The Use and Misuse of Questionnaires
in Intercultural Training
By John W. Bing, Ed.D.
Introduction
In this paper, the terms intercultural and cross-cultural
are used interchangeably to refer to training which helps participants
learn about, adjust to, or develop skills with respect to a culture other
than their own.
Cross-Cultural Training programs have many purposes,
venues, and audiences. In my experience, they have been used to orient
Peace Corps volunteers, government aid workers, health workers, students
arriving and departing, the military, and employees in many busi-ness contexts.
As of late, they are being utilized in some diversity programs in the U.S.
and Canada.
Questionnaires can be used in many different ways
including assessing the needs of participants before program design; in
formative or summative evaluations; as a way of determining the knowledge
of participants; and as a way for gathering information about the environment
into which, or in which, participants are or may be working. There
are also cross-cultural questionnaires which are intended to elicit the
preferences of respondents without referring to a research-generated database.
In this paper I will focus on a specific form
of questionnaire used in intercultural training programs: Multi-country
questionnaires based on quantitative research.
Description of the Questionnaires
There are only two major databases which compare
cross-national data over more than 50 countries gathered through questionnaires.
These have been developed by Geert Hofstede, the pioneer in the field of
quantitative research in comparative management, and Fons Trompenaars,
a consultant and author in the same field. Both are from The Netherlands.
The older of the two questionnaire-generated databases
was developed by Hofstede. At IBM, he headed a team of six researchers
to develop the first internationally standardized questionnaires and a
system for administering them; the results of his 53 country and region
surveys were published in Culture's Consequences: International
Differences in Work-Related Values (Hofstede, 1980).
The more recent of the two questionnaires and
associated databases has been developed by Fons Trompenaars and published
in Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Differences
in Business (Trompenaars, 1993). There were 47 countries represented
in this survey at the time of publication of Riding the Waves of Culture.
The databases generate mental geographies.
They are two different geographies, as if created by explorers who have
crafted their own maps of the parts of the same new world each explored.
Hofstede calls culture "the software of the mind,"
set against the "hard wiring" of genetic development. In fact, he
draws out three levels of what he calls "mental programs":
1. "The universal level of mental programming
which is shared by all, or almost all, mankind. This is the biological
'operating system' of the human body, but it includes a range of expressive
behaviors such as laughing and weeping and associative and aggressive behaviors
which are found in higher animals."
2. "The collective level of mental programming
is shared with some but not with all other people; it is common to people
belonging to a certain group or category. . . . The whole area of
subjective human culture. . . belongs to this level."
3. "The individual level of human programming
is the truly unique part—no two people are programmed exactly alike, even
if they are identical twins raised together."
These three levels of what Hofstede calls "programming"
describe the three levels of fountainheads of human behavior: The
biological/genetic basis of universal (as well as, I believe, specific)
human traits; the environment, chiefly culture; and the combination of
the two, which produces our personalities.
Both Hofstede and Trompenaars describe what they
are exploring as the map of culture. Hofstede's map is divided into
four provinces; Trompenaars' into seven. Only one of the provinces
has been named the same (the individualism/collective dimension).
A rather significant complication, perhaps it
might be better called a confusion, to both maps is that although the information
from these studies are often interpreted as cultural dimensions which describe
the differences between cultures, in fact they both analyze the differences
between national groups. In the case of many countries, perhaps most,
this means measuring multicultural societies and lumping the results as
national scores. For the Japanese scores, this may not be a problem;
for Canadian, Belgian and Malaysian scores it may well be. However,
it makes pedagogical sense to gather, analyze, and disseminate information
by country name; to gather the data by separate cultures would mean problems
in other directions: For example, would Flemish and Dutch cultures
be labeled the same, or different? Perhaps future researchers will
gather data by both cultural and national names. Certainly this would
make it easier to deal with the creation or disappearance of countries,
a development more common now than in the past.
It should be noted that in chapter 7 of Culture's
Consequences, Hofstede (1980) presents data by language area for Belgium
and Switzerland and discusses at length the difference between Flemish
and Dutch. Once again, Hofstede has established the standard for
future research.
The two questionnaires which developed the databases
(in the above analogy, the "map") changed over time as questions were substituted
or rewritten to improve reliability. Hofstede used many versions
of the questionnaire over the years he researched and analyzed the IBM
data. Trompenaars has also utilized different versions.
Hofstede's database is the larger, with 116,000
questionnaires provided to recipients in their own countries and analyzed
to provide the basis for his four-dimension map of cultural geographies.
The four dimensions were "discovered" from the data; that is to say, they
were determined after data were gathered and derived through study of those
data. Later, he and Michael Bond added a fifth dimension, valid only
for Asian cultures.
Trompenaars' dimensions were generated through
a study of the literature and his questionnaire generated from these dimensions.
His database is as of now smaller, consisting perhaps of around 50,000
questionnaires. Trompenaars' questionnaire is often provided to participants
outside their countries, unlike Hofstede's approach. However, Trompenaars'
data cover much of the active business world of today, including areas
Hofstede never covered because IBM had not yet penetrated these areas.
They include Eastern Europe, Russia, and China. Trompenaars has also
been successful at popularizing the notion of cultures' influence on business,
both in Europe and the Americas.
The Four Hofstede Dimensions are
as follows (I am using the original terminology, with simplifications
in brackets):
Individualism—Collectivism
The individual-collective dimension describes
differences in how respondents view the focus of their work—as a fundamentally
solitary, individual activity, in which credit or blame, reward or punishment,
falls on the individual; or as a collective or team enterprise, in which
the group receives credit, blame, reward or punishment.
Example: In Hofstede's study. the U.S. is
the most individualistic country. Those coming to work in the U.S.
from any other country (here for the moment and in future examples discounting
individual differences) should therefore feel themselves relatively unsupported
upon their arrival. They may feel a bit as if they were dropped into
the U.S. work environment to sink or swim on their own. In my experience
(having worked with over 500 arriving employees and their families), this
is indeed the case.
Low Power Distance—High Power Distance [Participative—Hierarchical
Orientation]
This dimension differentiates participative and
hierarchical workplaces. In high-power-distant organizations, the
flow of decision-making and responsibility is top-down; in low power-distant
organizations, the authority may be expressed in coaching rather than ordering,
and responsibility may be devolved.
For example: If a high-power distance subordinate
is matched with a lower power-distance supervisor who prefers coaching
to providing strong direction, the subordinate may feel a sense of bewilderment
or resentment at what is perceived as a lack of direction.
Low Uncertainty Avoidance—High Uncertainty
Avoidance [Risk—Structure Orientation]
This dimension discriminates between those who
prefer a highly structured work environment to those who prefer
not to be encumbered by rules, regulations, and red tape.
For example: A work environment in which
every person has his or her own distinct work, and is provided with clear
guidelines, and for which there are predictable long-term rewards and benefits,
is preferred by those with a high need for certainty. Government
and university offices are typically so structured. In other cultures
and workplaces (the software industry in the U.S., for example), rules
and regulations are perceived as barriers to creative development or to
entrepreneurial advances. This end of the scale is inhabited by those
with a preference for risk.
Masculinity—Femininity [Task—Relationship Orientation]
This scale, originally conceived by Hofstede to
differentiate between country cultures that emphasized "masculine" traits
of task and achievement and "feminine" traits of relationship and concern
for quality of life, is now focused (in the Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™)
on the traits themselves, since it is at best a matter of controversy as
to whether those specific traits and genders are linked in all cultures.
An example: In some cultures and workplaces
people must form relationships before they can work together effectively;
often in these workplaces the quality of life issues (family leave, child-care
centers, aesthetic factors in the workplace) are also of importance.
On the opposite side of the spectrum deals are often done by complete strangers
with nothing but a formal agreement to affirm the arrangement. In
such places, task accomplishment can be accomplished without much attention
to forming relationships.
Turning to the second research area, the Trompenaars'
Dimensions are as follows (again, I am using Trompenaars' original
terminology, with interpretations in brackets):
Relationships with People:
Universalism vs. Particularism [rules vs. relationships]
The question at the heart of this dimension revolves
around whether rules or relationships regulate workplace behaviors.
Example: If you are a universalist, you
will follow societal or work rules in your life and work; a particularist
is concerned about whether or not the needs of people, particularly those
people closest to him or her, are being met.
Individualism vs. Collectivism
So far as I am able to determine, this area is
very similar to Hofstede's; in other words, the two maps overlap at this
coordinate.
Neutral vs. Affective [unemotional vs. emotional]
This dimension relates to the display of emotion
at work. Those who are from cultures which do not show much emotion
at work (for example, who do not talk about their health or lack of health)
are "neutral"; those who do are "affective."
Specific vs. Diffuse [brief and numerous vs.
long-term relationships]
This dimension distinguishes between people who
make many friendships, which are normally brief and superficial, and those
who make very few but very deep friendships which last for many years.
In those workplaces in which specific relationships
are prevalent, friendships may be instrumental, that is to say, they may
enable the participants to accomplish goals. In those organizations
and societies in which diffuse relationships are more common, there is
a clearer divide between acquaintenceships, which are the norm, and friendships,
which are exceptional and significant and take long to develop.
Achievement vs. Ascription [achievement vs.
other attributes]
This dimension describes the difference between
those who value achievement as the primary dimension of success, and those
who value not only achievement, but also the background of the colleague,
his or her education, other attainments, and even the reputation of the
family or extended family itself.
For example, in parts of Europe, there is still
a special cachet for those who are considered to be of aristocratic background.
In Islamic cultures, those who have been on the Haj or the pilgrimage are
often accorded higher status.
Attitudes toward Time [relative emphasis on
the importance of the past, present, or future]
In some societies, for example in France, the
importance of the past, as represented in literature, architecture, music,
and other streams of culture, are significant; in others, for example the
U.S., the future is perceived to be more important than a past away from
which many Americans immigrated.
Attitudes toward the Environment [harmony vs.
control of the outside world]
A basic concept of Japanese life is Wei, or harmony.
This is reflected in such societal expressions as the Tea Ceremony and
the architecture of gardens and religious sites. In other countries,
controlling nature is much more important than understanding or recreating
its harmonies.
These differences are often reflected in the workplace.
In Japan, confrontations are not supposed to occur; collaboration, consensus
and other techniques have been developed to maintain harmony. In
other societies, workplace disagreements and even violence are not unknown.
With this background we will move to the issue
of the proper use of questionnaires associated with these databases.
The Use of Research-Based Quantitative Questionnaires
in Cross-Cultural Training Programs
Over the past six years, cross-national research-based
quantitative questionnaires in cross-cultural training programs have been
developed to achieve two purposes:
1. To aid participants in developing an
understanding of their own cultural profile and thus to foster an understanding
of others' cultural profiles.
2. To help participants compare country
culture profiles on the Hofstede or Trompenaars' dimensions, and to understand
what bridging might be required for each participant to be more effective
in working with people from those cultures.
These techniques were pioneered in the United
States at International Training Associates of Princeton (a company which
has since 1986 provided training and consulting to global companies and
to nonprofit organizations such as the United Nations and the American
Management Association), when ITAP was licensed to offer a version of Hofstede's
questionnaire in its training programs as a didactic tool. As a research
tool, it has only recently been used to gather data to update earlier data
or to add new countries.
As such, ITAP began providing its clients with
the Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™
(CW), as it is now called, in 1989. Participants answer a 24-item
questionnaire, made up of questions Hofstede had selected from his series
of questionnaires, from which their CW score is computed. The scores for
each participant become bar charts representing his or her culture profile
on the four Hofstede dimensions. Because the list of questions has
been drawn from the original research questions, the relationship between
the participants' scores and the country scores is direct and clear.
Reliability and validity are thus related to the original research, as
are the participants' scores.
Pedagogical inferences can thereby be drawn between
individual scores and country scores. For example, consider participant
Bill, an American, who has a high score for individualism and he is being
transferred to a job requiring team development in a country with a lower
average score for individualism, as determined by the Hofstede database.
Bill must determine how best to proceed with his new team, tempered with
the knowledge that it is likely that his colleagues on the team will prefer
a more collective approach to decision-making, reward provision, task allocation,
and so on, than his own preferred personal style. Knowing both his
own cultural style and the national average for the country in which he
will be working gives Bill the tools to analyze and project alternative
approaches. Should he adopt a more "collective" style, allowing decisions
to be made more by the team than he would have done? Should he insist
on his style even if that might cause his team to resist that process?
The point here is that such information gives
participants the knowledge that different approaches exist. It also
provides training designers the opportunity to create skill-building role-plays
and other exercises to assist participants in developing competencies to
work effectively in different countries.
The Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™
can also be utilized as a way of compiling individual scores of members
of a team. This information can then be used to help team members
understand the diversity of approaches within the team and which team members
might be predisposed toward certain kinds of team activities. For
example, if one member had an especially high need for structure (i.e.,
a high score on Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance dimension) compared with
other members, that individual might be pressed into service as the team
planner.
Variations of the Trompenaars questionnaire have
sometimes been used to analyze corporate culture.
The Misuse of Research-Based Quantitative Questionnaires
in Cross-Cultural Training Programs
With so much competitiveness in the cross-cultural
training and consulting market today, there have been examples of questionnaires
cobbled together with little research and no statistical analysis of reliability
or validity. In these cases, they are more marketing than instructional
tools, and they may in fact be misleading.
There may also be claims made for the use of such
questionnaires which exceed the limits of their development.
Such sins are many, and are here enumerated:
Venial (or less serious) Sins
1. The use of questionnaires, whether research-based
or not, whether in the field of cross-cultural training or not, is too
often accompanied by claims of miraculous and quick cures to very complex
problems. In fact, because questionnaires create data which represent
models of reality, they must be seen for what they are: A simplification
and reduction of reality. In fact they gain their pedagogical power,
as for example do simulation games as well, from this process of simplification
and reduction. It is therefore incumbent on practitioners to carefully
explain to their participants the limitation of the models they are using.
2. Representing a national database as a
cultural database is an easy sin to commit; however it is important to
point out that in multicultural societies there maybe be much cultural
variation within a country (e.g., Canada, Belgium, China, the United States).
3. Each database is created within a time
frame and has specific limitations. Although the Hofstede database
is not contemporary, it is now being updated, and a recent study (Hoppe,
1990) indicates the dimensions are stable over time. A limitation
of the Trompenaars database is that it has not always been tightly controlled
for demographic aspects of information-gathering; this may have implications
for its reliability.
4. It is tempting to claim that the questionnaires
and associated databases provide the coordinates for the entire map of
culture. We do not yet know the complete map of culture (that is
to say, all of the dimensions of cultures that should be compared to have
a complete view of those cultures), nor are we likely to in the near future.
It is therefore important to point this out, supplementing these databases
with other sources of information about cultural aspects of business in
different countries.
5. Practitioners can err by leading our
participants to assume that cultural differences will account for all the
differences in a cross-cultural interaction. However, it is clear
that differences in personality and institutional and environmental influences
will also play a role in interactions between people no matter whether
those interactions take place between people of different cultures or the
same culture. Cross-cultural practitioners should take care to take
account of these other influences in their seminars.
6. With quantitative databases and associated
questionnaires, it is very easy to make the error of directly comparing
individual scores to country scores. However, country scores are
average scores, and individual scores cannot be directly compared to averages.
It is impossible, for example, for someone, even with a very high score
on individualism, to be completely individualistic. Human beings
do not operate as walking scales. Practitioners should therefore
be careful to use the information didactically rather than engage in mathematical
comparisons of scores.
Mortal (flagrant) Sins
There are three flagrant sins. They are:
1. Assuming that country averages in a database
relate to individuals in that country. Country averages are typically
(but not always) bell-shaped curves, with individuals at the tails of these
curves who may behave in some ways more like members of other cultures
than members of their own cultures. I was guilty of such a sin early
in my career when I gave the Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™
to a Japanese employee of an American company and, when his score was very
high on individualism, accused him of being insufficiently Japanese.
In fact, I surmised later, the employee decided to work for an American
company specifically because his own preference, for whatever reason, was
higher on individualism than many of his fellow Japanese. Practitioners
should help participants in their seminars avoid stereotyping people from
other countries and cultures by pointing out that those they meet on their
travels may be not "typical" at all, but rather examples of exceptions
from cultural norms.
2. Taking for granted that sociologically-based
questionnaires and databases developed in one culture are sufficient to
explain cultural differences to people from other cultures. This
is a serious difficulty in the field, because there are few models which
address cultural differences available in the West which have their origin
in other cultures. I discovered an example of the kind of problem
this causes in a class I taught at the United Nations in Vienna.
I had just provided Trompenaars' definition of culture as "a way of solving
problems." A man (originally from China) declared: "To me,
culture is the water that we swim in: It surrounds and defines us."
Clearly, the definition of culture itself is culturally-influenced.
Practitioners should be careful to elicit definitions of culture from participants
themselves in order to avoid the imposition of one set of ideas over another.
Researchers should work to develop models which can serve across cultures.
3. The pressure of competition sometimes
causes otherwise sane practitioners to create fictional questionnaires.
One, developed by a major training organization some years ago, is still
in use today. It claims to be tied to the Hofstede database.
However, it is not. Because the Hofstede questionnaire is copyrighted
but the database is in the public domain, the practitioner devised his
own questions unrelated to the database. But the resulting profile
appeared to be related to the database. Why is this a sin?
It can yield cultural profiles which do not relate to the dimensions which
define them and can seriously mislead participants. Such questionnaires
are but smoke and mirrors. Practitioners should maintain standards
which prevent such debasing of the field and of research standards.
Other Conundrums
There are other conundrums in these areas which
are less sins than areas of uncertainty. Clifford Clarke, one of
the leaders in the field of Japan/U.S. business-focused cross-cultural
research, has questioned the validity of sociological (multiple national
questionnaires) versus anthropological approaches (single-culture questionnaires
and interviews). He believes that the reliability of such questionnaires
is questionable given the translation problem and the fact that for Japanese,
for example, the context of the question asked is as important as its content.
Conclusions
Questionnaires and their associated databases
must be used sensitively and with caution. Sometimes results may
be counter-intuitive such as when the Hofstede questionnaire yields a high
"masculinity" or task-orientedness score among Japanese in the Hofstede
data. This suggests that Japanese have low relationship concerns,
which is quite contrary to other research and observations. The answer
to this dilemma may be conjectured in the likely response of the Japanese
as members of a group, not as individuals. Hence, the answers of
Americans on such questionnaires tend to be as individuals; of group-oriented
peoples, such as the Japanese, as members of a group. High task-
and competitive-orientation appears to be a group characteristic in Japan.
It is precisely in these counter-intuitive areas
that new understanding of cultural differences may be discovered.
If practitioners learn to use questionnaires and their associated databases
responsibly, they can provide valuable assistance to people learning to
work effectively in other countries.
Bibliography
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's Consequences:
International Differences in Work-Related Values. Newbury Park,
CA: Sage Publications.
Trompenaars, F. (1993). Riding the Waves of
Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business.
London: The Economist Press.
Hoppe, M.H. (1990). A Comparative Study
of Country Elites: International Differences in Work-Related Values
and Learning and Their Implications for Management Training and Development.
(Doctoral Dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1990).
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