For terms not mentioned in this Glossary see the Subject Index.
AGENCY: the way in which persons empowered to act on behalf of an organization fulfill this task. See also group agency.
ANTHROPOLOGY: the science of humans in their physical, social, and cultural variations. In this book the term always stands for social or cultural anthropology, which is the integrated study of human societies, in particular (although not only) traditional or preliterate ones.
ANXIETY: a diffuse state of being uneasy or worried about what may happen.
BUREAUCRACY: a form of organization based on strict rules and responsibilities attached to positions, not persons.
COLLECTIVISM: the opposite of individualism; together, they form one of the dimensions of national cultures. Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onward are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lives continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.
CONFUCIAN DYNAMISM: a dimension of national cultures found through research among student samples using the Chinese Value Survey. Rebaptized in this book long-term versus short-term orientation (see under these catchwords).
CORPORATE CULTURE: organizational culture at the level of a corporation. See organizational culture.
CORPORATE IDENTITY: common symbols (such as logos) for subsidiaries belonging to the same corporation.
CORPORATE VALUES: a list of descriptions of desirable traits and behaviors for employees and managers of a corporation.
CORRELATION: in statistics, the degree of common variation of two sets of numbers. The coefficient of correlation can vary from a maximum of 1.00 (perfect agreement) via the value 0 (no relationship) to a minimum of −1.00 (perfect disagreement).
CULTURAL IDENTITY: see Identity. Identity is conscious and not to be confused with culture, which is usually unconscious.
CULTURAL LEGITIMATION: finding symbolic justification for practices so that they become morally acceptable. It is usually driven unconsciously by interests and always by cultural values.
CULTURE: (1) the training or refining of the mind; civilization; (2) the unwritten rules of the social game, or more formally the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another—this meaning corresponds to the use of the term culture in anthropology and is likewise used throughout this book.
CULTURE ASSIMILATOR: a programmed-learning tool for developing intercultural communication skills.
CULTURE SHOCK: a state of distress following the transfer of a person to an unfamiliar cultural environment. It may be accompanied by physical illness symptoms.
DIMENSION: an aspect of a phenomenon that can be measured (expressed in a number) independently of other aspects.
DIMENSIONAL MODEL: a set of dimensions used in combination to describe a phenomenon.
EMPOWERMENT: the process of increasing employees’ influence on their work situation.
ETHNOCENTRISM: applying the standards of one’s own society to people outside that society.
EVOLUTION: a process in which generations of a replicator (e.g., gene, individual, or group) produce surplus descendants with small variations, and some of these produce more offspring than others; in other words, less successful variants are weeded out by natural selection.
EXCLUSIONISM: the cultural tendency to treat people on the basis of their group affiliation and to reserve favors for groups with which one identifies, while excluding outsiders. Together with its opposite pole, universalism, this is one of Misho Minkov’s WVS-based dimensions of national cultures.
EXTENDED FAMILY: a family group including relatives in the second and third degree (or beyond), such as grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.
FACE: in collectivist societies, a quality attributed to someone who meets the essential requirements related to his or her social position. To “give face” means to show due respect for that position.
FACE VALIDITY: a property of a research item in a questionnaire that seems to measure exactly what the wording of the item suggests, rather than something hidden and that can be revealed only after an analysis of the research results.
FACTOR ANALYSIS: a statistical technique designed to assist the researcher in explaining the variety in a set of observed phenomena by a minimum number of underlying common factors. The phenomena that are combined in a factor will be strongly correlated.
FEMININITY: the opposite of masculinity; together, they form one of the dimensions of national cultures. Femininity stands for a society in which emotional gender roles overlap: both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life.
FLEXHUMILITY (ALSO SPELLED “FLEXUMILITY”): a coined term for the characteristic of societies whose cultures promote humility, flexibility, and adaptability to changing circumstances. Together with its opposite pole, monumentalism, this is one of Misho Minkov’s WVS-based dimensions of national cultures.
FUNDAMENTALISM: the belief that there is only one unchanging Truth and that one’s own group is in possession of this Truth, which is usually defined in great detail.
GESTALT: an integrated whole that should be studied as such and that loses its meaning when divided into parts; from a German word meaning “form.”
GROSS NATIONAL INCOME (GNI): a measure of the total flow of goods and services produced by the economy of a country over a year, including income from foreign investments by domestic residents, but excluding income from domestic investments by foreign residents.
GROUP AGENCY: the capacity for concerted collective action of a group.
GROUP IDENTITY: see identity.
HEROES: persons, alive or dead, real or imaginary, assumed to possess characteristics highly prized in a culture and thus serving as models for behavior.
HOMEOSTASIS: the tendency of an organism or social system to maintain internal stability by compensating for external changes.
HOMININ: an ancestor of modern humans. Used to be called “hominid” in previous classification systems.
HUMAN NATURE: the set of traits that are shared by all of today’s human beings.
IDENTITY: a person’s self-affiliation as a member of a group or category. Often rooted in national or regional origin, language, and/or religious affiliation, it is conscious and visible both to the holders of the identity and to the environment that does not share it. See also corporate identity.
IDEOLOGY: a coherent set of ideas that serves to give a purpose to life and to set moral standards.
INDIVIDUALISM: the opposite of collectivism; together, they form one of the dimensions of national cultures. Individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after him- or herself and his or her immediate family only.
INDIVIDUALISM INDEX (IDV): a measure for the degree of individualism in a country’s culture, originally based on the IBM research project.
INDULGENCE: the opposite of restraint; together, they form one of the dimensions of national cultures. Indulgence stands for a society that allows relatively free gratification of basic and natural human desires related to enjoying life and having fun.
IN-GROUP: a cohesive group that offers protection in exchange for loyalty and provides its members with a sense of identity.
INSTITUTION: an organized set of activities to which the people in a group attribute a symbolic function. Institutions can be purely symbolic (marriage) or have a physical form (a school).
LONG-TERM ORIENTATION: the opposite of short-term orientation; together, they form a dimension of national cultures. Long-term orientation stands for the fostering of pragmatic virtues oriented toward future rewards, in particular perseverance, thrift, and adapting to changing circumstances.
LONG-TERM ORIENTATION INDEX (LTO): a measure for the degree of long-term orientation in a country’s culture. LTO-CVS scores are based on the Chinese Value Survey among student samples; LTO-WVS scores are based on the World Values Survey of representative samples of national populations.
MASCULINITY: the opposite of femininity; together, they form one of the dimensions of national cultures. Masculinity stands for a society in which emotional gender roles are clearly distinct: men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on material success; women are supposed to be more modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life.
MASCULINITY INDEX (MAS): a measure for the degree of masculinity in a country’s culture, originally based on the IBM research project.
MATRIX ORGANIZATION: an organization structure in which a person can report to two or three superiors for different work aspects—for example, one for the task and one for the professional side, or one for the business line and one for the country.
MONUMENTALISM: a characteristic of societies that reflect the state in which the human self is like a proud and stable monolithic monument. Together with its opposite pole, flexhumility, this is one of Misho Minkov’s WVS-based dimensions of national cultures.
MORAL CIRCLE: the group of all people to whom full moral rights and obligations are granted, usually unconsciously. A moral circle requires a culture. People can belong to several moral circles with different degrees of reach—for example, nationality, religion, organization, family.
MOTIVATION: an assumed force operating internally that induces an individual to choose one action over another.
NATIONAL CHARACTER: a term used in the past to describe what is called in this book national culture. A disadvantage of the term character is that it stresses the individual aspects at the expense of the social system.
NATIONAL CULTURE: the collective programming of the mind acquired by growing up in a particular country.
NATURAL SELECTION: differential survival of descendants of the same parent form, leading to evolution of that form (the replicator).
NUCLEAR FAMILY: a family group including only relatives in the first degree (parents and children).
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one organization from another.
PARADIGM: a set of common assumptions that dominate a scientific field and constrain the thinking of the scientists in that field.
PARTICULARISM: a way of thinking prevailing in collectivist societies, in which the standards for the way a person should be treated depend on the group to which the person belongs.
PATH DEPENDENCY: the fact that evolution (or any other process) is constrained by its own history. As a consequence, from every next evolutionary step there is no way back.
POWER DISTANCE: the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. One of the dimensions of national cultures (from small to large).
POWER DISTANCE INDEX (PDI): a measure for the degree of power distance in a country’s culture, originally based on the IBM research project.
PRACTICES: the scope of what people do, including the symbols to which they respond, the heroes they venerate, and the rituals in which they take part, but not their values.
PURCHASING POWER PARITY (PPP): a basis for comparing gross national income that takes the local purchasing power of money into account.
PROXIMATE MECHANISM OF EVOLUTION: the actual process of replication and selection that leads to evolution of the units that undergo it. For instance, stories evolve through retelling with modifications, orally or in writing; individuals evolve through sexual reproduction with mutation.
RELATIVISM: a willingness to consider other persons’ or groups’ theories and values to be as reasonable as one’s own.
REPLICATOR: a unit of selection in an evolutionary process. A replicator can be a gene, an individual, a group, or a cultural value or practice—anything that reproduces with variation, whether biologically or otherwise.
RESTRAINT: the opposite of indulgence; together, they form one of the dimensions of national cultures. Restraint stands for a society that suppresses gratification of needs and regulates it by means of strict social norms.
RISK: the chance that an action will have an undesirable but known outcome.
RITUALS: collective activities that are technically superfluous to reach desired ends but that, within a culture, are considered to be socially essential; they are therefore carried out for their own sake.
SHORT-TERM ORIENTATION: the opposite of long-term orientation; together, they form a dimension of national cultures. Short-term orientation stands for the fostering of virtues related to the past and present, such as national pride, respect for tradition, preservation of face, and fulfilling social obligations.
SIGNIFICANT: see statistically significant.
SOCIALIZATION: the acquisition of the values and practices belonging to a culture, by participating in that culture.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION: the existence of two or more classes in a society that have markedly different status and prerogatives.
STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT: the state in which the relationship between two measures for which only a sample of the entire population has been investigated is sufficiently strong to rule out the possibility that this relationship is due to pure chance. The “significance level,” usually 0.05, 0.01, or 0.001, indicates the extent to which the relationship could still be accidental.
STEREOTYPING: a form of reasoning in which similar characteristics are ascribed to all members of a collective (group, category, or culture).
SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING: a person’s evaluative reaction to his or her life, in terms of either life satisfaction (cognitive evaluations) or affect (ongoing emotional reactions).
SYMBOLS: words, pictures, gestures, or objects that carry a particular meaning recognized as such only by those who share a culture.
TYPOLOGY: a set of ideal types used to describe a phenomenon.
UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE: the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations. One of the dimensions of national cultures (from weak to strong).
UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE INDEX (UAI): a measure for the degree of uncertainty avoidance in a country’s culture, originally based on the IBM research project.
UNIVERSALISM: a way of thinking prevailing in individualist societies, in which the standards for the way a person should be treated are the same for everybody. Together with its opposite pole, exclusionism, this is one of Misho Minkov’s WVS-based dimensions of national cultures.
VALIDATION: testing the conclusions from one piece of research against data from independent other sources.
VALUES: broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others, largely unconscious. To be distinguished from practices. See also corporate values, in which the word values means something entirely different.
XENOPHILIA: the feeling that persons and things from abroad must be superior.
XENOPHOBIA: the feeling that foreign persons or things are dangerous.