Self-Enhancement-Self-Transcendence (саморазвитие и самопревосходство) Subdimensions
As with the Individualism and Openness-to-Change continua, the U.S. managers had the highest scores on Self-Enhancement. Therefore, as might be expected, the U.S. managers score relatively high on all Self-Enhancement subdimensions However, what is curious is that they also score relatively high on both Self-Transcendence subdimensions. Nonetheless, after subtracting the Self-Transcendence scores from the Self-Enhancement scores, the U.S. managers were the group with the overall highest score on the Self-Enhancement continuum.
Also, as in the findings for the Russian and Japanese scores on the Individualism and
Openness-to-Change dimensions, there was no consistent pattern for the Self-Enhancement subdimensions. The pattern for the Self-Transcendence subdimensions was consistent with the findings for Collectivism and Conservation.
Perhaps more intriguing, however, is a comparison of the Eastern cultures on the Self-Transcendence subdimensions. The Japanese score relatively high on Universalism when compared to the Chinese and significantly lower than the Chinese on Benevolence.
The interesting point is that the concern for family as the referent group - which typically leads to Asian cultures scoring high on Benevolence - does not appear to be particularly important to present-day Japanese.
The Chinese hold the traditional view that family and trusted friends comprise the in-group, while the Japanese view their company as the in-group. One possible explanation for the Japanese managers' view of the in-group, and thus relatively low Benevolence score, is an historic crossvergence effect. That is, fifty years of Western ideological influence, combined with the Confucian-based importance that Eastern cultures attach to in-group membership has led to an integration of economic ideology and national culture that, in turn, has resulted in the "company family" becoming the referent in-group in Japan.
Finally, the findings for Hedonism (жизнелюбие) may be worthy of notice. While the Japanese managers scored lower than the U.S. managers on Hedonism, they both scored significantly higher than the Russian and Chinese managers. This finding leads us to ask: Is Hedonism an outcome, or perhaps a predictor, of economic development? Also, the U.S. scoring higher than Japan is consistent with the idea that a correlation may exist between Hedonism and economic
development, given the length of the periods of current economic development in the U.S. and Japan.
CONCLUSIONS
The findings from this study raise a number of questions. For example, is the assimilation of values a two-way, or perhaps a many-way street? Two-way assimilation would certainly have positive implications for the global corporate culture design over the long run. Likewise, is crossvergence a temporary, transitional state between convergence and divergence? And if so, how long is the transition process? The answers to these questions also have long-term
implications for the likelihood of the global organization.
Our findings are encouraging for a global form of organization that they do not strongly support the divergence perspective. However, on the other hand, neither do the findings strongly support the ideal for a seamless corporate culture - a convergence finding. Our findings, by substantially supporting crossvergence with culture-dominant, suggest that the global corporate culture concept may be viable in the long term, especially if crossvergene proves to be a transitional state, and values assimilation is a mutual process. However, we feel that these findings are not particularly supportive of the global organizational concept in the short term, especially when we look at the differences at the subdimensional level. There appear to be too many work value differences to make this concept presently realistic.