In-Group Collectivism

From globe model’s, in-group collectivism is an expression of pride, loyalty and cohesiveness with regard to one's family or organization. It is about the strength of small-group ties and is also known  as "individual" collectivism, "family" collectivism and, sometimes, "collectivism II" (House et al., 2004)

In-Group Collectivism (IngC), also known as “Family Collectivism,” is one of two Collectivism (COLL) dimensions measured by globe model among the 61 societies for which data are available. globe model’s other COLL dimension (Institutional COLL) will be covered in a subsequent column.

Among social researchers as well as workplace managers familiar with cross-cultural psychology and research, the Collectivism (COLL)-versus-Individualism (IDV) dichotomy is the most familiar because it was the most salient dimension to emerge from the work of Geert Hofstede, Ph.D. Hofstede is a Dutch sociologist who became the first social scientist to derive comparative metrics for societies. His original work, conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was based on his own analysis of employee attitude survey data from IBM divisions throughout the world.

It started with Hofstede

Hofstede conceptualized IDV as the inclination to look primarily after oneself and one’s immediate family. COLL, generally positioned as the opposite of IDV, referred to being less concerned with oneself and one’s family and more concerned with important group allegiances, such as one’s extended family and one’s employer. Perhaps not too surprising, the U.S. ranked highest in IDV.

One of the chief controversies regarding IDV versus COLL is whether the two are really opposites – or more specifically – whether they are unidimensional or bi-dimensional opposites. We’re starting to digress from the issue at hand here, but this is an important distinction. With unidimensional opposites, more IDV automatically means less COLL – sort of like the way we think of full-versus-empty when referring to the amount of liquid in a glass.

Co-existing opposites

Bi-directional opposites are different – because they can co-exist and overlap with one another. An example would be happy versus sad. In conversation, we may refer to “happy” and “sad” as discrete emotions, but emotions are far more complex than that. Conflicting emotions actually do co-exist – which you may already know if you are the sort of person who cries while watching those youtube videos where the dog welcomes his soldier-owner back from deployment.

The reason this is relevant is that whether we are referring to Hofstede’s IDV-versus-COLL or GLOBE’s IDV versus IngC, it’s important to allow for the possibility that a particular country or society is not entirely one or the other. More likely, most societies are a complex mix of both.

Now, back to Project GLOBE and IngC versus IDV…

Globe researchers operationalized (defined for measuring) IngC as an expression of pride, loyalty and cohesiveness with regard to one’s family or organization. In high-IngC societies, prevailing norms reinforce small-group ties (e.g. ties with family and close friends). For example, in these societies, children generally live at home with their parents until marrying, and aging parents generally live at home with their children.

Implications for benefits administrators

Human resources practitioners –specifically benefits administrators who work for multi-national corporations – should see great relevance in the preceding paragraph. For example, on-site child-care or subsidized child-care may be an important offering in high-IDV societies – but perhaps not so much in high-IngC societies, where older generations may be able to provide care in the home. In those societies, benefit options relevant for the care of elderly adults may be more appealing.

Hofstede’s analysis found that the U.S. ranked highest in IDV. By the way, his IDV correlated very strongly and negatively with GLOBE’s IngC practices. Recall that GLOBE surveyed practices (as is) and values (should be). The graphs in the slides above show how the U.S. compares on IngC among a sampling of countries.

–Slide #1: The U.S. is the 51-st lowest on COLL or the 11th-highest on IDV, whichever way you prefer to look at it. The Philippines ranked highest on IngC, while Denmark ranked lowest. Or flip the continuum, and Denmark ranked highest on IDV, while the Philippines ranked lowest.

– Slide #2: Pain points: Sweden had the second-highest IngC pain point (behind New Zealand) in the direction of desiring to be higher IngC (lower IDV), while China had the highest pain point in the direction of desiring lower IngC and more IDV. The U.S. actually desires to be a little higher in IngC. What that means is certainly open to discussion. My suspicion is that it may have something to do with work-life balance, but we’ll have to come back to that in a subsequent column

– Slide 3#: This look at cultural distance shows us that the countries wishing to be higher IngC desire this change to a much greater extent than those already high in IngC wish to be higher in IDV. Again, we can’t really explore all of that here, but I believe that it may relate to individuals in high IDV societies being held responsible for events that are not under their control. That’s a topic for a dissertation, however, a book or a much longer column. Exploration of that idea would need to touch on bodies of theory and research that are relevant for physiological stress as well as need for achievement.