[Music] the term power distance was used as far as I know for the first time in the 1960s by a Dutch social psychologist Mark bu who did experiments with uh individuals whom we gave different power relationss and in the 1970s uh I have borrowed the term uh when I wanted to describe differences between National societies now the my definition of power distance as a dimension of societal culture is the following it is the extent to which the less powerful members of Institutions and organizations expect and accept that power is distributed unequally so the power distance
lies with the people at the bottom and not with the people at the top there's always somebody who wants to take the position at the Top If the people at the bottom let her or him do it but um it's only if the people at the bottom accept it that this can be done uh how does power distance transfer itself in a society well it is present in the relationship between the children and the parents the children learn a position towards the parents and other older people in their environment now here I have a opposition
of the two extremes and most countries I must say most cultures are some in between but uh I put on the one side large power distance on the other side small power distance in large power distance inequality in a society is considered a normal part of society that's the way the world is made in a small power distance the idea is that inequality is somewhere wrong and it should be reduced if possible in large power distance the feeling is that superiors are Act Superior beings they are different kind of people whereas in small power distance
the idea is that okay there are hierarchist but the hierarchist are somewhat the rules of the game you need it to create order but it doesn't mean that the superiors are also Superior and sometimes you can change roles then in large power distance the feeling is that power comes first and good and evil comes afterwards um so first you know who has the power and then you decide what is good and what is evil in the small power distance the feeling is that power should be used legitimately and everybody on the top on the bottom
is actually uh under the same rules of law in the education of children and the large priorties inside respect is one of the most important things a child can learn on the small power distance side IND dependence is one of the most important things a child can learn in the organizing large power distance societies they love centralization and small power distance societies love decentralization and finally the relationship between the subordinates and their boss in the large PR dist societies subordinates simply assume expect that they will be told what to do in the small power distance
sociey subordinate when it relates to their work they expect to be consulted now how do we measure societal power distances there is no absolute standard uh we know that all societies are unequal but some are more unequal than others this of course is a pun on a sentence from George Orwell Animal Farm all animals are equal but some are more equal than others but what we measure is the difference between one society and another the position of societies relative to each other is measured by an index the power distance index PDI and these are plotted
on a scale from 0 to 100 and scores close to zero stands for a smaller power distance and scores close to 100 stand for a larger power distance now here I have made a table off for a few countries actually we have data for 76 countries but I only took uh 14 countries here uh and you can see on the one side the countries with the higher power distance with on the top Russia and then it's followed by Mexico China the Arab countries India and from the European an countries the largest power distances are in
France and then comes Japan Japan is not really very high it's just about the break even and then just below the break even is Italy now we get to the low side then okay we get to United States we get the Netherlands we get Australia we got Germany we got Britain and the very low one here is Denmark now what can we do with this power distance index well you can validate it and what does validating mean validating means is you have these numbers and you are going to compare them statistically with phenomena in society
phenomena that are measured by other people and and other ways actually hard data from society and that is done by correlation and I have made a small list of things power distance index scores correlate with on the high side more income inequality on the low side less income inequality on the high side a smaller middle class a larger lower class on the low side a larger middle class actually most people are middle class on the ipdi side um you find the dictatorships and if this it isn't dictatorship it's an oligarchy oligarchy means that there are
a limited number of people from whom the power comes on the low po side the use of power should be legitimate they have the Trias politica which means the legislative the judicial and the executive power which are separated and the people at the top the executive top they all also subject to the two other powers in the large power distance side in politics you got a big chance of violence as often there is fighting in local Politics on the low power Lance side most conflicts are res resolved peacefully on the large power distance side in
order to change a political system usually you need a revolution but the Paradox about Revolution utions is revolutions lead to the fact that you got another face on the top but not necessarily that the system itself changes on the uh low power L side political systems change slower they change by Evolution and evolution in general means that yes there is a change then another bit of research has demonstrated that in large PR distance countries business executive tend to be older if people are in power they stay in power longer until they're a lot older whereas
in the low power liness societies business Executives tend to be younger and the last one I selected is how Innovations come about Innovations either social Innovations or technological innovations that come about in a large power distant Society only when they are supported by the hierarchy whereas in the low power dist societies we have spontaneous Innovations there are people who come with original IDs we call them Mavericks or Rebels and they come with Innovations which therefore are more frequent in low power dist and societies the last question I want to raise which people often ask is
but don't these scores change over time well first of all there is a reason why anyway they will not change very quickly because they are transferred as I said from parents to children and after childhood these values rarely change people carry them with them for their entire life now there is a interesting research project by a professor from kronan University sh bkl who has compared answers to questions correlated with power distance for two successive generations and the answers are from the world value survey and the generations are 30 years apart the first generation is about
the time that my first research was done and the second generation is not long ago and uh what he shows is that if you look at the scores of that older generation and the younger generation there is a shift towards smaller power distances over these 30 years uh not a very big shift but there is a shift but the position of countries relative to each other has remained the same they have been moving together and this is precisely what the scores are based on so the scores don't change country differences expressed in the scores are
also often rooted in history you can find Historical stories from centuries ago where you say well this was the difference between Britain and Germany at the time and look how it is now so the scores can be assumed to be stable over time [Music]
