. A low context communication is just the opposite – it’s more explicit – i.e., the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code (Hall and Hall, 1987: 9). Each culture he argued had its own language of time which is reflected in their differing attitudes to the past and/or future, punctuality, scheduling and so forth. With regard to space he is particularly noted for his “theory of proxemics”. The term “proxemics” refers to the use of space such as personal space and to architectural design scale and locations. Proxemic rules may underlie people’s behaviour in crowds, the physical distance that is kept between people in bus queues, the way people decorate homes and offices, and seating arrangements during meetings (1963). In the past some interest in his work was shown in a number of arenas, including management. In that discipline, for instance, he published articles in management journals such The Harvard Business Review and he was quite widely cited in the emerging literature on international business. In management there is still some engagement with his work. Its attraction is mainly threefold. First, his use of objective measures (physical distance especially) to identify a culture rather than attempting to quantify elusive values. Hall calls for studies which looked “more at what people do than what they say” (1968: 83). Second, his evidence and examples are clear indicators of visible diversity, that the world is not ‘flat’ behaviourally. Third, he cautions against the ecological and the atomistic fallacies: “Any culture characteristically produces a simultaneous array of patterned behavior on several different-levels of awareness. It is therefore important to specify which levels of awareness one is describing (in Hall et al. 1968: fn. 4). However, his work has considerable limitations and many critics (see the comments of several critics in Hall et al. 1968, for instance). Whilst he prudently uses objective measures, the range of activities he describes is limited. Despite his warnings about confusing social levels he does not always practice what he preaches. Just like GLOBE, Hofstede, Huntington, Trompenaars, his work is laced with generalisations about national and regional populations, for instance, “Japanese” and “Central Americans”. It is these generalisations which have probably attracted most criticism. Anthropologist Weston La Barre, for instance, chides him for ignoring negative instance (that is employing a positive test strategy) and for disregarding diversity within populations: behavioural variety influenced by regional differences; gender; age, status, changes over time, and specific contexts (Hall et al., 1968, 101). The objectivity of his ‘objective’ measures has also been questioned. Specifically, the naturalness of his photographs of human behavior – evidence he extensively relies on has been doubted. That is not to suggest that the photographs are contrived but rather than the subjects may have altered their behavior when aware that they were being photographed. Whilst his espoused multi-level focus clearly has merit, his generalisations about national populations – and larger groupings – are unwarranted assertions of population uniformity which inadequately recognizes within-country diversity and change (Hastings et al. 2011). “I wish” anthropologist Frank Lynch states that he “moved more quickly towards the study of subcultural differences … and gave us fewer undifferentiated “Americans,” “Arabs,” and “Greeks” (Hall et al., 1968: 102)(emphasis in original). But these calls to acknowledge subnational and intraregional differences, just like those made to the subjective culturists discussed above, also fell on deaf primordialist ‘ears’. Some problematic attempts to theorise and describe sub-national populations are discussed later in the chapter in the ‘culture as plural mono-cultures section’. Culture as Geographically Bound A fundamental, but largely implicit, corner-stone of GLOBE, Hofstede’s and Trompenaars models is nationalistic myths about the primordiality of nations (Cubitt 1998). For instance, Hofstede states that “National values are as hard as a country’s geographic position” (2005: 13) and “while change sweeps the surface, the deeper layers remain stable, and the [national] culture rises from its ashes like the phoenix” (ibid.: 36) – plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Really? On the contrary, country’s boundaries may be unstable. Poland, for instance, as a nation-state ceased to exist in the late eighteenth century and was only reconstituted with quite different borders at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 when the borders of many other European countries were radically altered. After World War II, the borders of Poland and many other countries were again changed. Land and people formerly in one state may be re-designated as part of another state. For example, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France most recently in 1945 (having yo-yoed back and forth over the previous century). ‘India’ was separated into India and Pakistan in 1947. Whole states or parts of states may be annexed (or re-claimed) as the north of Cyprus was by Turkey. States may be formed by the voluntary or involuntary combination of multiple states (for instance, Germany in the late nineteenth century and again in the late twentieth century and Italy in the mid-nineteenth century). And yet these countries, and the many founded only in the twentieth century, are assumed to have a primeval and unchanging national culture. This ahistorical essentialism should have no place in serious depictions of countries. The particular state location of a territory may be disputed. Is Tibet or Taiwan part of the People’s Republic of China? Is Kashmir Indian or Pakistani? Is Northern Ireland Irish or British? Are the Falkland Islands/the Maldives part of Argentina? Is Crimea Russian or Ukrainian? States may fragment into multiple states, violently (for example, the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 into [West] Pakistan and Bangladesh) or peacefully (for example, the separation of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992). Even stable space is not an enduring distinction of all countries. Writing about the determination of national boundaries at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, Arthur Balfour, the UK’s Foreign Secretary angrily observed the spectacle of “all powerful, all ignorant men sitting there and partitioning continents”. Similarly, UK Diplomat Harold Nicolson despairingly said: “How fallible one feels here! A map – a pencil – tracing chapter: Yet my courage fails at the thought of the people whom errant lines enclose or exclude” (in Will 2004: 131). For the GLOBE, Hofstede, Trompenaars and followers, relying on ahistorical essentialism, a unique national culture supposed to map neatly onto often arbitrary and recently created political boundaries. But there is also confusion in their cultural depictions as to whether the supposedly uniform and causal culture is that of a nation, a nation-state, or a multi-nation state. As Rubenstein and Crocker (1994: 122) observe: “Of the roughly 180 states that compose the current world system, 15 at most can be called nations in the sense that a vast majority of people believe that they share a common ancestry and cultural identity. The norm for states is multinationality, with 40 per cent containing people from five or more distinct nations” (ibid). In almost one-third of states, the largest national group does not even compose a majority of the population. Nations may comprise part of a state (e.g. Tibet) or extend beyond the borders of a single state (e.g. significant numbers of Kurds and Basques have lived for centuries in multiple states). The territories supposed in the Trio’s models to be each characterized by a uniform, enduring, causal culture are overwhelmingly not single nations but clusters of nations within a single state. In effect, what the Trio purport to describe is not what they call ‘national culture’ but ‘country culture’. Whatever the space is called, Rosemary Tung points out, the assumption of “cultural uniformity” there is “fallacious” (2008: 45) Culture As Coherent The assumption of the causal primacy of a single culture (and thus the exclusion of any significant influence from other cultural and/or non-cultural factors) is logically necessary, but not sufficient, to imply uniformity of social action. What GLOBE, Hall, Hofstede, Huntington and Trompenaars also suppose is that for each national (or supernational) population, culture is shared and coherent. In other words, the culture (singular), posited as somehow shared by a defined population, contains no contradictory elements, it is logically consistent, and so it is impossible to construct incompatible, ambivalent, or contradictory propositions from that culture. In short, each culture is seen as an internally coherent block. The assumption of monopolistic causal cultural coherence necessarily leads to assertions of the complementarity of the logics of action. As Carl Ratner (2006: 61) states, “individuals … participate in a common, coherent culture that is structurally integrated at the societal level.” This view has many distinguished critics. Edward Burnet Tylor characterized culture as a thing of “shreds and patches” (in Smelser, 1992: 5). Bronislaw Malinowski states that “human cultural reality is not a consistent or logical scheme, but rather a seething mixture of conflicting principles” (1926: 121). A. L. Kroeber, described the notion of “total [cultural] integration” as an “ideal condition invented by a few anthropologists not well versed in history. It is hard to imagine any historian – other than a propagandist – bringing himself to advance such a claim” (1952: 3). Margaret Archer describes the myth of cultural integration as: “One of the most deep-seated fallacies in social science” (1988: 4). Why does the distinction between coherent and incoherent culture matter? Calculable or Not? If a culture is coherent, and thus unchanging and internally uniform, it can, in principle at least, be measured and compared via quantitative indices. Its supposed internal coherence gives it ontological status. Hofstede and Bond, for instance, unreservedly state that there is a “science of culture measurement”; that “direct measures of culture [defined as values]” are possible (1988: 9) – a claim which continues to underpin an immense literature (Peterson and Søndergaard, 2011). If such cultures characterise populations in specific locales (country, or whatever) such populations can, as a result, be compared as a totality and with precision. The qualities of foreigners are calculable whether one wants to meet, greet, negotiate with, or attack them. “Where one lives reveals what one is like” (Allik and McCrae, 2004: 13). An accurate, or at least an adequate, description is deemed possible through the identification of a small number of differentiated normative patterns. Hence, the claim that a culture is depictable, as a limited, potentially exhaustive, number of static and calculable “dimensions” (Hofstede, 2001; Javidan and House, 2001; Minkov, 2011, Trompenaars, 1993)(cf. Kreober, 1952) and that the “culture”, or “cultural distance”, between locations can be measured absolutely or comparatively (Barkema, et al. 1997; Hofstede, 2001; Kogut and Sing, 1988; Salomon and Wu, 2012)(cf. Shenkar, Luo and Yeheskel, 2008). In their excellent paper, Taras & Steel (2009: 2) refer to “[t]he need for quantitative culture indices” (emphasis added). The satisfaction of this “need” is theoretically possible within the notion of coherent culture. Whether, even from within that belief, any one of the Trio (or anyone else) has effectively achieved such representation is another matter. However, within the notion of incoherent culture, measurement of culture (as dimensions, distances or whatever) through any positivistic processes is inconceivable (Haraway, 1989; Lewis, 1991; Mitchell, 1995; Smelser, 1992). Is Endogenous Change Possible? Analytically speaking there is no mechanism within a coherent culture to ever change. In effect it is conceived of as harmonious but “immobilized variables” (Fischer, 2007: 1). Improvisation, innovation, oscillation, opportunism, localised practices, adoptions, and piecemeal changes are effectively excluded. Endogenous change, change through internal dynamics, is inconceivable. As Smelser states it is impossible “to explain variations by reference to a constant” (1992: 22). If causal primacy is attributed to such culture, then the social system cannot change its patterns of practice. A fixed fatalism is implied. There is no room for conflicts within, or between, institutions, for example, as each is deemed to be the reflection of a seamless non-contradictory cultural web. Exogenous change only is conceivable and that only after “major impacts” (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005: 16). Furthermore, as every part of a culture is conceived of as in a harmonious relationship with another, a change of any aspect necessarily changes the entire culture. x On the other hand, incoherent culture can conceivably change endogenously and if defined as causal, so too can social practices. Defining culture as fragmented opens the possibility not only of exogenous but also endogenous change through conflict, contradiction, competition, and ambiguity processes which the notion of coherent culture excludes. Change, whatever its origin, can be piecemeal – a change in one aspect does not necessarily affect any other aspect. Coherent culture is conceived of as a persistent heritage. Conservatism reigns supreme. But cultures are fusions, remixes, recombinants. They are made and remade through exchange, imitation, intersection, incorporation, reshuffling, through travel, trade, subordination. These flows transgress the boundaries of even the most clearly differentiated groupings (Lewis, 1991). The social is not, contrary to the coherentists’ reductive models, merely composed of, or dominated by, a blanket and undifferentiated pristine culture. Life is made in impurity and intermingling. Incoherence makes space for constrained agency – for bounded free will (Derné 1994; Slater 1970; Swidler 1986). As Moore and Sanders state: “We do not directly author all of our actions, but neither do we religiously follow rules” (2006: 11). Within the notion of coherent culture there is no room for “nonuniformity” (Wallace 1970: 35). The insistence on cultural uniformity precludes any theory of change springing from internal dynamics (Archer, 1988). Logically the component parts of any complex system can generate change – but only if some internal heterogeneity is allowed. The historiographic principle of coherent culture consists in attributing to ancestors the opposite of what is posited as true of a contemporary population – the creation of the culture by the former, passive acceptance by the latter (Brightman, 1995; Sahlins, 1999). A profound inconsistency is employed. At sometime in the past the inhabitants of a location are defined as active in creating a culture but for multiple generations the inhabitants have supposedly ceased to be creative and instead have been mere inheritors. And yet studies even of isolated ‘primitive’ societies have shown that their cultural history is one of fluidity and permeability (Boas 1982 [1940]; Brightman 1995). Views of culture as coherent point to path-dependencies, to the present as historically shaped but over-state the lock-in created by initial conditions. They contribute to countering atomistic views of societies but exclude the possible strategic exercise of agency. They counter wholly rational or materialistic reductionism but in their place offer another singularity. They focus on the particular and emphasize differences between populations – but their representations are too thin and fixed because they are blind to the richness and ambiguities of the specific; blind to transformations, fluidity, fragmentations, contestations, and hybridization; blind to trans-localization and to border crossings in general. Does Practice Matter? If social action is assumed to be dictated by a coherent culture then practice is seen as predictable and lacking variety within defined populations. Culture is decontextualized and practice (whatever people do) is peripheralised as it is merely the dependent variable. At most the study of conduct provides ‘illustrative’ examples of the generality of a depiction of a coherent culture as behaviour is a fait acompli – as Pierre Bourdieu critically states, it is seen as mere “execution” (1977: 25) as re-enactment of values. Incoherent culture acknowledging indeterminism and heterogeneity, justifies a practice orientation – at the extreme, culture is ignored or is seen as the dependent variable – but a wide range of interactive possibilities are consistent with a notion of incoherent culture. Coherent culture posits a subsuming explanation of practice; explanations consistent with incoherent culture require situated analysis. In the former, actors are mere exemplars – in the latter they are subjects of enquiry. Compatibility or Incompatibility? Linkages, communication, cooperation, fit, between people from different populations would be very difficult, even impossible, if they were socialized by unique, coherent cultures because such cultures are defined as impermeable. There are, it is postulated, objective boundaries between cultures. The supposed absence of linkages, communalities between cultures, each defined as internally coherent, justifies claims that other cultures are unintelligible and that those from one culture are “unintegrable” into areas monopolized by another coherent culture. Fons Trompenaars, for instance, advises businesses against relying on cultural “hybrids”. “Foreign cultures have an integrity”, he states, “people who abandon their culture become weakened and corrupt” (in Breidenbach and Nyri, 2009: 321). This view is methodologically, analytically, and prescriptively problematic. First, it, and similar notions about cultural incompatibility are not grounded in the empirics of the specific, instead they are deduced from the meta-notion of coherent culture. Secondly, it incorrectly supposes that most people ‘belong’ to just one (a national) culture. Even if assuming that each country has but one significant culture – a highly contested view – even mono-lingual, passport-free persons will be exposed to a range of cultural influences through their activities, group membership and increasingly internationalised media. National borders are not cultural borders – there is no escape from “hybridization”. Thirdly, with regard to the consequences of hiring such persons, situated analyses indicate, contrary to Trompenaars’ pronouncement, that exposure to more than one ‘culture’ does not only not only fail to create an untrustworthy cultural bi-polar, but often, albeit not always, such so-called “hybrids” are more effective managers than those who have lived in just one country (see Brannen, 2009; Shenkar, 2012; Tung, 1998 for instance). The coherent culture theories discussed above celebrate differences between, but not within, populations. They are blind to cultural ambiguities. The tensions between the active church engaged with the world and the monastic ideal in Christianity, for instance, illustrates “contradictory orientations within a single tradition” (Eisenstadt 1992: 75). Francis Hsu writes of the deep value conflicts in the United States, for example: Christian love with religious bigotry; democratic ideals of equality and freedom with totalitarian tendencies and witch hunting; emphasis on science, progress and humanitarianism with parochialism and racism (in Bock 1999: 102). Individuals “can hold a series of conflicting beliefs” (Linton, 1936: 362). Most people of a religious disposition simultaneously employ the notions of ‘free will’ (agency) and ‘the will of God’ (determinism). There is an extensive psychoanalytic, and other, literature which challenges the idea of the singularity and integrity of the individual self. But in any event it is indisputable that individuals may simultaneously hold several conflicting views and have conflicting values. Clifford Geertz, in harmony with what has become the accepted view in anthropology, dismissed the coherence view which he ridiculed as a: “seamless superorganic unit within whose collective embrace the individual simply disappears into a cloud of mystic harmony” (1965: 145). If cultural influence on social action is supposed, then cultural incoherence must logically be supposed to create social diversity. Rejection of cultural coherence does not necessarily entail rejection of some patterns within cultures (Brightman, 1995; Fischer, 2007). Culture as Plural Mono-Cultures A recent move amongst some cross-cultural commentators has been to acknowledge the problematic of depicting countries as cultural unities and instead to represent counties as composed of collections of multiple cultural groupings – increasingly so because of immigration. The sub-division is usually regional and/or ethnic. This acknowledgement of intra-national diversity is welcome. But the assumption that each of the defined sub-national groups is characterised by the same type as the Trio’s representation of national culture is problematic. The discussion here focuses on ‘ethnicity’ as the determinant of sub-national culture. Demarcating groups on the grounds of their (or their ancestral) location of origin, or on the basis of objective characteristics – for example, male Sikh turbans, or sub-national geographical location – does not require an assumption that the members of a group share a common subjective culture. Because someone differs in looks, or other means of defining them as part of another group, does not mean they share the same values as everyone in that socially defined group. Ethnic diversity has provided fuel, but not the only fuel, for the growth of ‘multi-cultural’ claims which oppose representations of a national cultural singularity with the notion of multiple cultural groups. The concept of culture is problematically fused with ethnic identity. In the contemporary world, the “new racism” (Barker, 1981) employs cultural difference instead of inherited characteristics, but uses it to justify pejorative descriptions of particular ethnic groups. But much more influential has been the view that democratic governments should accord ethnic minority groups collective cultural autonomy on the grounds that cultural recognition is a right (Eriksen, 2002). Especially since the American civil rights movement, there has been greater awareness of the harm suffered by minorities labouring under inequities or discrimination practiced over decades, and in some instances over centuries (Kukathas, 1992). Acknowledgement of differential (positive or negative) access to material or symbolic capital by different within country sub-groups does not have to be predicated on acceptance of the notion that each group has a unique, collectively shared, and coherent culture. But such claims are made. Riding the Waves of Culture (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner 2005, 223), for example, includes two chapters on cultures within countries, specifically South Africa and the US. Each ethnic group (for instance eight in South Africa including Xhosa, Zulu, Tsonga, and English) and five in the US (White/Caucasian, Black/African, Hispanic, Native American and Asian/Pacific Islander), and in both countries also males and females, are each supposed to have their own distinct cultures. The source of their generalisations about ethnic and gender cultures is not disclosed. The extensive literature condemning essentialist notions of ethnicity and gender is ignored. For example, studies even of supposedly isolated and ‘primitive’ groups by anthropologists have identified considerable internal heterogeneity: different myths, dialects, institutions, rituals and religions (Bock 2000; 1999; Chandra, 2006; Kuper 1999; Tyler, 1986). The notion that particular minorities are united by a common coherent culture underpins many of the moral claims and political demands and responses advanced by, or on behalf of, minorities. But as Amartya Sen (2007: 157) points out, notwithstanding the common description, and justification of such policies as “multicultural” they are, in fact, based on the notion of “plural monoculturalism” – the false and misleading notion that distinct cultures do, and should continue to exist in, as it were, “secluded boxes”. Uma Narayan calls the difference or essentialist version of multiculturalism a “package picture of cultures” in which each culture is represented as neatly wrapped up, sealed off, and identifiable by core values (in Phillips 2007: 27). Gerd Baumann’s study of Southall, a suburb in South-West London, describes and challenges essentialist notions of distinct cultures. The reification of culture, according to Baumann, is the defining feature of what he calls the dominant discourse of multicultural ‘community’ and ‘identity’. The dominant discourse about each of the area’s five ‘communities’: “Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Afro-Caribbeans and Whites”, is that each has distinct cultural values. This notion, he argues, is reinforced and legitimated by institutions such as media, local government, community leaders and political organizations. But he also identified a “demotic” (popular) discourse in the Southall ‘communities’, a discourse which is more flexible and complex, recognizing the situational and multifacteted character of individual identification and framing (in Eriksen, 2002)(see Pryce, 1979 also). Multiculturalist policies do not necessarily rest on the assumption of coherent culture (Phillips, 2007). The notions of communal interests, communal identity whilst often conflated with that of communal culture are conceptually distinct. Terence Turner usefully distinguishes between “critical” multiculturalism and “difference” multiculturalism (1983). The former is a dynamic notion which acknowledges diversity both within and between groups seeking to challenge hegemonic cultural claims and aiming to construct more vital, open and democratic cultures. In sharp contrast, the latter is a static notion which fetishises cultural difference and internal coherence. The distinctions turn on whether or not they essentalise culture. Arguably, the notion of collective values has facilitated more respect for differences and encouraged recognition of minority particularities. That in turn has perhaps helped counter racism, reduced inequality, enabled greater recognition of minority rights, led to more pluralist education; and deflated some post-imperial hubris. But on the other hand, partitioning society on the basis of supposed collective cultures legitimates and perpetuates segregation and fosters ignorance about and mistrust between each defined group. It encourages political and intellectual separatism and stereotyping by outsiders. It elevates cultural membership above other distinctions leading to neglect of other arguably more pertinent distinctions such as class and other asymmetrical socio-economic power relations. The notion of plural mono-culture has allowed powerful members to codify contested practices – thereby establishing their own authoritative readings that they employ to enforce conformity among group members. It has facilitated opportunistic defenses of malpractices (including the misogynistic), legitimated patriarchal practices, and reinforced stereotypical representations. It has restricted the opportunities for individuals and minorities within communities to reshape those communities whether directly or through interaction with those outside. By treating a culture as a badge of group identity it fetishizes it in ways which serve a shallow notion of ‘political correctness’ and puts some practices of group members in organizations, in the neighborhoods, and elsewhere beyond the reach of criticism and critical analysis (Turner, 1993: 411-12). For good and ill, the undertheorised notion of culture employed by many key advocates of multiculturalism is but the latest way of conceiving and explaining otherness (McGrane 1989). Todd Gitlin (1992) calls this the “romancing of otherness”. But whatever the consequences, and they vary between contexts, the idea that defined groups share a common coherent and compelling culture is an invention that does not reflect the reality of diversity, subgroup identities, subgroup conflicts, and fluidity. Policies supposedly reflective of, and protective of, distinct coherent cultures in fact perpetuate the myth of such cultures (Horowitz, 1985). ‘Cultural’ groups at regional, national, or sub-national level are not undifferentiated wholes. As Michael Mann states: “We can never find a single bounded society in geographical or social space” (1986: 1). DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Action has many ingredients other than, or additional to, values. Thus, the exclusion of these other factors in seeking to explain or predict action is reckless. Alternative, or additional, explanations of social action such as institutions, discourse, praxis, class, coercion are not without their limitations and controversies (Alvesson and Karreman, 2011; Clegg, 2013) but to ignore the possible influence on action of such matters or to treat them as mere consequences or manifestations of culture is unsatisfactory. As anthropologist Adam Kuper points out: “unless we separate out the various processes that are lumped together under the heading of culture, and then look beyond the field of culture to other processes, we will not get very far in understanding any of it” (1999: 247). Focusing on values as the superorganic force evades the necessity to deal with the complexities of human decision-making. When, for example, institutions are seen as the mere products of culture, the fact that they may represent the interests of certain elites is ignored. But GLOBE, Hofstede, Huntington and Trompenaars do not even look within culture as they restrict their bedrock notion of culture narrowly to values and to a contested meaning of values (Baskerville, 2003; Taras and Steel, 2009). The main research design and policy implication of this paper is: don’t suppose that descriptions of national cultures are a multilevel ‘answering machine’. That is not to argue that estimates based on individual or microdata are always unambiguously better. Pairings, families, peer groups, schools, laws, institutions and other contexts alter social outcomes in ways not explicable by studies which focus solely on individuals (Susser, 1994). Perils are posed not only by the ecological fallacy but also by the individualistic fallacy (generalizing from single or a few instances) (Subramanian, 2009). This is not an argument against multilevel research but a rejection of that which, downwards (or upwards) conflates/subsumes one level into the other (Archer, 1988). Action, as Hitt et al. state, unfolds within “multi-level dynamics” (2007: 1385). It is a plea for situated studies of action (McSweeney, 1995) which are open to considering localized contexts and influences from other levels including the transnational influences, transcultural and other (Brannen and Salk, 2000; Gamble, 2005; Halperin, 2007; Katz, 2005; Moore, 2014; Morgan and Kristensen, 2006; Murray and Hong, 1991; Sackman and Phillips, 2004; Tung and Verbeke, 2010). This is a clear message from the introduction to this book and from other chapters. Nor is the objection here an objection against the generation of hypotheses from ecological comparisons between countries or between levels within a country, albeit the ecological data must be reasonably accurate and the concepts reasonably sound. Unfortunately, the conceptions and depictions by the GLOBE, Hall, Hofstede and Trompenaars of national culture do not fulfill those criteria. Some of the recent discoveries of the causes of cancer (e.g. dietary factors) have their origin in the generation of such hypothesis from systematic international comparisons which were then investigated in lower level studies (Pearce, 2000). The objection is to the doctrinaire (and invalid) transfer of aggregate results (accurate or inaccurate) to lower levels i.e. to the fallacious supposition (as distinct from hypothesis generation or in the absence of prior supporting local evidence) that what characterizes, or is believed to characterize, entire national populations is also representative of each sub-national population. The later Parsons stated: “I am resolutely opposed to single factor explanations of phenomena in the world of humans” (1978: 1358). Cultural analysis is not the philosophers’ stone of the social sciences. All attempts at a theoretical unification of social science have failed. No one theory – no matter how scholarly – can possibly apply to all aspects of social life, all situations, all historical configurations. The aspiration or claim to have done so debars or discourages openness and dialogue between diverse currents and styles of work. Fewer over-blown claims about the causal primacy of coherent ‘national (or regional) culture and engagement with the long-standing debates about culture in an extensive literature outside of the believers’ scholarly community would be welcome and wise. As early as 1975 geographer Philip Wagner stated: “Aggregating mightly one can speak of national cultures. The chief attribute of such a broad concept is its uselessness … the time for crude aggregation of data is past” (11, 14). The time is, indeed, long past. Appendix Definitions of theDimensions used by the Trio The dimensions used by the Trio to describe, rank, and compare ‘national cultures’ relate to some or all of the following matters: the relationship between the individual and society; attitudes to authority and degrees of inequality and to risk and uncertainty; temporal orientations; reward structures. The possibility of depicting culture – or personality at the individual level – using a discrete number of topics originated long before the Trio published their work. For a historical overview see Digman (1990). And so, none of the Trio originated the concepts they employ. Amongst other sources all three draw on the early and middle work of Talcott Parsons. However, what is distinctive about the Trio’s employment of these concepts is: (a) their choice of some topics and exclusion of others; (b) the specific definitions they use (below); (c) the novel names they have devised for some topics; and most significantly (d) their claims to be able to quantitatively represent and compare national cultures – hence the label “dimensions”. Definitions of the dimensions employed and purportedly identified by each of the Trio are briefly set-out below Hofstede 1. The Power Distance: “the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally” (p. 98). 2. Uncertainty Avoidance is “The extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations.” (p. 161). 3. Individualism versus Collectivism: Individualism “stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose: Everyone is expected to look after him/herself and her/his immediate family only. Collectivismstands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.” (p. 225). 4. Masculinity versus Femininity: Masculinity “stands for a society in which social gender roles are clearly distinct: Men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on material success. Femininity stands for a society in which social gender roles overlap: Both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life (p. 297). The first four definitions are those Hofstede based on questionnaires from IBM employees. Later, drawing on research largely by Michael Harris Bond in Hong Kong and Taiwan he added a fifth in 1991 (below). 5. Long Term Orientation versus Short-Term Orientation: Long Term Orientationstands for the fostering of virtues oriented towards 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.’ (p. 359). In 2010 in collaboration with Michael Minkov he has added a sixth (below) and renamed the fifth dimension (above) Pragmatic versus Normative. 6. Indulgence vs Restraint: Indulgence stands for a society that allows relatively free gratification of basic and natural human drives related to enjoying life and having fun.  Restraint stands for a society that suppresses gratification of needs and regulates it by means of strict social norms (http://geert-hofstede.com/ ). Source of Definition 1 to 5: Hofstede, 200 Hofstede’s Data Source: a survey of a large number of employees of IBM between 1967 and 1973 in more than 40 countries. This work was updated and expanded in 1991 and 2001. GLOBE 1. Uncertainty Avoidance is the extent to which members of an organization or society strive to avoid uncertainty by reliance on established social norms, rituals and bureaucratic practices to alleviate the unpredictability of future events. 2. Power Distance is the degree to which members of an organization or society expect and agree that power should be stratified and concentrated at higher levels of an organization or government. 3. Collectivism I: Social Collectivism is the degree to which organizational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action. 4. Collectivism II: In-Group Collectivism is the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness in their organizations or families. 5. Gender Egalitarianism is the degree to which an organization or a society minimizes gender role differences and gender discrimination. 6. Assertiveness is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies are assertive, confrontational, and aggressive in social relationships. 7. Future Orientation is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies engage in future-oriented behaviors such as planning, investing in the future, and delaying gratification. 8. Performance Orientation is the degree to which an organization or society encourages and rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence. 9. Humane Orientation is the degree to which individuals in organizations or societies encourage and reward individuals for being fair, altruistic, friendly, generous, caring, and kind to others. Definition source: House et al. 2002, pp. 5-6. For minor changes in definition wording see: House and Javidan, 2004. GLOBE’s data source: The GLOBE study (House et al., 2004) was conducted in the mid 1990s, and involved more than 170 investigators in 62 countries or regions. The study was designed to replicate and expand on Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) work, (and to test various hypotheses that had been developed, in particular, on leadership topics). Survey questionnaires were developed and collected from 17,300 middle managers in 951 organizations across three industries. TROMPENAARS Trompenaars’ dimensions were refined in collaboration with Charles Hampden-Turner. 1. Universalism vs. particularism. Does a universal set of rules always apply or can cases be dealt with on an individual basis. 2. Individualism vs. communitarianism. Society’s emphasis of the individual or the community. 3. Neutral vs. emotional. The amount of feeling that is deemed acceptable to display publicly. 4. 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Comparative Studies in Society & History, 40: 637-665. i Trompenaars has for some time also jointly written with Charles Harvey-Jones, but as Trompenaars was the originator and in popular discourse their work continues to widely referred to as Trompenaars’ we have retained this label whilst acknowledging Harvey-Jones role. ii Although the term “ecological fallacy” itself was coined later by Selvin (1958) in his critique of Durkheim’s research on suicide, awareness of the methodological error of assuming that results derived from aggregate data are the same as, and therefore can be substituted for, those which would be obtained from individual level data, had been popularized earlier by Robinson who in a seminal paper demonstrated a striking discrepancy between ecological and individual correlation (1950). iii The other cross-level extreme – the ‘atomistic fallacy’ (also called the ‘fallacy of composition’ or the ‘reverse ecological fallacy’), that is, generalizing from individual or small n data – is not discussed here. For a national culture example of this fallacy, see Kets de Vries, 2001. For a discussion of the fallacy see, Lieberson, 1991. iv Hofstede has described national culture as analogous to “genes” (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005: 36). That echoes Zelinsky’s earlier claim that “culture is a prime genetic factor, along with the physical and biological in shaping the character of places” (1973, p. 91). v Hofstede’s own estimate is 4.2 percent (2001: 50). vi The ‘ecological fallacy’ is usually defined as the error of assuming that statistical relationships at a group level also hold for individuals in the group (King, Rosen & Tanner, 2004). However, in many papers which apply national cultural representations to lower levels causality is implied or asserted. In these instances the error may be more fully be described as the mono-deterministic ecological fallacy (McSweeney, 2013). vii For a discussion of the difference between culture and identity see Koveshnikov, 2011. viii I am grateful to Gleyce Oliveira of Petlove, São Paulo for this reference. ix Not all civilizationists suppose that a ‘civilization’ is defined by, even possess, a common coherent culture. Sociologist Andre Gunder Frank, for instance, states that civilizations are not “essentialist intrinsically self-contained entities. To claim, identify, and to study any such makes NO sense whatever and only beclouds reality” (quoted in Targowski, 2009: 84)(emphasis in original). x Without supportive evidence, and bizarrely, Hofstede states that on the very few occasions when there is a change in a national culture, the change occurs not only across that country but also within all countries throughout the world. National cultures very rarely change, he states, but when they do, “they change in formation” across the globe, that is to say the “relative position or ranking” of national cultures are unaffected (Hofstede 2001: 36).