Career Guide

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Organisations should possess long term vision and strive for future rewards

Long-term orientation invests in lifelong personal networks Long-term orientation invests in lifelong personal networks

One important cultural dimension that organisations must recognise is long-term versus short-term orientation; or as the GLOBE study calls it, “future orientation.”

Using Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov’s definition, “long-term orientation stands for the fostering of virtues oriented towards future rewards – in particular, perseverance and thrift... short-term orientation, stands for the fostering of virtues related to the past and the present – in particular, respect for tradition, preservation of “face”, and fulfilling social obligations.

In Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind, Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov found key differences between short-term and long-term societies in relation to business and ways of thinking. These were based on findings from the Chinese Value Survey (CVS) that was administered to students from 23 countries:

From the countries participating in the Long-Term Orientation Index based on the CVS (LTO-CVS), China was ranked first in long-term orientation with a score of 118. It was followed in succession by the East Asian countries of Hong Kong (96), Taiwan (87), Japan (80) and South Korea (75).

The United States was ranked 17th with a score of 29, while India was ranked seventh with a score of 61. Australia was ranked 14th with a score of 31. The lowest ranked countries were Nigeria with a score of 16, and Pakistan, 0.

Developing long-term orientation

There are two particular characteristics identified in long-term orientation societies that are worth noting. These are humility and self-control.

1 Humility

Hofstede refers to some market research conducted by a Japanese corporation that showed the importance of humility in the section on gender stereotypes.

He finds that “in long-term-oriented countries, or those with a Confucian tradition, humility is seen as a masculine virtue. In cultures with other dominant traditions, humility is seen as more feminine.”

With this observation it is important that we remember that feminine societies are not defined as such because they have no masculine characteristics, but because social gender roles have a greater tendency to overlap.

Nonetheless, Alexandre Havard in his book Virtuous Leadership makes it very clear that the virtue of humility is anything but weakness or resignation, and is an attribute that has acquired a pejorative connation.

He states, “The humble person often is seen as devoid of ambition and nobility and unworthy of honour... The humble man sees himself as he really is. He acknowledges his weaknesses and shortcomings, but also his strengths and abilities.”

2 Self-control

Self-control is the second characteristic identified with longer-term orientation. Havard opens the chapter on self-control in his book with a quote from Peter Drucker that says, “I no longer teach the management of people at work... I am teaching, above all, how to manage oneself.”

It is the ability to carefully manage the tendency we have for immediate self-gratification, by subordinating that passion or desire so we don’t jeopardise the ultimate goal we are trying to achieve.

We see this played out every day. A small business owner would like to pay himself a higher salary, but knows it would negatively impact cash flow and hinder the businesses ability to pay its debts on time. A major corporation resists the temptation to launch a new product that is not quite ready for the market, because it doesn’t want to sacrifice its brand reputation that has taken years to acquire. A government chooses to stay the course, rather than react to declining popularity in the polls.

These conflicts occur every day, and they demonstrate how culture impacts the way we respond to them, and why virtue is such an important and reassuring quality of leadership.

Responses to the GLOBE study by managers and leaders showed a strong correlation between long-term orientation (or “future orientation”) and the practices of uncertainty avoidance, institutional collectivism and performance orientation.

Ashkanasy et al. in their book Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, state that these organisations had a greater tendency for encouraging their members “to consider the collective interests in making decisions about how to manage information, technology, and knowledge, and in reducing uncertainty”.

In relation to the six implicit leadership theories, future orientation cultural values were significantly correlated with team-oriented leadership, participative leadership, humane-oriented leadership, and self-protective leadership, primarily because these encourage members to be “part of a shared leadership belief system.”

Dr Glenn Williams is the CEO and principal owner of Outward Looking International that empowers leaders and organisations to grow their leadership capacity. To engage Williams for special leadership workshops for your organisation, email people@leaderonomics.com