Persbericht
1 juni 2006
Op de inhoud van dit persbericht en de bijgevoegde rede rust een EMBARGO TOT donderdag 1 juni, 16.30 UUR
Emeritus Geert Hofstede bij instelling leerstoel 'Culturele Diversiteit'
'Cultuurverschillen bron voor Irak-oorlog en 9/11'
Van de aanslagen op elf september tot de oorlog in Irak en de Deense cartoonkwestie: cultuurverschillen speelden een grote rol van betekenis. Sterker nog: cultuurverschillen zijn vaker een bron van conflict dan van plezier. Dat betoogt emeritus hoogleraar Geert Hofstede vandaag bij de inauguratie van de naar hem vernoemde UM-leerstoel in het Theater aan het Vrijthof. Geert Hofstede geldt wereldwijd als goeroe op het gebied van culturele diversiteit. De Geert Hofstede-leerstoel Culturele diversiteit aan de Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen en Bedrijfskunde zal bekleed worden door dr. Mark F. Peterson.
Geert Hofstede ontwikkelde een model waarin een aantal cultuurdimensies dient als graadmeter voor cultuurverschillen. Het doel van het model is deze verschillen inzichtelijk te maken en zodoende te overbruggen. Bij de introductie op de academische zitting vandaag linkt prof. dr. Hofstede zijn 'culturele dimensies' aan de recente geschiedenis. Zo werd Ruud Lubbers in 1995 door de VS afgewezen als kandidaat voor de functie van secretaris-generaal van de NAVO, tot grote verontwaardiging van de Nederlandse regering. Ondanks zijn indrukwekkende staat van dienst, straalde Lubbers in het 'sollicitatiegesprek' onvoldoende uit een krachtig leider te kunnen zijn, aldus een ingewijde uit de VS. Volgens Hofstede is de Amerikaanse cultuur eerder masculien en de Nederlandse cultuur feminien. In de ogen van Amerikanen profileren Nederlanders zich te weinig in een sollicitatiegesprek, andersom vinden Nederlanders dat Amerikanen zich overschreeuwen. Lubbers was hier blijkbaar niet van op de hoogte, of dacht dat het niet zou opgaan voor een voormalig premier.
In het geval van de aanslagen op het WTC en het Pentagon in september 2001 speelde het cultuurverschil tussen de individualistische Amerikaanse samenleving en de collectieve cultuur van het Midden-Oosten. De FBI zag de aanslagen niet aankomen, omdat ze zich simpelweg niet kon voorstellen dat individuen zich zouden opofferen om hun tegenstanders te beschadigen.
Een andere eigenschap van de Amerikaanse cultuur, die ook op de Britten van toepassing is, is het korte-termijn denken, aldus Hofstede. Kwartaalresultaten spelen bijvoorbeeld nergens in Europa zo'n belangrijke rol als in de VS en Groot-Brittanië. Hierin schuilt ook de verklaring voor het feit dat deze twee landen wel een oorlog tegen Irak begonnen in maart 2003, terwijl de rest van Europa afzijdig bleef. 'In de beslissing om de oorlog in Irak te beginnen, keerde het korte-termijn denken zich tegen de initiators', aldus Hofstede.
Tot slot verklaart hij het ontstaan van de Deense cartoonaffaire aan de hand van de mate waarin mensen zich bedreigd voelen door nieuwe of dubbelzinnige situaties, oftewel intolerantie. Denen leven in een van de meest tolerante samenlevingen ter wereld. De hoofdredacteur van Jyllands Posten realiseerde zich niet dat zijn cartoons, bedoeld voor Denen, ook gezien zou worden door mensen met een hele andere 'mindset'. 'In de cultuur van de imam die de rel aanzwengelde, leren kinderen dat wat anders is, gevaarlijk is', aldus verklaart Hofstede het ontstaan van de Cartoonkwestie.
'Hoewel culturele diversiteit vaker een bron van conflict is dan van plezier, moeten we er toch mee leven en het beste van zien te maken', besluit Hofstede zijn introductie. Hij zegt zich dan ook vereerd te voelen dat de nieuwe leerstoel Culturele Diversiteit aan de UM zijn naam draagt. Over de eerste hoogleraar op deze stoel, Mark F. Peterson, is hij ook zeer content. 'Ik kan niemand anders bedenken in de internationale wereld van dit vakgebied die ik meer vertrouw met het neerzetten van een expertisecentrum op het gebied van culturele diversiteit aan deze universiteit', aldus Geert Hofstede.
Noot voor de pers:
De volledige (Engelstalige) tekst van de rede is in attachment bijgevoegd. NB Op de inhoud van dit persbericht en de bijgevoegde rede rust een embargo tot donderdag 1 juni, 16.30 uur.
Voor meer informatie over de inhoud van dit persbericht kunt u terecht bij Ellen Krijnen, tel. 043 388 3860, e-mail e.krijnen@efb.unimaas.nl.
De afdeling Communicatie & Relatiebeheer van de UM is bereikbaar via 043 388 5222, e-mail
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The Trouble with Cultural Diversity
Introductory address by Geert Hofstede at the Inauguration of the Geert Hofstede Chair in Cultural Diversity
University of Maastricht, 1st June, 2006
Dear audience,
On the 5th of June, 1568, this week four hundred and thirty eight years ago, Lamoral, Count of Egmont, and Philip, Count of Horne, were beheaded on the market square of Brussels, by order of the Duke of Alva, who represented King Philip the Second of Spain. King Philip, then the overlord of the Low Countries, tried to re-establish absolute authority over his territories, and this brought him into conflict with the high nobility of the Low Countries. The problems were confounded by the Reformation in which many people in the Low Countries had converted themselves to Calvinism, while the King saw himself as the upholder of the Roman Catholic faith.
Egmont and Horne had earlier taken a petition from the Dutch nobility to the King. Both were devout catholics who had served the King loyally for many years, having fought bravely against the French in the Spanish army. After the Counts had returned to the Low Countries, the King sent the Duke of Alva behind them to re-establish order. When this happened, their friend and colleague Prince William of Orange warned Egmont and Horne that they were no longer safe. He himself went temporarily into hiding in Germany. The story goes that when they parted, Egmont said "farewell, prince without a country", and Orange replied "farewell, count without a head."
The beheading of Egmont and Horne shocked Europe at the time, and marked the beginning of the Dutch Revolt; in our country we call it the Eighty Years' War. It eventually led to sovereignty for what is now the Netherlands, and its first separation from what is now Belgium. In the context of today's theme, I invite you to interpret it as an incident of Cultural Diversity. Egmont and Horne came from a society where rulers were expected to at least listen to their loyal subjects' arguments; King Philip and Alva represented a society where a King could expect blind obedience, and anything less counted as lese-majesty. The societies of the Counts and the King differed catastrophically on the culture dimension of Power Distance. Power Distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally. In entrusting themselves to their sovereign, the Counts made a cultural error of judgment which cost them their heads.
Cultural errors of judgment have probably been made ever since humanity split into two tribes, and they have cost many heads. Let me give you four more and more recent examples.
My second example deals with another leader of the Low Countries, Mr. Ruud Lubbers, one of the most successful and respected Prime Ministers the Netherlands have known. Leading three successive cabinets from 1982 to 1994, with twelve years of tenure he was the longest serving Premier since our Kingdom was founded. He counts as the architect of the polder model of consensus seeking in industrial relations which provided our country with years of prosperity. In 1995 he was nominated for the job of Secretary General of NATO. To the indignation of the Dutch government and public opinion, the American government turned him down. Our leading newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, reported on its front page of Saturday 6th January, 1996 (I cite my translation):
"Lubbers' rejection disturbs relationship with USA"
"According to an American government official who had been present at the application interview, Lubbers showed himself unfamiliar with important NATO issues. The spokesman said 'He was vague. I know he was a prime minister of the Netherlands for some ten years, but he did not impress us as a powerful leader". End of newspaper citation.
A book about Cultural Diversity, written years before Lubbers' application interview, contains the following text:
"Dutch and American society are reasonably similar on the dimension of Power Distance, but they differ considerably on another dimension called Masculinity versus Femininity, which opposes among other things the desirability of assertive behavior against the desirability of modest behavior. American society is staunchly masculine, Dutch society one of the most feminine in the world. American applicants to Dutch eyes oversell themselves. Dutch applicants in American eyes undersell themselves. They count on the interviewer to find out by asking how good they really are. They are very careful not to be seen as braggarts. The scenario for cross-cultural misunderstanding is quite clear. To an uninitiated American interviewer an uninitiated Dutch applicant comes across as a sucker. To an uninitiated Dutch interviewer an uninitiated American applicant comes across as a braggart." End of book citation.
Unfortunately Mr. Lubbers had not read this warning, or if he had, he did not expect it to apply to a former Prime Minister. Six years later, in 2001, Mr. Lubbers became the ninth High Commissioner for Refugees of the United Nations, and again he was highly respected for the way he executed his task, this time as a champion for the victims of repression whose interest he represented, if necessary against actions by powerful states. But unfortunately he once more suffered from a cultural difference between the USA and the Netherlands. Masculine societies tend to be prudish about sexuality. In the USA, 'sexual harassment' is a big legal issue. Holland, like the Nordic countries, is a feminine society and we don't even have a word for harassment. A Danish woman once explained to me: "either she likes it and then there is no problem; or she doesn't like it and then she will tell him to go to hell". Lubbers, unfortunately, permitted himself a liberty he could have got away with in Holland, but he did it towards an American female employee who did not tell him to go to hell but filed a formal complaint. This cultural error of judgment cost him his job and deprived the United Nations of one of their best High Commissioners ever.
My third incident of cultural diversity is what happened on the eleventh of September, 2001. Nineteen mostly Saudi terrorists only armed with Stanley pocket knives hijacked four US airplanes on regular scheduled flights and used them as bombs to destroy the Twin Towers in New York and part of the Pentagon in Washington DC. Amazingly, the secret services of the most powerful nation on earth had not foreseen this possibility. They made a cultural error of judgment along the dimension of Individualism versus Collectivism. Individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose. American society fosters extreme individualism: a person is supposed to think in terms of 'I', to look after his or her own interest, and certainly after his of her own life. The Middle Eastern societies from which the terrorists came are collectivist. Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, and have learned to think in terms of 'we'. A scenario in which individuals would collectively sacrifice themselves to damage their adversary had been simply unthinkable for a secret service consisting of Americans brought up in an individualist society.
My fourth incident is the war in Iraq. When in March, 2003 the USA and Britain started a war in Iraq, France and Germany refused to support them. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld scolded them as the Old Europe. As we all know, the Iraqi war proved a nightmare in terms of American lives lost, Iraqi civilians killed, a cost to the US taxpayer of so far 300 billion dollars, no evidence of weapons of mass destruction found, and a civil war with no end in sight. The cultural error of judgement this time relates to the dimension of Long-Term versus Short-Term Orientation. Messrs. Bush and Blair who took the decision to attack Iraq both grew up in short-term oriented cultures. Short-Term Orientation stands for focusing on the present, if not on the past. This mindset is found to an extreme extent in African and Muslim societies. Its opposite, Long Term Orientation, aims at future rewards through adapting to new realities, saving and perseverance. It is mainly found in East- and South-Asian societies. Most European societies are somewhere between these poles, but in comparison, British and US cultures are shorter-term oriented. Quarterly results, for example, are an Anglo-American invention, and in both in the USA and in Britain national traditions play a more important role in public opinion than in most of the rest of Europe. The English language needs four words to describe the day after tomorrow, unlike Dutch overmorgen, German übermorgen, French après-demain, Italian dopodomani or Russian poslezaftra. In the decision to start the Iraqi war, Short-Term Orientation took its revenge.
My fifth example of a cultural error of judgment is quite recent: it deals with the Danish cartoons. On September 30, 2005 the Danish business newspaper Jyllands Posten published political cartoons featuring Mohamed and Islam. An Egyptian fundamentalist imam in Copenhagen, who had got asylum in Denmark as a refugee and did not speak Danish, saw the cartoons, took offence and alarmed the Muslim world. Three months later the incident had escalated to Denmark's worst diplomatic crisis since World War II, with embassies burnt, even Norwegian ones, several demonstrators killed, and millions of Kroner lost in missed exports to Muslim countries. The cultural error of judgment this time related to the dimension of Uncertainty Avoidance. Uncertainty Avoidance is the extent to which members of a culture feel threatened by unknown or ambiguous situations; it relates to intolerance. Danes grow up in one of the most tolerant societies in the world, with an extremely weak Uncertainty Avoidance. The editor of Jyllands Posten did not realize that his cartoons, made for Danes, would be seen by people with a very different mindset. The Copenhagen imam had grown up in an environment with a much stronger Uncertainty Avoidance, where children learn that "what is different, is dangerous".
Dear audience, these five different cases related to five different dimensions of cultural diversity: Power Distance for Egmont and Horne, Masculinity versus Femininity for Mr. Lubbers, Individualism versus Collectivism for the US secret services, Short Term Orientation for Messrs. Bush and Blair, and Uncertainty Avoidance for the Danish cartoons. And each case led to a catastrophe.
My five examples were from political life, but it would not have been difficult to cite examples from the business world. Decisions about international mergers and acquisitions more often than not seem to be based on cultural errors of judgment, and lead to destruction of capital. Decisions about expatriation of managers can destroy their family life, apart from any damage the expatriates may cause to their company and to its foreign employees. Decisions about handling employees from minority groups may cause misunderstandings, be seen as discrimination and lead to loss of productivity.
Universities are not free from cultural catastrophes either. Teaching in a different cultural environment is not easy, and studying abroad can be very tough. In 1997 I was asked by the Universities of Maastricht in the Netherlands and Diepenbeek in Belgium to advise them about the cultural pitfalls of a possible joint venture: the project which in 2001 became the Transnationale Universiteit Limburg, the TUL. Reading what has been written about the pains of the TUL, I fear my warnings contributed little to prevent predictable problems.
Ladies and gentlemen, cultural diversity is more often a source of trouble than a source of pleasure. Nevertheless we have to live with it and make the best of it. In the past 25 years, an academic discipline of cross-cultural research and intercultural communication and cooperation has grown. It aims at helping future politicians, business leaders and educators in their handling of cultural diversity, so that future generations of leaders will not repeat the errors of their predecessors. Thirteen years ago, the University of Maastricht was less concerned about international quality than it is now, and it missed a historic opportunity to become a centre of excellence in this field. Fortunately its present leaders want to make a new start with a Chair of Cultural Diversity. I feel honoured and pleased that this Chair will carry my name.
But I am equally pleased and thrilled that the first holder of the new Chair will be Dr. Mark Peterson. During the past years I have admired his scholarship, his judgment, his clear writing and his gentle personality. He has this habit, rare among professors, to read the books of other professors. I cannot think of anybody within the worldwide community of cross-culturalists whom I would trust more with building a centre of competence in Cultural Diversity at this University.
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Universiteit Maastricht