10 minutes with Geert Hofstede on Long versus Short Term Orientation 01032015

The

long

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term

and

short

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term

orientation

dimension was introduced by me in 1991 for a fifth dimension of differences between national societies. I had found four dimensions, but there was a research project by Professor Michael Bond from Hong Kong who conducted research with a questionnaire developed by Chinese academics and that questionnaire produced a dimension that we did not have yet and this dimension I introduced as the fifth one that I called

long

for

short

term guidance, we only had data from 23 countries and it was only in 2010 when dr. Miguel Minkoff, my collaborator, discovered in the 1995 and 2004 world value survey data a dimension that was significantly correlated with this long term: the short-term data that we already had for the countries that we had in both studies and now, suddenly, the number of countries for which we had data jumped to 93 more than four times more and those are the scores we use now long-term

orientation

means fostering in a society pragmatic virtues oriented toward future rewards in particular perseverance just as persistence savings savings and adaptation to changing circumstances and the opposite Bowl short-term sense orientation for the promotion of society's virtues related to the past and present, such as national pride, respect for tradition, preservation of the face and the fulfillment of social obligations, which is related to long-term orientation, which is related to short-term orientation.

Long-term orientation With the data we obtained from the World Values ​​Survey we were able to expand our list of correlates of short- and long-term orientation and discovered that in the long term the feeling is that good and evil are relative. can change over time what is good and what is bad, while in the short term the feeling is that good and evil are absolute and always the same, which means that no long-term place where they apply norms depends on the situation, while in the short-term side of orientation the fixed norms always apply regardless of the circumstances in the long-term oriented society as a superior person is someone who knows how to adapt to the circumstances in the long-term oriented society. short term the superior person is someone who is always the same in the long term orientation we should be humble with ourselves while in the short term we seek positive information about ourselves in the long term we want to learn from other countries in the short term we are proud of our own country in the long term traditions can be changed in the short term site predictions are sacrosanct in the long term site when two truths oppose each other they can be integrated into something new in the short term orientation there is always contradiction between a and B if they are not equal and finally in the long term annotation it can be said that what is very important to solve a problem is common sense and certainly by choosing the middle path in the short term we find more fundamentalism which is choosing the extreme and as There may be religious fundamentalism but also ideological fundamentalism, political background, an antidote.

How do we measure long- and short-term orientation? Again there are no absolute standards. We can measure the differences between societies and the position is measured in an index. The long-term orientation index. LT. Oh, and we have scores for this index on a scale. from zero to one hundred, where zero cents means short-term orientation and one hundred means long-term orientation. Let me again give you an example of the 93 countries for which in this case we have data. I selected again 14 countries, 7 at the top. side 7 on the low side and on the high side we find first of all East Asia, Japan and China, but also relatively high are Germany and Russia, a little lower, but still on the upper side we find the Netherlands, France and Italy and on the border Sweden. now on the low summit but relatively close to the upper side we find Great Britain we find India and with a short term orientation we find Israel, the United States, Mexico, Australia, Nigeria and other African countries and finally, very briefly, Egypt 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 social factors that can be measured elsewhere and that do correlate with long-term and short-term orientation. First, there is an interesting difference between secondary school performance. high school students in mathematics, which is regularly measured in UNESCO research in long-term-oriented societies, high school students tend to score higher in mathematics, but rate their own results lower in long-term-oriented societies. short term. they overvalue their own mathematical results in long-term oriented societies there is a higher savings rate and there are funds available to invest in short-term oriented societies there is a smaller savings course and there is little money to invest on the long-oriented side term that companies seek market share and long-term profits in the short term, companies report quarterly results and the final result is very important, which are the results in that particular period, in long-term oriented companies, Investors prefer family businesses and real estate in short-term oriented societies.

There is more preference for stocks and mutual funds and finally, but this is only true for the poorest countries, we find that in poor countries that are long-term oriented economic growth is faster in poor countries that are short-term oriented. Economic growth is slow and this is not the case. It is no longer true when countries become rich because then there is no difference. Don't these LTO scores change over time? The scores again reflect values ​​transferred from parents to children. There has been a research project in which the same values ​​were studied for 15-year-olds across an entire country. number of countries and we find that we obtain the same differences between countries for 15-year-olds as for the entire population, the values ​​acquired in childhood rarely change in adulthood.

We have analyzed the research of Professor Mughal Stack, who compared the answers to the same questions. for two age cohorts separated by 30 years from the global value survey, but for this dimension there was no change globally and no change in the relative position of countries now, this is true despite the enormous technological changes that we have seen in the past. period with the introduction of global information systems that affect private habits and business practices, but the way they do this varies between societies according to pre-established values, so the same technology does not mean that it is used in the same way and finally, 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 short-term rotation, which most often helps them second.