The term uncertainty avoidance was used in the 1960s in a well-known American book about the theory of the firm. It was applied to the level of organizations by Syed and March, but I borrowed it in 1970s for describing differences between national societies. What does uncertainty avoidance mean? Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which the members of a culture, of a national society, feel threatened by ambiguous and unknown situations. Some people think that it means risk avoidance, but it does not mean risk avoidance, and I have a good example to show why that is the case.
What does uncertainty avoidance mean? stand for, I'm opposing here two extremes, the uncertainty avoiding societies and the uncertainty accepting societies, and actually most societies are somewhere in between. In uncertainty avoiding societies, the uncertainty which is inherent in life is a threat that must be fought, whereas in uncertainty accepting societies, uncertainty is normal, and life is accepted as it comes. Which also implies that in uncertainty avoiding societies there is more stress and anxiety and in certainly accepting societies there is less stress and anxiety.
In uncertainly avoiding societies, aggression and emotions may sometimes be vented. Whereas in uncertainly accepting societies, aggression and emotions should be controlled. Uncertainly avoiding societies have a feeling that what is different is dangerous.
What is different is dangerous. Whereas uncertainly accepting societies believe that what is different is curious. There is, in uncertainly avoiding societies, a need for rules. There is a need for rules, even if they are impractical, or even if they are never practiced.
There must be rules, there must be a rule. Whereas uncertainly accepting societies... don't like rules very much, they want fewer rules, and even the rules that are necessary may sometimes be broken in case of necessity.
Uncertainty-avoiding societies believe in formalization, uncertainty-accepting societies believe in deregulation. Innovations, also technological innovations, are adopted in uncertainty avoiding societies rather slow, rather carefully. For example, the modern information systems. innovations have taken more time in the uncertainty avoiding societies than in the uncertainty accepting societies.
In uncertainty avoiding societies people tend to stay in the same job as long as tech. can because changing jobs is one of the most uncertain things one can do in life. In uncertainly accepting societies the changing of jobs is much more easily done.
And finally, and very importantly, uncertainly avoiding societies, they are afraid of people who are different, who look different, who behave different, who come from elsewhere. It's called xenophobia. Whereas uncertainty accepting societies are more tolerant.
They are more tolerant towards people who are different. How do we measure uncertainty avoidance? Well, there is no absolute standard.
So you can only compare one country to another. Differences between societies is the only thing you can measure. And the position of the society is very important.
The position on the uncertainty avoidance is measured by an index, the uncertainty avoidance index, UAI. And the countries we have got data from have been plotted. on a scale which goes from zero for weak uncertainty avoidance societies to a hundred for strong uncertainty avoidance societies. Let me give you some example. We have data.
For 76 countries, on the high side, on the top, we find Russia. And we also find Japan. In the European countries, the Western European countries, France scores highest on uncertainty avoidance.
In the other side of the Atlantic, we have Mexico, which scores high. In Europe also, Italy scores fairly high. And we find high scores in the Arab countries and just above average in Germany.
On the low side, we find... also not so far from Germany, but on the other side. We find the Netherlands.
We find Australia and the United States. And still lower, we find India. Britain is quite low.
China is low. And the Nordic countries, especially Denmark, are very low. What can we do with this index, the uncertainty avoidance index? How can we validate it? What is it useful for?
Well, you can do statistical analyses and see what phenomena in society are related to this index. And then we discover one thing which is very interesting, which is that in general uncertainty avoiding societies drive faster, people drive faster on motorways and even the speed limits on motorways tend to be higher there. uncertainty accepting societies drive slower.
And here you show that uncertainty avoidance is not risk avoidance, because obviously if your body drives faster, there is more risk in traffic. But this is supposed to be a known risk. It is not felt as a source of uncertainty. In uncertainty avoiding societies, there is more.
alcoholism and there is less alcohol abuse in uncertainty accepting societies. In uncertainty avoiding societies it is compulsory for everybody to always be able to identify yourself so you should carry your identity card all the time. Now in most uncertainty accepting societies you have identity cards but carrying them is optional.
You only need to carry them if you want to go some where you have to identify yourself. There is an interesting difference in healthcare between the two kinds of societies. In uncertainty-avoiding societies there are relatively more doctors and fewer nurses.
And in uncertainty-accepting societies there are relatively fewer doctors and more nurses, which means that the number of tasks which on the one side are performed by the doctor himself can be delegated to the other. to nurses who are less educated, who are supposed to be less expert. There is also a difference in perceived corruption. There is an organization called Transparency International that issues a corruption perception index.
You cannot measure corruption, but you can measure the perception of corruption. And now we are talking about wealthy countries in particular. On the uncertainty-avoiding side, the wealthy countries tend to be perceived as more corrupt.
On the uncertainty-accepting side, the wealthy countries tend to be perceived as less corrupt. There are interesting differences in the field of marketing and advertising. For example, in the uncertainty avoiding societies, clean products and pure products tend to be quite popular.
cleanliness and purity are key words in marketing a product, whereas in the uncertainty accepting side, consumers will be more attracted by easy products, by convenience products, ready-made products. And this also is seen in advertisements, in ads. You will see in the inadvertently avoiding societies, more often an expert......person...
Maybe somebody in a white coat who explains to you why this product is so important, whereas in the advertising side on the Uncertainty Accepting Societies, advertising more often uses humour. It is very interesting to put the two dimensions of power distance and uncertainty avoidance next to each other. Now, first of all, they are not related.
In some parts of the world, you find a combination where both are high and other parts where both are low, but there's also countries where one is high and the other is low. And so I made a table, a two-by-two table, where I divided... or 76 countries into high and low uncertainty avoidance, strong and weak uncertainty avoidance, and high and low power distance. And then if I look at how people organize themselves, you can see the difference. And it is already there if you ask people what they imagine if they think of an organization.
Now if you have a small power distance and a weak uncertainty avoidance, then you are in the Anglo-Saxon countries, you are in the United States, you also are in the Nordic countries of Europe and marginally in the Netherlands. If people think of an organization, it is something like a market, a place where people interact. But nothing is fixed forever. You can change the rules, you can change the circumstances.
Whereas if you have a small power distance but a strong uncertainty avoidance, then you get to countries like the German-speaking countries, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, but also the Baltic countries in Europe. And then you see that people imagine an organization as a kind of machine. A machine that operates by itself is not necessary that the boss intervenes all the time to make it function, but it's a well-oiled machine.
Now, if you move to the corner where the power distance is large and the uncertainty avoidance is strong, then you get to the typically Latin countries, including France, but also Russia. and the countries of Southeastern Europe, but also some Asian countries like Japan and Korea. And there, people imagine an organization like a pyramid of people, actually a pyramid where there's somebody at the top.
In France, it's called the Président Directeur Général, PDG, and everybody else is on their proper place below. And the organization functions owing to this structure that makes it function. And finally, you have the combination of large power distance but weak uncertainty avoidance.
And this we find in the two largest countries in the world, China and India. And there, an organization is rather imagined like a family. The relationship in an organization can be compared to the relationship in a family.
And this is also... visible in the fact that there are more family-owned organizations and family members are employed in the own organization. Don't the UAI scores change over time in a world where so many things are changing?
Now, first of all, the scores reflect the values that have been transferred from parents to children. And... There are values that rarely change after adulthood. We got them when we were children. When discussing the other dimensions, I'm also referring to research by Professor Beugelstek from Groningen University, who compared answers to the same questions by two age cohorts, successive generations 30 years apart, and In the case of the UAI index, we found no worldwide shift and also no systematic changes in the position of countries.
However, there is another effect which becomes evident. We do have data over a period of 80 years, ever since 1935. From which we can reconstruct an uncertainty avoidance index and we can see that there is an oscillation in the entire world. There are periods when all indexes tend to go up and periods when they tend to go down. And the periods when uncertainty avoidance tends to be high is in periods of war and economic crisis. And in periods of peace and economic stability, the index tend to go down again.
So this wave movement is visible worldwide, but it does not affect the relative position of countries.