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RULE MAKERS, RULE BREAKERS:How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World
Michele J. Gelfand
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Hey Boys,
How’s The Water?
s the water? What the hell is
water?
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CULTURE
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Omnipresent… but invisible
Distinctly human … no other species has it
Affects everything from politics … to parenting
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Pavalena/Shutterstock.com
Pavalena/Shutterstock.com
Saul Steinberg, View of the World from 9th Avenue
Cover of The New Yorker, March 29, 1976
© The Saul Steinberg Foundation /Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Cover reprinted with permission of The New Yorker magazine. All rights reserved.
It’s just like going
from New York
to Pennsylvania!
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Used by permission.
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Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash
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ADD CREDIT HERE – Otago times will send once they receive payment
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/62140256@N04/8236987723
By Jerryhattric (Flickr: wizard's wishes) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
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By Bachrach44 [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons By Serenity [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons
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Derived from NHANES data
Unique baby names in the U.S.
Data source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_adult_15_16/obesity_adult_15_16.htm
Prevalence of Obesity Among U.S.
Adults Aged 20-74
Data source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_adult_15_16/obesity_adult_15_16.htm
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What Ties These Examples Together?
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• Human ability to develop, maintain and enforce rules
• The glue that binds us together
Social Norms
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TIGHT O
Strong Norms& Punishments
Weak Norms &Permissive
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33 Nations
7000 Individuals
6 Continents
22 Languages
International Investigation
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TIGHT O
Lower Crime
Uniformity
Self-Control
ORDER
Different People
Creativity
Change
O P E N N E S S
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0
5
10
15
0 1 2 3 4
Pop Density
0
5
10
15
0 100 200 300
Food Deprivation
0
5
10
15
0 5 10 15
Territorial Threat
0
5
10
15
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Pathogen Prevalence
0
5
10
15
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Disasters
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A Fractal Pattern of Human Difference
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Source: NOAA Climate.gov (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2016-historic-year-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters-us)
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Personality Openness
State Tightness State Looseness
Personality Conscientiousness
Order•More Law Enforcement•Less Homelessness•Less Divorce
Self Control•Lower Drug Use•Less Debt
Creativity•More Patents•More Fine Artists
Equality•Fewer EEOC claims•Minority-owned Businesses
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FOLLOW THE RULES
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The Culture of Class
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Middle Class
• Working Class versus Upper Class• Meaning of Rules
• Jaguars versus Plumber Vans
• Greater threat:
• Falling into poverty
• Dangerous occupations
• Threatening neighborhoods
• Tight loose trade-off
• Age 3: Max the puppet
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Photo included with permission from the child’s parents
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Within Our Organizations
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Organizational Culture• Rules and predictability; Formal• Strong socialization (training) and monitoring• Prevention-focus (avoids mistakes) and impulse control
Industries• Manufacturing, Hospitals, Airlines
Context • Greater threat • High volume of oversight & regulations
Tight Organizations
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Loose Organizations
Organizational Culture• Flexibility and experimentation; informal• Less monitoring• Promotion-focus (taking risks) and openness
Industries• Start-ups, Design, Tech
Context• Safety risks are minimal • Mobility and change
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Leaders, Tight and Loose
• Over 15,000 managers across 700 organizations in 62 societies
• Leadership behaviors that contribute to being an “outstanding leader”
Tightness autonomous Looseness Charismatic, team-oriented
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Challenges to Tight-Loose Mergers
• Method
– 4,638 CBAs across 32 Countries, 1989-2013 (SDC Platinum database)
– CBA performance = ROA Change Acquirer’s ROAt-1 –ROAt+3
Gelfand , Gordon, Li, Choi, & Prokopowicz (2018) Harvard Business Review
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Results• CTL differences reduce CBA performance
• 1 Std. dev. change in CTL diff. => .6 percentage loss, US$ 204 million change in net income
• Relation strengthened by directionality (tight acquirer), …
Variable Model
Cultural tightness-looseness (CTL) differences (H1) -0.633*
(0.264)
Controls, year, and industry dummies are included
Observations 4,638
R-squared 5.40 %
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Lessons Learned• Prepare to Negotiate Culture
– Cultural assessment
– Which domains need to be tight?
– Which can be loose?
• TL Ambidexterity
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Reaching Ambidexterity
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Which is Better?
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An Age-Old Debate • Freedom or Constraint?
– Plato, Confucius, Hobbes
– John Stuart Mill, Freud
• Neither?
– Too tight or too loose is maladaptive
• The Goldilock’s principle of TL
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Depression
Blood Pressure
Suicide
Happiness
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TL Balance
• Identify contexts where we need to tightenloose norms – Tesla, Uber– The wild west of the internet
• Identify contexts where we need to loosen tight norms– United; some manufacturing firms
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Our Own TL Mindsets
• Are you an order Muppet or a chaos Muppet? (Dalia Lithwick, 2012)
• Cultivate empathy for others’ mindsets
• Identify and negotiate tight-loose conflict in our daily lives