S. Schwartz model of cultural values

1. Cross-Cultural Organizational Psychology S. Schwartz model of cultural values

2. The Structure of Value Relations • The theory = seven types of values on which cultures can be compared by considering three issues that confront all societies. • According to theory, the seven value types are postulated to form three bipolar dimensions that express the contradictions between the alternative resolutions to the following issues : • Autonomy versus Conservatism (to define the nature of the relation between the individual and the group), • Hierarchy versus Egalitarianism (to guarantee responsible behaviour that will preserve the social fabric), • Mastery versus Harmony (the relation of humankind to the natural and social world).

3. Theoretical structure of values

4. Validation of theory - Similarity Structure Analysis • Similarity Structure Analysis (SSA; Borg & • Lingoes, 1987; Guttman, 1968) was performed on data from over 35,000 respondents from 122 samples in 49 nations). • For each of the 122 samples, the mean importance of each of the 45 values was calculated. Then correlations between the mean importance of each pair of values across the samples were computed. Because the analysis uses means of samples that represent cultures rather than ratings of values by individual respondents, the analysis yields culture-level rather than individual-level dimensions (Hofstede, 1980; Schwartz, 1994b, Hofstede, Hofstede, Minkov, 2012). • Portrays the pattern of intercorrelations among values, based on sample means, across all the samples. Each value is represented by a point such that the more positive the intercorrelation between any pair of values the closer they are in the space, and the less positive their intercorrelation the more distant.

5. Cultural level

6. Work centrality • The MOW International Research Team (1987) defined work centrality as the importance and significance of work in a person’s total life. • Their index of work centrality includes both a general question about the importance of work and a question about the importance of work relative to four other lifeareas—leisure, community, religion, and family.

7. Cultural values & work

8. Usefulness • The approach might fruitfully be exploited, for example, • to predict and interpret national differences in such additional areas as: • risk-taking and innovation in work; • managers’ behaviour towards workers; • decision-making styles of reliance on own judgement, rules, • consultation with superiors or subordinates, etc.; • penetration of work involvements into other areas of life.