[Music] the dimension longterm versus short-term orientation was introduced by me in 1991 for a fifth dimension of difference between National societies I had found four dimensions but there was a research project by Professor Michael bond from Hong Kong who had researched with a questionnaire made by Chinese Scholars and that questionnaire produced a dimension which we didn't have yet and this Dimension I introduced as The Fifth and I called it long for a shortterm orientation we only had data for 23 countries and it was only in 2010 when Dr Michael minkov my collaborator discovered in the
world value survey 1995 till 2004 data a dimension which was significantly correlated with this long-term versus short-term data we had already for the countries which we had in both studies and now suddenly the number of countries for which we had data jumped to 93 more than four times as many and those are the scores we use now now long-term orientation stands for the fostering in a society of pragmatic virtues oriented to Future rewards in particular perseverance same as persistence Thrift saving and adapting to changing circumstances and the opposite poll shortterm orientation stands for the fostering
in the Society of Virtues related to the past and the present such as national pride respect for tradition preservation of faith and fulfilling social obligations what it relates to long-term orientation what relates to short-term orientation uh by the data we got from the world value survey we could extend our list of the correlates of long-term and short-term orientation and we found that on the long-term side the feeling is that good and evil are relative they can change over time what is good and what is evil whereas on the shortterm side the feeling is that good
and evil are absolute and always the same which means that on the long-term side which Norms apply depends on the situation whereas on the shortterm orientation side fixed Norms always apply whatever the circumstances in long-term oriented societies a superior person is somebody who knows to adapt to the circumstances in the shortterm oriented Society the Superior person is someone who is always the same in the long-term orientation we should be humble about ourselves whereas on the shortterm orientation we seek positive information about ourselves in the long-term side we want to learn from other countries on the
shortterm side we are proud of our own country on the long-term side Traditions can be changed on the shortterm side tradtions are sacr San on the long-term side when two truths oppose each other they may be integrated into something new in the shortterm orientation there is always an contradiction between A and B if they are not the same and finally long-term orentation you can say that what is very very important to resolve a problem is common sense and certainly choosing the middle way in the shortterm side we find more fundamentalism which is choosing the extreme
and there there could be religious fundamentalism but also ideological fundamentalism political fundamentalism how do we measure long and shortterm orientation there is again no absolute standards we can measure the differences between societies and the position is measured in an index the long-term orientation index lto and we have scores for this index on a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 stands for shortterm orientation and 100 stands for long-term orientation let me give you an example again from the 93 countries for which in this case we have data a picked again uh 14 countries seven on
the high side seven on the low side and uh on the high side we find first of all East Asia Japan and China but also relatively high is Germany and Russia uh somewhat lower but still on the higher side we find the Netherland and France and Italy and on the brink Sweden now on the low side but relatively close to the higher side we find Britain we find India and shortterm orientation we find Israel the United States Mexico Australia Nigeria and other African countries and finally very short Egypts and other Islamic countries what can we
do with this long-term orientation index what does it correlate with well I'll give you some examples of societal factors that can be measured elsewhere and that do correlate with long-term short-term orientation and first of all there is an interesting difference between the performance of secondary school students at mathematics which are regularly measured in UNESCO research in long-term oriented societies Secondary School students tend to score higher at mathematics but to rate their own results lower in the shortterm oriented societies Secondary School students perform relatively poorly at mathematics but they tend to overate their own math results
on long-term oriented Society I is there is a larger savings quote and funds are available for investment and the short-term oriented societ is there is a smaller savings quotes and there is little money for investment on the long-term oriented side companies seek market share and long-term profits on the shortterm side the companies report quarterly results and very important is the bottom line which is the results in that particular period in the longterm oriented societies investors prefer family business and real estate in the short-term oriented societies there is more preference for shares and mutual funds and
finally uh but this is only true for poorer countries uh we found that in uh poor countries that are long-term oriented economic growth go goes faster in poor countries that are short-term oriented economic growth goes slow and this is no longer true when countries become wealthy because then there is no difference anymore don't these lto scores change over time scores again reflect values transferred from parents to children there has been a research project where the same values were studied for 15 year olds across a number of countries and we discovered that we get the same
country differences for 15y olds as we got for the entire population values acquired in childhood change rarely in later life we have looked at the research by Professor burgl who compared answers to the same questions for two age cohorts 30 years apart from the world value serve but for this Dimension there was no worldwide shift and there were no changes in the relative position of countries now this is true in spite of the enormous technological changes that we have seen in the past period with the introduction of Global Information Systems which do affect private habits
and which do affect business practices but the way they do so tends to vary between societies according to the pre-established values so same technology does not mean that it is used in the same way and finally uh long-term orientation plays an important role in the economic development of poor countries poor countries with a long-term orientation develop economically faster than poor countries with a shortterm orientation which more often stagnate [Music]
