Plane crashes linked to a cultural dimension?

Can cultural issues cause planes to crash? Malcolm Gladwell — the wild-haired pop intellectual of “Tipping Point” fame — says yes, and dedicates a whole chapter to the subject in “Outliers: The Story of Success,” the book he  published in 2008.

In an interview with Fortune Magazine , Gladwell, a British-Canadian journalist, bestselling author and speaker, said:

‘Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. When we think of airline crashes, we think, Oh, they must have had old planes. They must have had badly trained pilots. No. What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the US’

‘But Boeing and Airbus design modern, complex airplanes to be flown by two equals. That works beautifully in low-power-distance cultures [like the U.S., where hierarchies aren't as relevant]. But in cultures that have high power distance, it's very difficult.'

Gladwell explores two plane crashes—one Colombian (Avianca Flight 52) and another, South Korean (Korean Air Flight 801)—and how the culture of the pilots perhaps contributed to each disaster. He focuses on how well the pilots communicated with each other and with air traffic control. Poor communication in these examples, he argues, has to do with something called a culture’s Power Distance Index (P.D.I.)—the term and concept come from psychologist Geert Hofstede—which is a measurement of “how much a particular culture values and respects authority,” as Gladwell defines it. Countries with a high P.D.I. generally value being more deferential towards authority, and thus not contradicting a superior (the U.S. has a low P.D.I. of 40). Gladwell argues that since both Colombia (67) and South Korea (61) rank towards the top of the P.D.I. list, the subordinate members of their cockpit crews were unable or unwilling to speak up as assertively as they should have about safety concerns.

What’s your take on this? The next time you take a flight, are you going to check on the nationality of the pilots before flying? Is the airline owned and managed by a hierarchical culture such as Thai, Chinese or Mexican?

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