Critiques on Gray-Hofstede’s Model: what impact on cross-cultural
accounting research?
Vassili Joannidès, Danture Wickramasinghe and Nicolas Berland
Discussant’s comments.
Peter Armstrong Emeritus Professor Leicester University Management school
Based on a questionnaire survey of IBM employees in around 80 countries, Hofstede’s empirical
research identified cross cultural variations in the ‘mental programmes’ characteristic of different
cultures. Intended to be of relevance in the design of management control systems, the dimensions
of difference he identified were power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism,
masculinity/femininity and long term vs. short term orientation.
This research has been immensely influential. This being the case it is not surprising that it has also
attracted a considerable volume of ‘primary’ criticism. The paper by Joannidès, Wickramasinghe and
Berland is essentially a ‘secondary’ criticism of that primary criticism. Broadly speaking it concludes
that the primary criticism hasn’t made much difference to the procedures of other empirical
researchers in the field.
The paper begins by selecting four papers which critical of Hofstede’s conceptualization and
methodology: Bhimani (1999), Harrisons & McKinnon’s (1999), McSweeney (2002) and Baskerville
(2003). The proposals for alternatives made by these authors are summarised as follows
Harrison
(1999)
&
McKinnon Bhimani
(1999)
Empirical site and
cultural unit
McSweeney
(2002)
Settings other than merely Alternative
Western cultures
nationality
Theoretical
framework
Selective
Hofstede
New
institutional
theory
Alternative frameworks if
Anthropology
New accounting history
possible
Methodology
Selective methods
Ethnography
emic research combined with Ethnography
etic perspectives
Baskerville
(2003)
to Ethnicity
ethnic groups
Anthropology
Emic ethnography
In order to assess the influence of these criticisms, they then identified all the subsequent empirical
studies of cross-cultural variations in accounting practice which referred in a non-trivial manner to at
least one of the four critiques. This resulted in a database of 17 papers. Within this database the
authors searched for signs of the influence of the critiques in five areas:
The knowledge claims articulated or knowledge debates addressed (Accounting, Culture, or both)
The empirical site of the research (cultural site or cultural unit)
and
Theoretical framework
Methodology (primarily quantitative, ethnographic)
Contribution to Knowledge (theoretical/empirical or methodological)
The authors’ discussion of the take up of the four critiques in these areas is complex and difficult to
summarise. These, however, are the summary tables which they offer on each of them:
The knowledge claims articulated or knowledge debates addressed (Accounting, Culture,
or both)
Knowledge covered
Accounting Culture Crossroads
Missing papers
Number of papers
4
5
5
The empirical site of the research (cultural site or cultural unit)
Ethnicity
Nationality
Number of papers
3
Singhalese in Sri Lanka
Cultural sites
Malaysian ethnic groups
Chinese Malaysians
Country
6
Well documented nations
(US, Canada, China)
3
Missing papers
7
1
Turkey
India
Taiwan
Chinese Indonesians
Theoretical framework
Number of papers
Gray-Hofstede
4
Radical ethnography
4
Key constructs
Full reliance
Geertz
Cultural
Economy
Selective Hofstede
Missing papers
7
2
2 dimensions borrowed
from
Hofstede
or
emerging
from
an
exploratory study
Political
Combined with
concept of the face
Ho's
Context-based
anthropology
(on Anthropological literature
Chinese and Javanese
cultures)
SMS theory
Methodology (primarily quantitative, ethnographic)
Methods
# of papers
Questionnaires
only
5
& other data
2
Radical
ethnography
Second
hand/laboratory
Missing papers
3
5
2
Archives on the
considered culture
Questionnaires
Key methods
Factor
Open-ended
interviews
analysis
Cluster analysis
Structured
interviews
Etic and emic
constructs
Numerical figures
from
official
Participant
reports
observation
Laboratory
Interviews
experiments
Contribution to Knowledge (theoretical/empirical or methodological)
Theoretical
Contributions
knowledge
Number of papers
Confirmation
5
Enrichment/refutation
3
New theory
7
Gray's model is refuted
Resource-based
Theory is confirmed
as the basis for ABC
Views of control
differ across cultures
and settings
Contribution contents
Empirical
Methodological
6
Ethnic
groups
6
to
Gray's framework is
confirmed
Culture
is
an
additional
contingency factor
Culture
as
an
Culture can feed agency adaptive process
Undertheory
studied
Culture
matters cultures
Agency
relationships more than political
are country-specific
and legal factors in
explaining
divergences
in
accounting
standards
Relationships with
the
mother
company
matter
more than culture
in the convergence
of MCSs
Operationalization
of
etic/emic
research
Laboratory
experiments
to
make culture a
control
variable
New measures of
international
accounting
differences
Table
Comment
My first comment concerns the authors’ procedure. Given that the various versions of Hofstede’s
work have attracted something over 15,000 citations, it is unlikely that the four critiques selected by
them are the only ones. If this is the case, how were those critiques selected as potentially
influences on subsequent work?
My second comment concerns the four critiques themselves. My impression is that they do not take
adequate account of the purpose behind Hofstede’s work. Whilst implausible as a total account of
culture, the ‘dimensions’ of it which he picks out, seem to be elements of it which might be of
relevance to the construction of management control systems. Some of the critiques, moreover,
object to the fact that his multinational sample was restricted to employees of the IBM corporation.
This objection would be fair enough if Hofstede had been concerned with cultural differences per se,
but he was not. He was concerned with cultural differences inasmuch as they concern the
management of the multinational corporation and in that context the IBM sample looks entirely
reasonable.
Two of the critiques propose anthropology and ethnography as alternative courses of theory and
method respectively. These approaches have their strengths, of course but there are problems.
Given the restricted scope inherent in ethnographic studies, is incumbent on the critics to make it
clear what settings they have in mind for an ethnography which is to be relevant to the management
of the multinational corporation. The fixation on ‘ethnicity’ seems particularly perverse in view of
the vast ‘cultural’ difference between the favelas and the gated communities of Brazil, for example.
As for anthropological theory, this has been beset over recent decades with a ‘crisis of
representation’ in which the anthropologists themselves have become part of what Van Maanen
calls ‘tales from the field’. As an evasion of the pitfalls of positivism, this move works admirably, but
practising executives would be entitled to ask how on earth they might inform policy.
Concerning the authors’ contribution, I think they have done an admirable job in holding up a mirror
to critical accounting research. It is not a flattering one. The question which haunts me is, ‘What is
the point of criticising other people’s empirical research without presenting (as opposed to merely
proposing) an alternative?’ McSweeney’s critique of Hofstede is an extreme. This paper example is
cited 673 times in total, an extraordinary number for a UK paper in the social sciences. Of this huge
total, it is quoted in at most 17 empirical papers on cross cultural accounting, at most three of which
use ethnographic methods in line with his proposal (‘at most’ because the authors do not correlate
non-questionnaire methods with citations of the authors who propose them). Even in the case of
this potential 3 we do not know whether the authors’ use of ethnographic methods was actually
influenced by McSweeney’s paper. They might have decided on these methods independently and
then cited him in support of that decision.
But what, I wonder, did the other 656 (or more) authors actually do with McSweeney’s paper? Did
they too make suggestions about how other people should conduct their research?