Business School Teaching Across Countries

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Cultural ManagementInternational Journal of Cross

DOI: 10.1177/14705958060623502006; 6; 19International Journal of Cross Cultural Management

Simon Ulrik Kragh and Malene DjursaaModernization and Management: Business School Teaching across Countries

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According to contingency theory, organiza-

tions tend to fall into two broad categories:

mechanistic and organic organizations. In the

ideal-typical description, mechanistic organi-

zations are bureaucratic and hierarchical,

production is standardized, and work pro-

cesses are based on repetition and routine.

Employees have little or no say in decision-

making, communication is vertical, flowing

from the bottom up in the organization or

Modernization and ManagementBusiness School Teaching across

Countries

Simon Ulrik KraghCopenhagen Business School, Denmark

Malene DjursaaCopenhagen Business School, Denmark

ABSTRACT The choice between mechanistic and organic organizational forms of control

should depend not only on the degree of technological and economic complexity, as argued

by contingency theory, but equally on whether the cultural conditions necessary to make theorganic model work are present. Teaching and learning are complex work processes, and

the way control is exercised at business schools is illustrative of principles applicable to other

organizations. Data about 26 countries suggest that teaching styles in post-industrial societies

are more likely to follow the organic model, involving greater ‘empowerment’ of students

and less formal authority. In the business school context, this ‘empowerment’ is shown to

rest on students’ cultural values of solidarity and social commitment. The argument is then

pursued to the sociocultural and political environment of the business schools. Running the

‘student empowerment index’ generated by own data against international value surveys

suggests a close relationship between teaching styles and various indicators of cultural and

political modernity.

KEY WORDS • business schools • culture • international • modernization • teaching

Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publicationswww.sagepublications.com

DOI: 10.1177/1470595806062350

CCM International Journal of

Cross Cultural

Management2006 Vol 6(1): 19–36








from the top down. In contrast, in the organic

organization management is consultative,

communication is horizontal as well as verti-

cal, there is an extended use of teamwork, and

employees are empowered to make decisions.Workflows are complex and are designed to

support creativity and innovation.

The classical explanation of the existence

of these different types of organization is that

the mechanistic organization is the rational

choice in a context characterized by simple

and stable technology and predictable mar-

kets, while the organic type of organization is

the rational choice in a context of changing

technology and uncertain markets requiring a continuous process of innovation (Burns

and Stalker, 1994 [1961]; Lawrence and

Lorsch, 1967; Galbraith, 1973).

The two types of organization are often

regarded as representative of industrial and

post-industrial society (e.g. Senge et al., 2000;

Florida, 2002). The mechanistic form of

organization thus represents the bureaucratic

and hierarchical management structures

associated with assembly-line production of

standardized products, characteristic of the

most dynamic industries in the early 20th

century, while the flat and informal organic

model is seen to fit companies in the creative

industries and hi-tech companies of the

early 21st century. In the transition from

industrial to post-industrial society, produc-

tion becomes more knowledge intensive, and

markets and technologies change at a faster

rate, calling for more flexible and creative

organizations.

However, changing cultural patterns also

contribute to changing behaviour in organi-

zations in a process of rational adaptation. At

the same time as technology and market con-

ditions change, norms and values undergo

transformations that organizations have to

cope with in order to be effective. The cul-

tural context, no less than technology and

market conditions, affects the choice of orga-

nizational form.

In this article, we suggest that organic

organizational forms result from a process of

rational adaptation to values and norms in

post-industrial or consolidated modern soci-

eties, while mechanistic organizations tend to

arise from a corresponding rational adapta-tion to values and norms in societies that

are closer to earlier stages of sociocultural

evolution. The reason, we suggest, is that the

economically and socially most advanced

and developed societies in the world also

have the strongest civic cultures, which in

general enable them to empower people in

their roles as employees as well as citizens.

Following Putnam (1993), we use the term

‘civic culture’ to designate groups or societieswhere values and norms of trust, solidarity

and commitment govern interpersonal rela-

tions, rather than sheer egoism and oppor-

tunism. Where such civic values are strong,

as is the case in advanced, post-industrial

societies, organizations as well as politics tend

to be horizontal and based on voluntary par-

ticipation. In less advanced societies, the civic

culture is typically weaker; consequently

there is a greater need to impose hierarchical

control on citizens and employees, resulting

in organizations with mechanistic character-

istics.

Modernization theory, which constitutes

the conceptual framework for this article,

states that the economy, social conditions

and cultural values of a society are to a large

extent structurally and functionally linked

and change in relatively predictable ways

(Rostow, 1971; Inglehart, 1997; Inglehart

and Baker, 2000). All societies eventually

pass through the same stages of development,

moving from traditional agrarian to modern

industrial society and from there further to

post-industrial or postmodern forms. In this

sense societal evolution displays a relatively

high degree of homogeneity, but this does

not necessarily imply that societies converge.

When developing countries modernize, the

rich western countries may already be on the

way to post-industrial or postmodern condi-

tions.

International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 6(1)20








The analysis focuses on one particular

type of organizational activity: business

school teaching. There are two reasons for

this choice. First, existing research suggests

that business school teaching and manage-ment in organizations in general tend to

enact similar sociocultural values (Senge,

1997; Senge et al., 2000; Hofstede, 2001;

Brown and Lauder, 1992; Brown et al., 2003)

and thus – to some extent at least – it is

possible to generalize findings from business

schools to other types of organizations. Second,

business schools are important providers of

potential managers to companies, and both

the content of teaching and the attitude tomanagement and cooperation, which stu-

dents acquire during the process of social-

ization at the institutions, are therefore

strategically important for business.

The article draws on two types of data:

the results from a student survey giving

information on teaching practices in different

countries (see the Appendix), and a number

of external databases providing knowledge

about sociocultural conditions in the national

environments of the business schools. In

the first half of the article we analyse and

interpret the survey data; in the second we

investigate the link between the survey data

and the external indicators of sociocultural

conditions in the national environment.

Authority, Trust and

Complexity in BusinessSchool Teaching acrossCountries

The Data

The first set of data consists of 796 answers to

a survey conducted at Copenhagen Business

School (CBS) (Kragh and Bislev, 2003) with

the purpose of identifying differences in

approaches to teaching and learning that

apply at business schools across countries.

Prior to the survey, the study group con-

ducted 25 in-depth interviews and focus

groups in order to identify themes to be

included in the questionnaire.

The respondents consisted of foreign

students studying as exchange students at

CBS, and Danish students who had spentone or two semesters abroad as exchange

students. Students with mixed national ori-

gin, or students without experience from

both their home country and Denmark

were sorted out. The students were asked

about conditions at CBS and at the foreign

institution where they had studied either as

exchange students or as local students. The

data on Denmark refer exclusively to CBS

and are an aggregate of Danish and foreignstudents’ descriptions of conditions at this

university.

The questionnaire contained two ques-

tions relating to authority and equality, both

indicators of the degree of deference ex-

pected of students, and the degree of control

exercised by professors:

1 What is the relationship between

professors and students like? Do

professors treat students as equals, or areprofessors authoritarian?

2 How do you usually address professors:

formally (e.g. by surname or title) or

informally (e.g. by first name)?

Three questions indicate the degree of com-

plexity and democratic participation in teach-

ing:

3 What is mostly emphasized by

professors: reproduction of facts andtextbook knowledge, or critical

discussion and individual perspectives?

4 How often do you use business cases in

class?

5 How often do you work in groups?

Question 3 indicates the degree of com-

plexity in two ways: in terms of communi-

cation flows and epistemology. Critical dis-

cussion implies interactive teaching and thus

two-way communication between professors

and students, while the emphasis on indi-

Kragh & Djursaa: Modernization and Management 21








vidual perspectives and a critical approach

implies a high acceptance of opinions and a

falliblist or relativist notion of knowledge,

in contrast to the communication of facts

and pre-established knowledge. Question 4 issimilar to the extent that case teaching is

interactive, involving not only interaction

between students and professors, but also dis-

cussions among students in class. Group work

– question 5 – is communicatively complex

because students participate actively in the

planning and execution of the tasks, and usu-

ally draw on a larger variety of sources than

available in class.

Question 2 on formality in relationsbetween students and professors was binary;

the other four questions used a 5-point scale.

In order to conduct the analysis at the

national level, we merged all student answers

and subsequently aggregated the data to

national averages. The substantial variation

in numbers of respondents from the different

countries arises from the Danish students’

choice of exchange university and the nation-

ality of the foreign exchange students at CBS.

Countries with fewer than seven respondents

are not included in the analysis (see the

Appendix).

Authority, Communicative

Complexity and Trust at

Business Schools in 26

Countries

Table 1 shows the correlations between the

answers to the five questions aggregated to

the national level.

There are strong correlations internally

between the indicators of authority (1,2) and

internally between the three indicators of

communicative complexity (3,4,5), but more

importantly, there are strong and significant

correlations between authority and complex-

ity. The strong positive correlation between,

for example, the degree of classroom egali-

tarianism (2) and the emphasis on discussion

and viewpoints in class (3) clearly shows that

authoritarian teaching and class manage-

ment systematically accompany a low degree

of communicative complexity, and that the

absence of authority goes with more varied

forms of interaction. The more moderate but

still highly significant correlations betweenclassroom egalitarianism and the use of case

teaching and group work point in the same

direction: egalitarian relationships between

professors and students are systematically

found together with the use of empowered

work groups, interactive communication, dis-

cussion of viewpoints and participation.1

Figure 1 shows the ranking of the coun-

tries that results from a reduction of the five

related variables, using factor analysis. At the top of Figure 1 we have countries

that have the most egalitarian relationships

between students and professors, and the

highest degree of complexity in teaching,

including an emphasis on critical discussion

and exchange of opinions. At the bottom we

find nations with apparently more autocratic

approaches to teaching at their business

schools, one-way communication from pro-

fessors to students and an emphasis on facts

and textbook knowledge.

The differences suggested by this ‘student

empowerment index’ recall the previously

discussed distinction between mechanistic

and organic organizational forms. According

to the founders of contingency theory, Burns

and Stalker (1994 [1961]), in mechanistic

organizations there is a ‘hierarchic structure

of control, authority and communication

[. . .] a reinforcement of the hierarchic struc-

ture by the location of knowledge of actuali-

ties exclusively at the top of the hierarchy,

where the final reconciliation of different

tasks and assessments of relevance is made.’

And there is ‘a tendency for operations and

working behaviour to be governed by the

instructions and decisions issued by superiors’

(p. 120).

In the organic type of organization, in

contrast, ‘omniscience [is] no longer imputed

to the head of the concern; knowledge about

the technical or commercial nature of the









here and now task may be located anywhere

in the network; this location becomes the ad

hoc centre of control, authority and commu-

nication’. Communication ‘consists of infor-

mation and advice rather than instructions

and decisions’, and there is ‘a lateral rather

than a vertical direction of communication

through the organization, communication


Table 1 Authority and participation at business schools in 26 countries

1 2 3 4

1 Addressing professors informally

2 Egalitarian relationships between students .88**

and professors

3 Critical discussion emphasized by professors .62** .81**

4 Frequent use of business cases .44* .50** .71**

5 Frequent use of group work .47* .60** .80** .77**

Notes : N = 26. Spearman’s rho. * p = .05; ** p = .01.

Notes : Factor scores. Method: Principal components. Extraction: Eigenvalues above 1. Variance explained: 72%.

Factor loadings: Addressing professors (1) .77; Authority (2) .90; Critical discussion (3) .92; Cases (4) .80; Group

work (5) .86. All German business schools except one are located in the former West Germany.

Figure 1 Empowerment of students

Denmark

Sweden

Finland Australia

Netherlands

Canada

USA

Singapore

Iceland

Great Britain

Norway

Mexico

China

Ireland

BelgiumThailand

Lithuania

Austria

Czech Republic

France

Spain

Germany

Russia

Poland

Italy

Japan

Low empowerment High empowerment

–2 –1 0 1 2

C o u n t r y o f

b u s i n e s s s c h o o l








between people of different rank [. . .] resem-

bling consultation rather than command’

(Burns and Stalker, 1994 [1961]: 121).

This is also an adequate description of

business school teaching as reported by thesurveyed students. In the countries at the

bottom of Figure 1, respondents characterize

communication as vertical; knowledge con-

sists of facts imparted by the professor and

textbooks, and students feel they have little or

no autonomy to influence work processes. At

the top of the Figure schools are egalitarian,

with complex patterns of communication

and a high degree of decentralization of

both knowledge and decision-making. Inthis sense, the student empowerment index

measures the degree of mechanistic and

organic approaches to class-management at

business schools across countries.

Authority, Trust and Interaction

Why do these differences in teaching styles

exist? With regard to management practices,

classical contingency theory points to differ-

ent technologies and market conditions,

which may require different degrees of orga-

nizational flexibility. In the case of teaching,

however, technology hardly plays such a

major role that it can help explain the

national differences, and it is also difficult to

see how market uncertainty and the need

for flexibility and innovation are supposed to

differ across nations and influence teaching

styles.

Part of the explanation may lie in the

different degrees of commitment of students

and the amount of trust professors have in

the students’ ability, willingness and motiva-

tion to work on their own and participate in

the teaching process. This interpretation

was suggested by a closer inspection of the

transcripts and summaries of the in-depth

interviews and focus groups that preceded

the survey.

Asked to describe the greatest difference

they saw between CBS and their home uni-

versity, many East European students said

that they had been very surprised to see that

Danish students voluntarily engaged in study

activities that were not graded, such as

making presentations of a business or theo-

retical issue in class. They were also surprisedto experience how the Danish students saw

knowledge and intellectual competence as a

source of prestige; among students in their

home universities, it gave prestige to be

‘smart’ and get through the course with high

grades, but as easily and effortlessly as

possible.

Other statements point in the same direc-

tion and suggest furthermore that low stu-

dent commitment is directly associated withstronger professorial authority. A French

student thus argued that ‘people in general

are lazy and therefore must be pressured to

work’, drawing a clear causal connection

between low commitment and authority. A

Danish student, also studying in France,

observed that the ‘French students work

very hard to get into the prestigious schools,

but once they are inside, the study as

such doesn’t matter very much’. Her own

experience with group work at the French

university illustrates the link between com-

mitment and authority. Having been to a

couple of meetings where most of the time

had been spent on conversations about

things that were irrelevant to the project, she

felt she had to take charge of the process and

simply put the other members to work.

According to her, at CBS students are much

more committed to the group work and

‘everybody reads what the other members

have written and wants to put their mark on

the project’ without any need for coercion or

control.

The student statements suggest a link on

the one hand between low commitment and

authoritarian conditions, and on the other

hand between strong commitment and higher

degrees of freedom, empowerment and

egalitarian forms of control. Authoritarian

external control and value-based internalized

commitment can be seen to substitute for









each other as sources of cooperation and

social order.

The observation that cooperation can

take place on the basis of either authority or

commitment suggests an interpretation along the lines laid out by Putnam (1993) who com-

pares an anecdote by the 18th-century philo-

sopher David Hume with Hobbes’ political

philosophy. Hume gives this illustration of

the role of trust and solidarity:

Your corn is ripe to-day; mine will be soto-morrow. ’Tis profitable for us both, that Ishou’d labour with you to-day, and that youshou’d aid me to-morrow. I have no kindnessfor you, and know you have as little for me. Iwill not, therefore, take any pains upon youraccount; and shou’d I labour with you uponmy own account, in expectation of a return, Iknow I shou’d be disappointed, and that Ishou’d in vain depend upon your gratitude.Here then I leave you to labour alone; Youtreat me in the same manner. The seasonschange; and both of us lose our harvests forwant of mutual confidence and security.(Putnam, 1993: 163)

This emphasis on solidarity and trust as

prerequisites for effective cooperation con-

trasts strongly with Hobbes’ solution to the

problem of order and cooperation. Hobbes

also takes the point of departure in man’s

uncooperative and egoistical character, but

trust and solidarity are insufficient to secure

cooperation and social order. If individuals

are left to themselves, the outcome will be

anarchy unless a strong authority steps in and

represses the socially destructive tendencies.

Both Hume and Hobbes thus take the point

of departure in the shortsighted egoism of

man arguing that it must be modified in

some way for cooperation and social order to

exist. For Hume the ideal is a social order

based on trust and solidarity, which tempers

the basic self-centred and shortsighted in-

stincts, while Hobbes argues for the imposi-

tion of an external authority.

The example is equivalent to the pris-

oner’s dilemma game, where the rational

solution for both is not to cooperate if both

parties act out of pure self-interest and

opportunism (Kay, 1995). If both players are

opportunistic, and each of them knows that

the other will not reciprocate when his or her

turn to help comes, there will be no coopera-tion in spite of the benefits they potentially

could draw from it.2 Trust and solidarity

between the actors as well as the imposition

of an external authority are solutions that

serve to avoid the negative outcome that fol-

lows when the players act out of pure egoism

without constraints. In descriptions of the

prisoner’s dilemma game, it is usually the

authoritarian solution that is emphasized as a

way out of the otherwise unavoidable lose– lose outcome, but as illustrated in Hume’s

anecdote, cooperation based on commitment

and trust is also a possibility.

Against this theoretical background, it is

possible to understand the end points of the

student empowerment index as representa-

tive of two different solutions to the problem

of cooperative order. Assuming that students

lack commitment, solidarity and trust

towards each other and towards the institu-

tion as a whole, there are but two ways to

avoid suboptimal learning conditions: Either

the professors – or the institution – impose an

external control on the students, or they seek

to develop the students’ norms of responsi-

bility, solidarity and trust. To the extent that

the latter is possible, authoritarian control

becomes unnecessary, paving the way for

leaning activities based on empowered

students.

The egalitarian business schools in coun-

tries like the USA, Great Britain, Australia,

New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Norway

and the Netherlands function well in spite of

the absence of authoritarian control, suggest-

ing a high degree of solidarity and trust

among students, and between students and

professors. Such norms enable business

schools in these countries to practise inter-

active teaching and group work, which puts

control in the hands of the students, without

risking disorder or suboptimal results. These









enabling conditions do not appear to be

present to the same degree in the East Euro-

pean countries, Japan, Germany and south-

ern Europe, which may help to explain

why conditions here are more authoritarianand forms of teaching and communication

simpler.

If students lack solidarity and social com-

mitment, professors cannot empower them

because attempts to do so will lead to unco-

ordinated talk and lack of direction, and pro-

fessors will have to respond to the growing

disorder by drawing on their authority and

reverting to more restricted forms of commu-

nication and interaction.

Student Empowerment and

Culture

We have so far argued that different degrees

of student empowerment and the corre-

sponding forms of interaction and communi-

cation are rational solutions to the problem

of order and cooperation and depend on the

strength of commitment values. The aim

now is to investigate to what extent the

national differences in teaching styles at busi-

ness schools correspond to other national

differences. Correlations do not necessarily

imply direct causal relationships, but if the

national teaching styles correlate significantly

with other national characteristics, there is

reason to believe that they reflect underlying

societal conditions – that they are part of the

same cultural complex of linked values and

norms.

In order to investigate this we made an

explorative correlational analysis between

the student empowerment index and a large

number of variables from external databases.

The data we use are the World Values

Survey (1995/1997) comprising more than

60,000 respondents in 43 countries, selected

data from United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP, 1998), Transparency

International’s Corruption Perception Index

(2002) and the organization’s report on civil

liberties. We also included data from Trom-

penaars’ (1997) cross cultural study on man-

agers’ values as part of the explorative search

for significant relationships.

It is important to underline the explo-rative nature of the investigation that follows.

The probability of getting false measures of

significance increases proportionally with the

number of correlations, and it is therefore

necessary to be cautious and recognize that

some of the significant p values might be

spurious. Nevertheless, as we will show, there

is a consistency in the findings that does

suggest an overall meaningful pattern of rela-

tionships.In the first place the findings suggest that

there is a link between the degree of student

empowerment in a country’s business schools

and empowerment in society as a whole.

Table 2 shows the correlations between

the student empowerment index and (1) the

number of years a country had had un-

interrupted democratic rule by 1995, and

(2) Transparency International’s ranking of

countries according to the strength and

extension of civil liberties.

The correlations are both strong and

highly significant, suggesting that we find

high student empowerment in countries that

have stable democratic pasts and where the

citizens enjoy extended civil rights. As we

move up the student empowerment index in

Figure 1, we not only move towards more

egalitarian and complex interactive forms of

teaching, but also towards countries which in

general have more stable democracies and

allow their citizens more liberty.

It is also interesting to note that in coun-

tries where business school students are

empowered, people feel that they are in

general control of their own lives, whereas

people tend to feel that they have less control

over their own lives in countries where busi-

ness school teaching is authoritarian and has

little or no interactive teaching (Figure 2).

We suggested that the different degrees of

student empowerment at the business schools









are dependent on the degree of commitment

values, and it is therefore interesting to note

that the student empowerment index also

correlates strongly and significantly with the

extent to which people in general trust each

other and with the level of corruption in

society (Table 3).

A strong level of generalized trust implies

that people in general take for granted that

other persons with whom they deal do not


Table 2 Democracy, civil liberties and student empowerment

1. Stable democracy .66**

2. Civil liberties .64**

Notes : Spearman’s rho. * p = .05; ** p = .01.

Sources : (1) Inglehart (1997), (2) Transparency International (2000).

Notes : Spearman’s rho = .69; p < .01. The World Values Survey question reads: ‘Some people feel they havecompletely free choice and control over their lives, while other people feel that what they do has no real effect on

what happens to them. Please use this scale [. . .] to indicate how much freedom of choice and control you feel you

have over your life turns.’ All German business schools referred to by the students except one are located in the

former West Germany.

Figure 2 Perceived control over own lives and student empowerment

S t u d e n t e m p o w e r m e n t i n d e x

2.0

1.0

0.0

–1.0

–2.0

5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0

Perceived control over own lives

Denmark

Sweden

Australia

Finland

USA

Mexico

Iceland

Ireland

Germany

Italy

Poland

Spain

China

Great Britain

Norway

Netherlands

Russia

Japan

Czech Republic

Austria

LithuaniaBelgium

France








act opportunistically and out of pure egoism,

and consequently that the risk of ending up

being cheated is small.

The corruption measure indicates, among

other things, the degree of social solidarity or

opportunism of citizens towards the state and

ultimately towards other, anonymous, fellow

citizens. A high level of corruption reflects a

low degree of solidarity with the system as a

whole and a high propensity to act oppor-

tunistically.

In his comparative analysis of northern

and southern Italy, Putnam (1993) argues

that the ‘civic values’ of trust and commit-

ment are a necessary condition for the

existence of democracy, and he explains the

‘uncivic culture’ of the South and its propen-

sity for authoritarian solutions to problems of

order and cooperation with the absence of

mutual trust and solidarity in this region.

In the North, where mutual trust is much

higher, the democratic traditions are also

stronger. Inglehart (1997) similarly shows in

the analysis of the World Values Survey data

that trust, together with income per capita

and education, mirrors the global distribu-

tion of stable democracies. This suggests that

the same logic that we used to explain the

presence or absence of interactive and egali-

tarian approaches to teaching is at work at

the level of society. Corrupt societies where

people in general distrust each other are also

those that have the weakest democratic tradi-

tion. Conversely, where such civic values are

strong, democracies are correspondingly

strong and individuals feel that they are in

control of their own lives. In society and in

society’s business schools, the degree of

empowerment of citizens and students seems

to reflect the presence or absence of trust,

loyalty and commitment: when these civic

values are strong, democracy tends to be

stable and teaching is based on empowered

students.


Table 3 Trust, corruption and student empowerment

1. Trust .67**

2. Corruption –.75**

Notes : Spearman’s rho; * p = .05; ** p = .01

Sources : (1) World Values Survey (1995/97), (2) Transparency International (2000).

Table 4 Membership in voluntary organizations and student empowerment

Church .54**

Sports .75**

Arts .77**

Unions .63**

Parties .61**Environmental groups .77**

Professional groups .73**

Charity .64**

Other .73**


Source : World Values Survey (1995/97).







Voluntary Organizations

The correlations between the student em-

powerment index and membership in volun-tary organizations are particularly revealing,

as shown in Table 4.

The moral principle in voluntary organi-

zations is the same as in students’ group work

and other forms of voluntary cooperation:

they only work if members do not misuse

their freedom of action and free-ride. Volun-

tary cooperation requires that members com-

mit themselves, putting the ‘we’ of the group

above the ‘I’ of immediate interest. In the

absence of such commitment-values it may

be possible to establish cooperation on the

basis of external authority, but there will

typically be few, if any, horizontal voluntary

organizations (Putnam, 1993).

The correlations rather clearly show that

in the countries where we find empowered

business school students we also find wide-

spread membership in voluntary organiza-

tions of all kinds because the high levels of

trust and loyalty enable horizontal egali-

tarian cooperation. Voluntary associations

and participatory and egalitarian forms of

teaching thus tap into the same underlying

sociocultural conditions.

Business School Teachingand Modernization

Among the significant bivariate correlations

that appeared in the exploration of the data,

groups of correlations seem to point towards

socioeconomic modernization as an under-

lying factor influencing civic culture and

democracy at the level of society, and com-mitment and classroom egalitarianism at the

level of business schools. Table 5 shows

the correlations between the indicators of

socioeconomic modernization and student

empowerment.

We find a high degree of student empow-

erment in the richest societies in the sample

and the lowest student empowerment among

the poorer countries, and there seems to be a

clear link between the student empowermentindex and the shift from industrial produc-

tion to services. This suggests that high levels

of student empowerment are post-industrial

or late modern phenomena and, conversely,

that low student empowerment is associated

with industrial modern society. In other

words, as economies change from being

based primarily on industrial manufacturing

to a situation where the production of

services constitutes the largest employment

sector, business schools tend to empower

students and use interactive teaching and

self-managed work groups.

The student empowerment index cor-

relates with the UNDP index of human

development, which is a combined measure

of life expectancy, adult literacy, enrolment

in education and real GDP per capita.

Education is another classical indicator of

modernization, and in view of the contents of

Table 5, it is perhaps not surprising that we

also find strong correlations between student


Table 5 Economic development and student empowerment

1. Human Development Index .50**

2. GDP per capita (ppp) .40*

3. Employment in industry –.50*4. Employment in services .55**

Notes : Spearman’s rho. * p = .05; ** p = .01. The Human Development Index is a United Nations Development

Programme indicator composed of life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, educational gross enrolment ratio and

real GDP per capita. All variables are from UNDP (1998).








empowerment and enrolment in education,

as shown in Table 6.

Furthermore, there is evidence that in the

countries which rank high on our empower-

ment index, citizens have a higher quality of

life, as shown in Table 7.

Taken together, Tables 5, 6 and 7 indi-

cate that high student empowerment is a

feature we find in rich, post-industrial welfare

states. Countries with empowered business

school students are richer, produce intangi-

ble goods rather than physical goods, and

have a better educated and happier popula-

tion compared to the nations at the bottom of

the student empowerment index.

Family Values and Gender Roles

It is no less striking that our measure of

student empowerment correlates with a large

number of family values and indicators of the

role of women in society. Table 8 shows the

correlations between the student empower-

ment index and family values.

The position of women in society is

closely related to family values, and the con-

tents of Table 9 confirm the direction already

established.

It may appear strange that the way busi-

ness school professors teach management

and related disciplines in business schools

should be statistically correlated with family

values and the role of women in society.

However, it is clear that as we go down the

student empowerment index towards busi-

ness schools with more professorial authority

and less complex interaction, we also move in

the direction of societies with more tradi-

tional family values and gender roles. Of

course, this does not imply a direct causal

relationship, but suggests that family values

and teaching styles are part of the same

cultural complex of linked values and norms.

Civic Culture andModernization

So far, we have pursued and found a com-

mon logic linking different degrees of egali-

tarian, participation-oriented and interactive

forms of cooperation and social order, both

in the business schools of different nations

and in their sociocultural context.

However, important questions remain.

Different degrees of civic culture appear to


Table 6 Education and student empowerment

1. Gross educational enrolment 1995 0.53**

2. Public education expenditure: % of GNP 1995–97 0.44*


Source : UNDP (1998).

Table 7 Quality of life

Happiness .61**

State of health .80**

Life satisfaction .77**

Notes : Spearman’s rho. * p = .05; ** p = .01. The question on happiness reads: ‘Taking all things together, would

you say that you are very happy, quite happy, not very happy or not at all happy?’ The question on health reads:

‘All in all, how would you describe your state of health these days? Would you say it is very good [. . .] Very poor.’

The question on life satisfaction reads: ‘All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these

days?’ (10-point scale going from dissatisfied to satisfied). All questions are from the World Values Survey (quoted

from Inglehart, 1997, Appendix 5).








influence teaching, but how can we explain

the observation that some nations have

stronger civic values than others, and there-

fore different approaches to authority in

society and teaching? And why does the

student empowerment index correlate with

such apparently disparate phenomena as

employment in services, life satisfaction,

family values and equality between men and

women? In order to answer these questions

we need a theory that is able to explain all the

observed correlations and integrate them in

an overall, conceptual framework.

A modified version of Huntington’s

theory on political modernization (Hunting-

ton, 1968) offers a possible explanation.

Huntington’s goal is to explain the process of

modernization of traditional societies. The

argument is that socioeconomic moderniza-

tion causes a disruption in the core institution

of traditional society – the extended family

and kin-group – at the same time as modern

institutions are still weak and under-

developed. In such transitional societies cor-

ruption, nepotism and a lack of identification

with modern institutions prevail, and the

rational response for politicians and military

leaders is to impose strong authoritarian

control in order to regain social order and

efficiency. The high incidence of authori-

tarian control and the widespread corruption

in developing countries are thus connected in


Table 8 Family values

1. Must always respect parents –.66**

2. Respect depends on family background –.56**

3. Divorce is never just –.45*4. Women need children –.62**

5. Children need both parents –.87**

Notes : Spearman’s rho. * p = .05; ** p = .01. Questions 1, 3, 4 and 5 are from the World Values Survey (quoted

from Inglehart, 1997, Appendix 5), question 2 from Trompenaars (1997: 10). In question 1 respondents were asked

to state their agreement with the statements ‘Regardless of the qualities and faults of one’s parents, one must

always love and respect them’ versus ‘One does not have the duty to respect and love parents who have not earned

it by their behaviour and attitudes.’ Question 2 asks if respondents agree with the statement ‘The respect a person

gets is highly dependent on their family background.’ Question 3 asks respondents to state whether they ‘think that

divorce can always be justified, never be justified or something in between.’ Question 4 reads: ‘Do you think that a

woman has to have children in order to be fulfilled or is this not necessary?’ and question 5 reads: ‘If someone says

a child needs a home with both a father and a mother would you agree or disagree?’

Table 9 Women in society

1. Gender Empowerment Index .67**

2. Seats in parliament held by women (lower house) .61**

3. Seats in parliament held by women (upper house) .49*

4. Women in government at ministerial level (pct ) .48*

5. Estimated earned income of women (USD, ppp) .60**

6. Men have more right to jobs than women –.74**

Notes : Spearman’s rho. * p = .05; ** p = .01. Questions 1–5 are from United Nations Development Programme

(1998). The gender empowerment index is a composite of indicators of gender equality. Question 6 is from the

World Values Survey (quoted from Inglehart, 1997, Appendix 5) and reads: ‘When jobs are scarce, men should

have more right to a job than women. Agree/disagree.’








a Hobbesian logic similar to the one Putnam

found in southern Italy. A similar logic, we

argue, lies behind the more autocratic styles

of business school teaching in some coun-

tries.

As modernization consolidates, the notions

of citizenship and loyalty with the modern

institutions of society grow stronger, creating

the foundations for democracy. An impor-

tant aspect of this change lies in the weaken-

ing of the family and in-group loyalties.

In traditional society, solidarity and trust

primarily exist within the borders of the

extended family or tribe, while members of

in-groups treat outsiders with indifference,

opportunism or hostility. As the ‘strong ties’

of the family break down, the ‘weak ties’

between out-group members gain strength,

and relationships of solidarity and trust

increasingly begin to develop among non-

family and out-group members (Granovetter,

1973; Fukuyama, 1999). As the socioeco-

nomic transformations bring individuals from

different in-groups together in modern insti-

tutions, they gradually learn to cooperate,

drawing on a common cultural stock of

mutual trust and solidarity.

In this analysis, a fully consolidated

modern culture consists of individuals who

identify with the nation state and its institu-

tions, who are citizens rather than tribesmen,

that is, a culture where social solidarity in

principle encompasses all citizens. In an

advanced modern society, former ‘strangers’

have learned to trust each other and commit

themselves to cooperation as members of the

same individualized culture (Scruton, 2003).

In this cultural context, there are strong

norms of cooperation among otherwise un-

related individuals which make democracy,

voluntary organizations, self-managed work

groups and empowered employees and stu-

dents possible.

In order to substantiate this thesis we

checked to see if the student empowerment

index also correlates with Trompenaars’

findings on in-group/out-group orientations

and, as Table 10 shows, this is in fact the

case.

Countries that in our data have the least

empowered students thus tend to give prefer-

ential treatment to in-group members, and

the converse applies for nations that empha-

size empowerment of students. Particularistic

values and in-group solidarity are strong in

the former, while the universalistic values of

equal treatment of all citizens and general-

ized trust are typical of the latter.

The development towards fully consoli-

dated modernity thus implies a simultaneous


Table 10 Preferential treatment of in-group members and student empowerment

1. Percentage of respondents who would lie to

the police in order to help a friend –.59**

2. Percentage of respondents who would write afalse review in order to help a friend –.48*

Notes : Spearman’s rho. * p = .05; ** p = .01. The source of both questions is Trompenaars (1997). Question 1 (p. 35)

is an index composed of three questions related to the following overall question: ‘You are riding in a car driven by

a close friend. You know that he was going at least 35 miles per hour. He hits a pedestrian in a city where the

maximum allowed speed is 20 miles per hour. There are no witnesses [. . .]. What right has your friend to expect

that you protect him?’ The second question (p. 53) is similar, the overall question being: ‘You are a newspaper

journalist who writes a weekly review of new restaurants. A close friend of yours has sunk all her savings in a new

restaurant. You have eaten there and you really think the restaurant is no good. What right does your friend have

to expect you to go easy on her restaurant in your review?’








transformation of linked social conditions

and values. Accompanying the transforma-

tion in the socioeconomic structure and

the growing affluence, family and in-group

values lose importance, citizen values gain inimportance, and authoritarianism declines

because of the growth of universalistic civic

values, making coercion and control obso-

lete. The correlations between the student

empowerment index and these changing

economic, social, cultural and political condi-

tions rather unambiguously suggest that

student empowerment is an outcome of

changing economic, sociocultural and politi-

cal conditions in society. Family values andstudent empowerment change together, not

because there is a direct causal link between

them, but because they are part of the same

historical process of change.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that the extension of

organic organizations depends on the civic

culture of society, which again depends on

the stage of modernization. In less advanced

modern countries, we should thus expect to

find a lower ratio of organic to mechanistic

organizations due to the influence of a

weaker civic culture and the underlying stage

of modernization. This analysis fits into the

general contingency framework, but whereas

classical contingency theory emphasizes the

technological and economic environment,

we have argued that culture, no less than

objective environmental conditions, influ-

ences norms, values and structures in organi-

zations. At the same time as organizations

adapt to rapidly changing technologies and

economic uncertainties in the market by

moving towards organic structures, the

cultural changes produced by the ongoing

process of modernization make the function-

ing of such organizations possible. A strong

civic culture, commitment and social solid-

arity ensure that the decentralization and

empowerment that are necessary to operate

efficiently in post-industrial or postmodern

markets do not degenerate into inefficiency

and disorder.

The evolutionary pattern suggested here

does not necessarily imply a convergence of cultures and organizational forms. At the

same time as mechanistic organizations

change into more organic ones and thus

acquire the characteristics of the most

advanced nations today, there is reason to

believe that these advanced nations also

change and develop new, and so far

unknown, forms of organization, which may

differ from both the mechanistic and the

organic forms. The process of modernizationimplies that societies move through the same

stages, but not necessarily that all societies

will end up belonging to the same final stage

of historical development.

For international organizations and com-

panies, the conclusion that automatically

presents itself would be that they should

adapt the degree of authority and participa-

tion to the civic culture in their environment.

The closer societies are to traditional society

and the transition to modernity, the more

control is called for, and the organizations

should not, as a rule, make these societies

their first choice when they decide to place

operations which require decentralization,

empowerment and complex forms of com-

munication and interaction. The socio-

cultural environment of late modern societies

is better suited for these tasks.

However, it should also be borne in mind

that the conclusions drawn here are based on

national averages and do not take the spread

around the mean into consideration. In other

words, it is of course possible that companies

may find employees who are able to work on

the basis of commitment and trust, even if

the central tendency points in the opposite

direction.

The analysis has left unanswered a num-

ber of issues that future research should

address. In the first place, due to the high

level of analysis and the focus on central









tendencies across countries, the individual

nations have been treated as ‘black boxes’

without investigating nation-specific reasons

for their position in the overall picture. Fur-

ther research is needed in order to explain indetail why, for example, advanced countries

such as Japan and Germany rank so low in

the student empowerment index.

At the same time, further surveys are

needed in order to obtain a larger sample

size, which would allow more detailed and

precise conclusions about the role of the

various variables that covary with student

empowerment. The most effective way to

accomplish this would be to run similarresearch projects at a number of business

schools in various countries. Such an

approach might also produce insight into

nation-specific conditions, explaining devia-

tions from the central tendency.

Notes

1 The use of titles and polite forms of verbs andpronouns in languages that allow this may to

some extent be a matter of convention ratherthan cultural expressions of deference andauthority.

2 Expressed formally as a prisoner’s dilemmagame, the two farmers’ situation may look like the following.

Farmer B

cooperate not cooperateFarmer A

cooperate 10,10 2,20

not cooperate 20,2 5,5

The numbers to the left of the commas arethe payoffs to farmer A, and those to theright of the commas are payoffs to B. If bothdecide to cooperate, they both receive apayoff of 10. If they both decide not tocooperate, they each receive a payoff of 5. If A helps B, but B does not reciprocate, A isleft with the ‘sucker’s payoff’ of 2 while Bgoes away with 20. If A cooperates with B,but defects when his or her turn comes, Agoes away with 20, and leaves B with 2. For A the choices are: if B cooperates (the firstcolumn), A is better off defecting; and if B

does not cooperate, A is also better off defecting. When both farmers know that theother is acting rationally and out of pure self-interest, the outcome is 5,5, i.e. thesuboptimal solution. Hume’s example differs

somewhat from this formalization as he – simplifying – supposes 0,0 to be the result of mutual non-cooperation.

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Appendix:Respondents per country

Country of students’ Respondents Country of students’ Respondents

business schools per country business schools per country

Denmark 796 Austria 18

USA 110 Singapore 17

France 89 Belgium 13

Canada 64 Iceland 11

W. Germany 59 Mexico 10

Great Britain 53 Sweden 10

Italy 51 Japan 9

Spain 37 Thailand 9

Australia 36 Ireland 8

China 24 Finland 8

Netherlands 23 Czech Republic 8

Norway 23 Poland 7

Russia 19 Lithuania 7

SIMON ULRIK KRAGH is in the CopenhagenBusiness School, Department of InterculturalCommunication and Management,Porcelænshaven 18A, DK-2000 Frederiksberg,Denmark. [email: [email protected] ]

MALENE DJURSAA is in the CopenhagenBusiness School, Department of English, DalgasHave 15, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark.[email: [email protected] ]









Résumé

Modernisation et management : L’enseignement en école de commerce à

travers les pays (Simon Ulrik Kragh and Malene Djursaa)

Le choix entre les formes mécanistes et organiques d’organisation du contrôle devrait dépen-

dre non seulement du degré de complexité technologique et économique, comme le soutient lathéorie de la contingence, mais également de la présence ou non des conditions culturelles

nécessaires au fonctionnement du modèle organique. L’enseignement et l’apprentissage sont

des processus de travail complexes, et la manière dont le contrôle est exercé dans les écoles de

commerce sert à illustrer des principes applicables à d’autres organisations. Les données

récoltées dans environ 26 pays suggèrent que les styles d’enseignement dans les sociétés post-

industrielles suivent plus probablement le modèle organique, impliquant une plus grande

« responsabilisation » des étudiants et moins d’autorité formelle. On montre que, dans le con-

texte d’une école de commerce, cette « responsabilisation » repose sur les valeurs culturelles de

solidarité et d’engagement social des étudiants. L’argument est alors étendu à l’environnement

socioculturel et politique des écoles de commerce. La confrontation de « l’indice de respons-abilisation de l’étudiant » issu de données propres avec des études internationales sur les valeurs

suggère clairement un rapport étroit entre les modèles d’enseignement et les divers indicateurs

de modernité culturelle et politique. En fin de compte, chaque école et chaque organisation

sont imbriquées dans un contexte culturel où les valeurs civiques soutenant les démocraties sont

étroitement apparentées aux valeurs liées au travail, sur lesquelles s’appuient les organisations.

Simon Ulrik Kragh and Malene Djursaa

Business School Teaching Across Countries

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