A Perspective on the Generalization from Organizational to National Culture: A Cautionary Note on the Biconditional Assumption

Abstract

We argue against the generalization from organizational culture research to its national culture.  Our starting premise is that organizations are homogeneous structures with set thresholds for membership. Selecting members of an organization is not a random process of sampling that represents the population; membership in an organization is established through selection criteria. Second, managers hire members with similar attributes to their own to ensure loyalty and compliance to the organizational culture. Third, the scientific method requires a single counterexample to break down the validity of generalization from the organizational culture to the national culture; this, in turn, threatens external validity. Fourth, economic development and education management styles migrate toward essential principles and values of the core of management, that is, convergence. We conclude that such generalization is a proposition that should be presented with caution, and conversely, national culture is not solely a measure of the effectiveness of management performance.