University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

194
are supposed to be more modest, tender and concerned with quality of life. For the
feminine society, social gender roles overlap in that both men and women are
supposed to be modest, tender and concerned with the quality life. In this respect, the
Chinese and the Danish are different from each other. Denmark had an extremely
low masculinity score, which as explained by Hofstede (2000) is possibly due to the
fact that the Viking period in Scandinavia meant that women had to manage the
villages while the men were away, thus women and men played equally important
roles in sustaining their livelihoods. While in China, the score is roughly sixty
percent, the relatively neutral result is probably a consequence of the long history of
absolute male dominant culture and the efforts of enhancing female status quo in
societies after the foundation of new China.
(iv) Uncertainty Avoidance
The fourth dimension, uncertainty avoidance, can be defined as the extent to which
the members of a culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations. In this
aspect, Denmark scored a low uncertainty avoidance index, which suggests that
citizens believe that they can participate in political decisions at the lowest, local
level. This means that they believe that their voice, if heard would make a difference,
which also creates a positive political climate since citizen protests are actually
acceptable. Interestingly, Chinese-speaking regions such as Taiwan and Hong Kong
also scored low in uncertainty avoidance index. The Chinese empire centred around
one person, the Emperor, and it was governed by general principles such as
Confucianism which advocated loyalty to the Emperor. Thus, this notion of loyalty is
so inbred in the Chinese that they are more willing and prepared to act on orders, so
long as the decision was mandated by the emperor or in this modern times; the
central government.
(v) Long term versus short time horizon or Confucian Dynamism.
The last dimension, Confucian dynamism, is of particular importance as it was an
addition due to the realization that eastern countries (such as China, Japan and Korea)
share distinctively different values from Western countries. Hence, the Chinese
Value Survey was formulated in which values that are not apparent in western
societies were included, such as “filial piety” (Hofstede and Bond, 1988) to better
represent Eastern thoughts. Figure 1 illustrates the values associated with
Confucianism. These values, also broadly termed as Virtue and Truth, are connected
with the practical idea of long term and short term orientation respectively. The
values on the left hand side are related to long term orientation value while the right
hand side is related to short term orientation.