comparative value priorities of chinese and new zealand

CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW ZEALAND
A good summary of New Zealand popular culture and history is available in Fairburn
(2008). Fairburn proposes that culturally New Zealand, particularly the Pakeha culture,
is heavily influenced by the UK, Australia, and the USA. The term Pakeha has evolved
from a Maori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) term referring to non-Maori. The
word now refers to non-Maori New Zealanders of European heritage, particularly those
from the United Kingdom (King, 1988, Spoonley, 1994). Originally, Pakeha had the
neutral meaning of different. However, in contemporary New Zealand Spoonley (1994:
89) identifies the meaning as “membership in the dominant group and by a particular
relationship to the Maori and to the social and physical environment of New Zealand”.
The sample for this study in New Zealand consists of Pakeha participants. Pakeha are
the majority influence in business. In September 2009, Statistics New Zealand 6
estimated there were 2,154,000 employed, including 253,700 Maori (11.8%). Pakeha
comprise about 77% of the labour force. By a large majority, the management and
professional positions are occupied by Pakeha and “Asians” (in New Zealand “Asians”
include those of East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian ethnicity). A thorough
review of Maori culture and leadership is available in Pfeifer (2005), along with
additional results for Pakeha in New Zealand using the GLOBE surveys.
New Zealand consists of two islands, North Island and South Island. The South Island is
the larger of the two; the other, North Island, is the more populous by a multiple of
three, about 1 million to more than 3 million, with nearly 1.5 million in the Auckland
City area. Being the larger, South Island is often called “the Mainland”. Today this
expression is used humorously, although still with pride by “Mainlanders”. Only about
a quarter of New Zealand’s four+ million inhabitants now live on the South Island,
however, in the early stages of European Pakeha settlement of the country, the South
Island was pre-eminent, with the majority of the European population and wealth
focussed there, due to gold rushes. In the early 20 th century, the North Island population
overtook the South, with 56% of the population living in the North in 1911 (King, 2003:
280-281).
6 http://www.stats.govt.nz/publications/product-development-and-publishing/nz-in-the-oecd/gdp-per-
capita.aspx
95