Values Influence Decision-making. While No

¶ … values influence decision-making. While no decision-making method is perfectly rational, perhaps weighted decision matrices come the closest to identifying optimal choices. However, even these are subject to influence by values at various levels, as the weights assigned to ranking criteria depend upon who is assigning the weights, his or her cultural background, and the sum total of their distilled experiences. For an interesting discussion upon how ranking criteria can be weighted differently depending upon the "ranker," please see Price-Bonham (1976).

In my experience dealing with businesses in multiple countries, I have often observed that the companies in a given country will have some shared values that are absent from companies in different countries. If the values shared by firms in one country are the same within that country, but differ among firms across countries, then perhaps an argument could be made that the differences have their roots at a deeper level; perhaps at the cultural level.

Further, since no values are intrinsic, but learned, and since none of these can be learned outside of culture, it stands to reason that personal values also have their roots in cultural values. In effect, I am saying that the concept of "values" is one that, at the very least, is highly multidimensional, and it is uncertain whether the effects upon decision-making by cultural, corporate, and personal values can be meaningfully disentangled.

My position, therefore, is that all values are ultimately reducible to cultural ones, and that culture is the main driver producing variance in decision making across professional and personal levels. Given prior research on the differences among cultures, this should come as no great surprise; consider Barker and Cobb (2000) and Hofstede and McCrae (2004). For instance, when a person is expected to behave in a way that is contrary to his or her personal values, cognitive dissonance is the inevitable result.

But these personal values are perhaps very largely, if not entirely, influenced by the values held at large by the culture into which the person was born. The degree to which personal values are at variance with cultural values is the degree to which an individual's personal experiences have positively or negatively reinforced cultural messages regarding its values. If the culture sends a message that working hard is a good way to get ahead in life, then the culture values hard work.

Yet, if a person thus acculturated works hard but is consistently passed over for promotion in favor of peers or subordinates who are not as hard working, a form of cognitive dissonance emerges that negatively reinforces the cultural message about hard work. The individual's values will necessarily change; he or she may no longer value hard work and may learn to value "taking it easy." Thus, cultural and personal values interact within the mind of the individual.

One clear, to me, example of how entangled values are across these three areas is in the Chinese concept of mianzi (Gries, 1999). This translates loosely as "face" and it is essentially the same "face" that one thinks of in the phrase, "to lose face." While this concept has some similar concepts in the West, such as self-image, self-respect, and esteem, none of these correspond 100% with "face" in the Eastern sense, nor do they have precisely the same effect on behavior. They do influence behavior, but not in the same way.

For instance, in the West, candor is a valued attribute and practice in business relations. One could say that American businesses value personal opinions and expect positive criticism when it is invoked. To paraphrase Frank Zappa, the trend-setting musician and pop-culture icon: progress requires deviation. This is a very Western point-of-view. I am not saying it is not the right point-of-view, nor that it is not a good one, but that it is not a point-of-view that is embraced in Eastern Civilization, certainly not in China.

I am reminded of something one of my professors once said to a class about the difference between Western and Eastern business practices, "In the United States, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but in Japan, the nail that sticks out gets hammered back in." Face" has as much to do with one's own self-esteem as it does with the self-esteem of others.

Whether in business or other settings, Chinese people will often demonstrate a notable lack of contentiousness, preferring to say indirectly what an American would not hesitate to say frankly. If one's professional or social senior in China errs in some way, the junior will seldom correct or criticize him. This is in part because doing so would cause the senior to lose face, which is undesirable. One does not want to be the reason another loses face.

Others take a dim view of someone who caused another to lose face in this way. When constructive criticism is invoked by a senior, or even by an equal, the response from a Chinese person will probably not be very candid. An articulate Chinese person will attempt to use polite conversation to lead the person requesting the criticism to arrive at the same opinion as is felt by the person of whom the criticism is being asked.

This is a roundabout way of saying, "I will gently talk you into developing the same opinion, criticism, suggestion, or conclusion as I have on this issue without explicitly stating what that actually is." Although I have observed this often enough, it is far from anecdotal; see for instance Tjosvold and Sun (2001) and Chen (2004). This is the inevitable result of China and other Eastern countries having high-context cultures. The implications this has for decision-making are hardly trivial.

In a high context environment, the transmission of information largely depends upon the context in which it is transmitted (Hall and Hall, 1987). A business meeting in China has a much different atmosphere than one in the United States. The hierarchy of executives in the meeting is much more important in Chinese meetings than in the U.S. This necessarily impacts the way subordinates make suggestions, give feedback, and even answer direct questions. Very often, silence on the part of subordinates is a sign of respect.

Contrast this with a business meeting in the United States in which subordinates are expected to make suggestions and respond to direct questions with frank answers. The Chinese subordinate in an American business meeting occupies a position that is not to be envied. His or her respectful silence in the presence of seniors may be construed as meaning that he or she has nothing to say. In a more personal venue, the high vs. low context culture issue and "face" issue play just as significant a role in decision making.

Americans will probably concur that, purely as consumers, most people are more apt to purchase an expensive.