The Biggest Culture Gaps Are Within Countries, Not Between Them

This article from Harvard Business Review talks about a research done by Bradley Kirkman, Vas Taras, and Piers Steel. It indicates the mistake we have when we use "culture"and "country" interchangeably especially when we talk about cross-cultural management. For instance, Japanese culture values group norms over individual; however, American culture has a strong emphasis on individual achievement. In fact, this research addressed four work-related values and their importance to the people in each country:Individuals vs. groups , Hierarchy and status in organizations, Having as much certainty as possible at work,Material wealth, assertiveness, and competition vs. societal welfare and harmony in relationships.

The result was that country is a poor container of "culture". Surprisingly, the differences of values within countries were over 80%, and less than 20% of the differences found between countries.

One of the reasons for that result is the immigration process which is leading to more diversity of values within countries.

It will lead us to error when we talk about Japanese or American way in general. Thus, to be precise we need to talk about cultures of professions than about cultures of countries."What that means is that if you put a bunch of physicians from different countries together in a room, they are likely to have more shared work-related values compared to a group of random people from the same country."(Bradley Kirkman, Vas Taras& Piers Steel, 2016)

The takeaway lesson here is never assume that individuals within countries will have the same values associated with their countries.