Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Are you a universalist or a particularist?

Radio broadcast by Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden Turner


Are you a universalist or a particularist? 

Consider for a moment this dilemma: You are a passenger in a car driven by a close friend, and your friend's car hits a pedestrian. You know that your friend was going at least thirty-five
miles an hour in an area where the maximum speed was twenty miles an hour. There are no witnesses.

Your friend's lawyer says that if you testify under oath that the speed was only twenty miles an hour, then you would save your friend from any serious consequences. What would you do? Would you lie to
protect your friend? What right does your friend have to expect
your help? On the other hand what are your obligations to
society to uphold the law?

This is the sort of question that Fons Trompenaars and Charles
Hampden Turner asked 15,000 managers in 28 countries around
the world. They were interested in exploring the cultural
difference between what they called universalist societies and
particularist societies. Universalist societies follow the rules and
assume that the standards they hold dear are the correct ones.
They try to get everyone to conform to them. That way, they
believe, society works better. Particularist societies, on the other
hand, believe that particular circumstances are more important
than general rules and that your response depends on the
circumstances and on the particular people involved.

Going back to the car and the pedestrian, Trompenaars and
Hampden Turner discovered that North Americans and North
Europeans were almost totally universalist in their responses.
They would put the law first. Only 70 per cent of the French and
the Japanese would do so, however, while, in Venezuela, two
thirds would lie to save their friend.

Does this matter for managers? Listen on  to find out more.
Episode 13: Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden Turner

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