Outliers and Hofstede

MBA is a great leveler. The heady excitement of macroeconomics, finance and marketing is tempered by the fatal boredom of HR and OB. And one topic that inevitably gets raised in HR and OB is the Hofstede’s Index.

Geert Hofstede, a Dutchman, profiled the behavior of people in various countries and concluded that cultural differences can be explained on a four-point scale: Power Distance, Individualism vs. Collectivism, Masculinity vs. Femininity and Uncertainty Avoidance. B-schools and academia adore such neat models and, next to Porter’s Five Forces, Hofstede’s Index has to be the most frequently used tool to explain away the failures of MNCs. It makes you sound intelligent and gets you points for class participation. Beyond that, it seemed useless. Until I read Outliers.

Gladwell’s latest book attempts to search beyond the obvious traits of successful people – that is intelligence, hard work and perseverance. They are important, he agrees, but claims there is a little something, called luck, which actually catapults them into a different league. Like his previous books, Outliers makes for interesting reading, but what made me sit up and take notice was his analysis of plane crashes.

Here is a chilling recount of the 1990 Colombian Avianca plane crash in New York. The aircraft is desperately running out of fuel, but has not been given permission to land. The captain asks the first engineer to contact ATC and tell them it’s an emergency. The first officer contacts ATC, and among other things, mentions they are running out of fuel. Planes are expected to be low on fuel as they reach the destination so ATC doesn’t give this much weight. But rather inexplicably, the first engineer doesn’t push.

The situation makes no sense, until one looks at it through Hofstede’s index. Colombia is a country with relatively high power distance, where people are more respectful of authority. Hence, no questions were asked. If the first engineer was an American, Gladwell claims, the conversation would have taken a different course. Reading this sent a chill down my spine, but it seems airlines world over have recognized such manifestations of cultural differences in everyday interactions, and have taken measures to train their pilots and crew.

Jai Hofstede!