[3] He conducted a survey from the 1960s to the 1970s through IBM, a multinational computer manufacturing company, which was the main contribution to his development of the cultural dimensions theory.
It was driven by the statistical procedure (also called "factor analysis") to make the development, based on the result of a global survey of the values of IBM employees conducted from 1967 and 1973.
Hofstede's theory identified six dimensions of culture: power distance, individualism vs collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs femininity, short-term vs long-term orientation, and indulgence vs self-restraint.
[11] Hofstede derived power distance scores for three regions and fifty countries from the answers given by IBM employees in the same type of positions to the same questions.
Higher PDI cultures usually adopt an autocratic leadership style, which means subordinates may be unlikely to approach and contradict their bosses directly.
China, Belgium, France, Malaysia, and the Arab world are regarded as examples of countries or regions with high PDI cultures.
In accordance with the responses to the questions in their questionnaire, the 14 countries were clustered into five main groups, which Haire et al. labeled Nordic-European (Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Sweden), Latin-European (Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain), Anglo-American (England and the United States), Developing (Argentina, Chile, and India), and Japan.
[22] When discussing "The Cross-Cultural Stream and Power Distance", four primary factors affecting a society's level of power distance are explained separately: the predominant religion or philosophy, the tradition of democratic principles of government, the existence of a strong middle class, and the proportion of immigrants in a society's population.
Finally, a large proportion of immigrants in a given society makes the low power distance trend stronger in all circumstances presented above.
The study also concludes that regardless of religion, any society that does not have a tradition of democracy or a significant middle class will have a substantially high power distance levels.
Having a high level of education is important to climb the corporate ladder, and the higher-ranking members of the organization are often paid much more than their subordinates when compared with companies with lower power distance.
[26] In low power distance organizations, superiors are not as concerned with status symbols and would be more open to employee discussion and participation.
The study finds that low power distance leaders facilitate a change-oriented environment for subordinates to discuss their ideas and concerns which leads to their admiration.
The study finds that in high power distance businesses, subordinates obey the gap between them and their leaders, and rarely interact with their superiors.
[30] The study concludes that the leadership style which is based on power distance culture correlates with the tools given to an employee to speak up in his or her environment.
In business, power distance can be defined as the acceptance (by employees) of the relationship between the highest and lowest ranked members in an organization.
The hierarchy and authority empower employers and supervisors with more rights of resource allocation, rewards, and punishment, which reinforce their status and enable them to lead and guide their subordinates autocratically.
The hierarchical differentiation between the top and the bottom gradually creates an invisible gap in the workplace, where subordinates tend to build greater sensitivity and cautiousness when communicating with their supervisors.
[citation needed] Yet, some researchers recently attested that employees and junior staff from high power distance countries are less likely to seek help from their supervisors.
[25] The beliefs employees hold regarding procedural justice—defined as the level of fair treatment by the superiors in the organization toward the employees—shape the nature of their relationships with authority.
Negative behavior in a low power distance culture increases when organizations treat them poorly because they lack the characteristics of submitting humbly before authority.
[40] For both low and high power distance cultures, they perceived fair treatment to be a fulfillment of the psychological contract made by the organization.
Conversely, people in low power distance countries are more sensitive towards any unequal phenomena, and their in-acceptance of dissonance endows them with a greater sense of responsibility for adjusting or correcting the problems in person.
The needs generated are classified into controllable and uncontrollable categories, where the occurrence of the former is due to a lack of effort, while the latter occurs from unforeseeable events such as natural disasters.
People with high power distance backgrounds perceive most of the issues as rightful inequality, and are reluctant to get themselves involved with "troubles", and usually ignore them.
[41][51][52][53] As such, Karen Page Winterich and Yinlong Zhang recommended that charitable organizations in high power distance countries should stress the significance of uncontrollable needs or salient communal relationship norms, through which the populace are more easily motivated to make a difference on social inequality.
They may be unfamiliar with a variety of things such as the differences in academic writing in America or the informality of certain relationships with "authority figures," like professors.
It is contrasted with China, a collectivist country people tend to worry more about the overall well-being of the group and put that at a higher importance than their personal wants or needs.
[59] A study conducted by Yuan Feirong and Jing Zhou demonstrates how individualism and collectivism correlate with power distance as well as its impact on creativity in a conceptual model.
It has been asserted that democratic governments occur most commonly among low power distance societies, where it is not ingrained into the minds of the people since young age that there are unquestionable hierarchies in life that should not be disputed.