Gannon's Model of American Business Culture

Martin Gannon argues that the cultural flavor and tone of American business culture can be captured it by likening it to a football game -- the flag-waving pageantry, the aggressiveness on the field, the complex plays and elaborate rules, the triumphant expressions of victory. He goes on to draw comparable images for the business cultures of other societies (2001).

British business culture he likens to a sturdy, traditional, built-to-last-for centuries English house. German business culture he compares to a symphony, put together by the precise integration of scores of subtle threads. Italian business culture becomes an opera, an elaborate production of lavish spectacle and high drama. Each is clearly chosen for familiarity, vividness, and association with its country. We all have some image of British home life, if only from British movies. We also have images of a Germany symphony, an Italian opera, and so on.

In the construction of his book, Gannon does not present the American football game first: it is tucked in roughly halfway through the book (2001, pp. 205-20). If we read it cover to cover, therefore, we will only encounter his portrayal of our own society after we have seen him present more than a dozen others to us. It is hard not to suspect, though, that the American reader does not first turn to the chapter on American culture first. Thus, in spite of Gannon's evident intention in the plan of the book, they are likely to end up reading his portrayal o

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es on so much that we feel strongly about. Moreover, Hofstede's framework is based on an extensive study, and it gives results that are often contrary to our nanve or stereotyped expectations. To take one example, German society turns out (like American and British societies) to have low power distance. For this reason, along with its individualism, Gannon classes it as an equality-matching culture. This is contrary to the popular-culture stereotype of heavy-handed German functionaries, from commandants to ticket clerks. However, this stereotype is the byproduct of one rather brief period in German history, powerfully reinforced by wartime propaganda. In German culture the respect given an authority figure is a respect earned by mastery of technique and integration: the professor, the chief engineer, and the orchestral conductor. A German chief engineer does not expect subordinates to click their heels when he walks past. He does expect them to share his commitment, and to put the same exact and loving work into their portions of the work that he does into his. It is notable that several of the Western industrial societies fall into Gannon's equality matching group, combining low power distance with high individualism. In

Category: Business - G