Mongolian Culture according to Hofstede’s dimensions

Sanduijav (2008) and Tkaczuk et al. (2010) measured Mongolian culture in the form of replicating Hofstede’s study. Though earlier briefly introduced in the introduction chapter,

the two studies’ findings are summarized in the following table.

Table 5: Mongolian Cultural dimensions by two different studies Individualism Power distance Uncertainty

avoidance

Masculinity Long-term orientation

Sanduijav 2008 19 12 76 53 43

Tkaczuk 2010 36 7.4 50 6.2 28

From the above table, Mongolian culture can be easily distinguished apart from a radical difference of masculinity scores in two studies. As a Mongolian who has grown up in the culture and the results of the two studies accord with the researcher’s personal observations except for the odd high masculine score of 53 in Sanduijav’s study.

Regarding the odd high masculine score, Hofstede (2005) stressed that age and occupation affects masculinity values. For instance, people tend to become more social and less competitive and egocentric as they age which leads to lower MAS and certain occupations are classified from most masculine to most feminine in his book Cultures and Organization. The most masculine occupations are sales representatives, engineers and scientists, technicians and skilled craftspeople whereas the most feminine occupations are office workers, semiskilled and unskilled workers and managers of all categories (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). With this in mind, it is possible to speculate the reason why Sanduijav (2008) obtained high masculinity score in her study. That 66.3% of her sample comprises age of 25-49 years old people, and academically trained professionals, and vocationally trained craftsperson, technician, information-technologists, nurses, artists or equivalent professionals make up 54.5% percent of the sample while merely 33.5% of the sample encompasses those feminine jobs such as office workers, semiskilled and unskilled workers and managers of all categories.

In other words, the sample was not representative of Mongolian society as a whole.

Thus, on the basis of the above indices, the following three conclusions can be drawn regarding Mongolia.

1. Based on low score in PD dimension Mongolia is a country that supports equality in society with the very low scores in power distance index.

2. Based on low score in LTO dimension Mongolians are quite short-term oriented people

3. Based on low score in MAS dimension Mongolian society inclines toward feminine It is useful to consider whether Mongolians were equal in terms of social status due to traditional support for equality or whether they have enjoyed equality by virtue of socialism and democracy. The common belief that Mongolians enjoy equality due to arrival of socialism is likely to be mistaken. In fact, at the commencement of the socialist period numerous Mongolian nobles and lamas were slain by socialists who were committing genocide under the command of Russian socialists. The elimination started in the fall of 1937 killing at least 22000 people out of a population which counted at most 800000.

Although all levels of Mongolians were slain, the majority of victims were 18000 Buddhist lamas followed by nobles, political and academic figures (Dashpurev, Soni, & Phil, 1992).

On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that equality was traditionally fostered by most members of Mongolia. Looking through literature on Mongolian culture and society, the review came across a book titled ‘Travels in Tartary Thibet and China’ by Huc (1900) in which the author wrote a great deal about his observations on Mongolians. This 114 year-old-book gives a good insight into traditional Mongolian society and Mongolians who were mostly defined by neighbors: Chinese and Russia during that time. Equality between noble Mongolians and commoners impressed the author. As he stated about equality in Mongolian society,

The noble families scarcely differ from the slave families. In examining the relations between them, it would be difficult to distinguish the master from the slave:

they live both alike in tents, and both alike occupy their lives in pasturing their flocks. You will never find among them luxury and opulence insolently staring in the face of poverty. When the slave enters his master's tent, the latter never fails to offer him tea and milk; they smoke together, and exchange their pipes. Around the tents the young slaves and the young noblemen romp and wrestle together without distinction; the stronger throws the weaker that is all. You often find families of slaves becoming proprietors of numerous flocks, and spending their days in

abundance. We met many who were richer than their masters, a circumstance giving no umbrage to the latter (Huc, 1900, p. 186).

Even today Mongolians are not much changed from that of old days as to equality. With regard to LTO, Mongolians have extremely short-term orientation which can be seen from Mongolian extravagance and proverbs. It is often observed that Mongolians love to be extravagant about dressing and frittering away money. For example, once in a while it is reported that some families lease their home and others sell their cars to opulently celebrate

“Tsagaan Sar”, Lunar year. People in short-term society tend not to be concerned about the future. For example, they do not invest compared to long-term oriented people, nor do they foster thrift (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005).

In traditional Mongolian culture, wealth is not very important which may be the reason why Mongolians have today’s feminine society as postulated by (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). Mongolians are nomadic people. As such, collecting wealth is an unnecessary load when they move to settle another place. One kind of Mongolian proverbs is “Yortontsiin 3”

which literally means three things of the universe. It tries to define everything abstract to objects in the universe within a three line verse from a Mongolian viewpoint. Regarding the notion of wealth, Yortontsiin 3 teaches,

“Knowledge is the greatest wealth To have children is the moderate wealth

Material is the least wealth (Erdene & Sanjperlee, 2012).¹”

In Mongolian culture thus material wealth is traditionally not deemed to be the most valuable concern. Yortontsiin 3 has no author, and initially it was orally passed to a next generation by Mongolians. It is widely known in Mongolian society.

Comparison of Mongolia and China in Three Dimensions

Now Mongolia and China’s markedly different indices in the three dimensions are presented to clarify and reason existing value differences that are most likely to be the underlying cause of problems and misunderstandings.

Table 6: Comparison of Mongolia and China's PD, MAS and LTO indices Power Distance Index Mongolia 7,4 LOWER China 80 HIGH Masculinity Mongolia 6,2 LOWER China 66 HIGH Long Term Orientation Mongolia 28 LOWER China 118 HIGH

Chinese cultural dimension scores are taken from Hofstede’s book ‘Cultures and Organizations’.

Even though the above indices obtained from two different studies are compared, it is plausible that there are value differences between the two countries since the numbers in three dimensions are not even approximate. Due to large distances in PD, MAS and LTO between Mongolia and China, most people of the two countries may not be able to cooperate in a mutually respectful way. There are certain studies that have found that an international joint venture has lower chances of survival if there is a large cultural distance between the home country (an expanding company) and the host country (Barkema, Bell, &

Pennings, 1996; Barkema, Shenkar, Vermeulen, & Bell, 1997; Li & Guisinger, 1991). The same thing might apply to many of Chinese owned businesses in Mongolia.

Also, one study measured cross-cultural differences in Central European countries

1Эрдэм ном дээд баян Үр хүүхэд дунд баян

(Kolman, Noorderhaven, Hofstede, & Dienes, 2003). One of their findings was strikingly similar to Mongolia and China context which was cultural value differences in three dimensions. Kolman et al. (2003) found that Slovakia markedly differed from the Czech Republic on four of the five dimensions regardless of geographical proximity and the past historical event of being one nation for many decades. On the basis of this finding, the authors surmise that it may be difficult to unite activities in these two countries in a single integrated organization. Their conjecture might seem true at least in Mongolia and China context.

Numerous studies have replicated Hofstede’s IBM study at the individual, organizational as well as country level and reached scores similar to the origial IBM study. As Hofstede pointed out, there are six major replicated studies at the country level between 1990 and 2002 covering between 14 to 28 nationalities; four of the six replications confirmed three out of the four dimensions—and each time the one missing is different. As it is explained, “the missing one is because the respondents included people without paid jobs at all such as housewives and students” (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005, p. 25).

Even though there is not any available cross-cultural comparative study of China and Mongolia, one study of Taiwanese doctors compared with Mongolian doctors and nurses has been carried out by Wu, Batmunkh, and Lai (2011). Taiwanese originally come from China so that they can to a certain extent represent China and hold rather similar value that is evidenced by G. Hofstede and Hofstede (2005) dimension scores for the two countries.

Their comparative case study found that Mongolian participants were more individualistic than Taiwanese doctors (Wu et al., 2011). However, regarding other comparisons in PD, MAS, their study seem to provide nothing due to the authors’ misinterpretation of MAS and PD. For instance, as they put it, “most of the doctors of both countries prefer male supervisors when in communication as they find them easier to understand both with each other and in the working environment” (Wu et al., 2011, p. 81). In fact, MAS has less to do with gender

preference yet much to do with preferred values of assertiveness and materialism. If both men and women prefer competitiveness and material success in a particular society, they are regarded as high in MAS. In contrast, a feminine society prefers the quality of life rather than material success and competition regardless of gender (G. Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). Since their study is at organizational level and compared two groups each consisted of 9 people from each country, their findings cannot give useful information as the authors themselves mentioned future research may use quantitative approach on a greater scale. Nonetheless, this kind of cross-cultural study is somewhat outside the scope of this study since this study was defined as a mono-cultural study

Sinophobia as a barrier

As stated in the preceding chapters, intercultural activity between Mongolia and China has been animated, and two countries are on the verge of further mutual development.

However, the existence of sinophobia in Mongolia is undeniable. Mongolia has some mistrust of its south neighbor for a long time. Rather than looking back to the old dispute, national hatred and wars between Mongolia and China, this section reviews contemporary anti-Chinese feelings among Mongolians which might adversely impact on the collaboration between the two nations’ people.

Billé (2008) carried out some fieldwork on anti-Chinese sentiment among Mongolians by looking at oral narratives in the country. During his stay in Mongolia, Billé conducted an interview with many Mongolians, observed the media and was conscious of other social activity in relation to anti-Chinese sentiment among the everyday Mongolians. In his research Billé identified three discussion subjects—threat to the nation’s territory, threat to the body and threat to Mongolian reproduction—about which Mongolians concern and feel threatened by China and its people. He claims that current anti-Chinese discourse was initially developed by Marxist ideology during socialist era. Billé concluded his research by stating that anti-Chinese discourse is fractured along a number of fault lines. For instance,

Mongolians who have direct personal experience with China no longer align themselves with mainstream discourse. This is true for particularly Mongolians who visited modern China cities such as Hong Kong, Shanghai. Another fracture is in gender, for Mongolian women were less nationalist compared with males. Therefore, Billé’s research findings support Bulag (1998) and Tumursukh (2001) who argue that nationalist discourse in Mongolia is mainly talked by males and that xenophobia is supported by strong patriarchal values and ethics.

Challenges Encountered by a Chinese employer in Mongolia

Although conflicts and anti-Chinese sentiments arisen from misunderstandings, prejudice or historical issues between the ordinary people have been studied by certain researchers such as Bulag (1998), Tumursukh (2001) and Billé (2008), how cultural value differences affect on workplace relationship between Chinese and Mongolians is unknown and is not really brought up into academic discussion. One newspaper article published in China, Song et al. (2012) wrote about challenges encountered by Chinese employers in Mongolia under the subtitle of ‘Irreplaceable Workers’:

It’s not easy to find workers in Ulan Baatar. Although Mongolians often complain that Chinese workers are taking their jobs, when companies come to recruit, there’s a small pool of local laborers. Even if a company can find Mongolian workers, management is a headache. From the view of Chinese bosses, Mongolian workers are lazy, alcoholic and unwilling to adhere to normal working hours. No matter whether it’s in the real estate or mining industry, Chinese bosses tend to prefer Chinese workers, even if the cost is higher.

It is obvious that the manner of managing Chinese employees does not work when it comes to Mongolian workers. The underlying reason seems to be that their work related value distinctions, as they are illustrated in the previous table 4, the two nations stand in two opposite poles in the three dimensions. To put it simply, the way Mongolian workers view

work differ from their Chinese counterparts.

From a Mongolian point of view, problems between a Chinese boss and Mongolian employees written by Munkhtsetseg (2008), a journalist, tells a story of a strike by tailors in a Chinese company in Ulaanbaatar. The complaints give a clue to cultural value differences:

Employees work from 8:30am to 17:30pm five days in a week. Yet on Tuesdays and Thursdays they work until 02:00 am. In case of coming late to the work, getting sick and taking leave, the employees get punished to pay a fine of 5000 to 10000 tugrug, Mongolian currency. Moreover, it is common that the tailors get locked from outside during work time, and that they work without having their locker keys. In addition, their lunch time is just 5 minutes. Just to go to a restroom for three minutes, the employees have to go through red tape to get the permission. If the servant arbitrary opens the restroom’s door for any of employees, there is a dominating rigid rule that takes measures on her. In response to their complaints, the Chinese boss said that a Mongolian worker who works as a tailor cannot be found. So the contract to take 300 employees from North Korea has been made (Munkhtsetseg, 2008).2

Apparently, a Chinese employer’s workplace requirement hardly meets Mongolian

discipline is regarded too rigid for Mongolians. On the other hand, the Chinese employer endeavors to make his tailors work by setting certain rigid rules. Of course, the Chinese boss seems to have values of high masculinity and long-term orientation as well. The all concerns expressed by the Mongolian tailors imply that they are low in MAS and prefer well-being and quality of live over success or money. For example, in their view, sometimes coming late to the work, getting sick and taking leave is okay. For such things, an employer should not impose any fine on employees. Also they want more time for having lunch and going to toilet.

Because “management study in Mongolia is a relatively new subject, and there are no empirical studies in local managerial values and practices” (Manalsuren, Weir, & Hopfl, p.

9), and there is also no intercultural management study that involves China and Mongolia, this research has done a little survey using Google survey among 53 Mongolian employees who work under Chinese employers prior to conducting a main survey based on Hofsede’s predictions in differences of PD, MAS and LTO societies. The minor survey focused on asking a few questions including multiple choice question and open ended question with regard to differences in three dimensions such as do you think that your Chinese boss seems too strict when it comes to the following. The multiple choices consisted of answers like ‘to grant leave or to give days off’ and ‘to promote one’s position.

The results for this multiple choice questions showed that 62% of the respondents consider their boss as strict when granting leave and giving days off, and 53% of the respondents view their boss strict when giving promotion. The open-ended question asked

‘if they have encountered similar kind of problems like long delay of promotion or refusal of a day leave request’. Not surprisingly, the responses for the open-ended question imply that there is dissatisfaction about those kinds of different views of a Chinese employer.

There are many instances of dissatisfied comments on absence of promotion and refusal of leave requests. For example, one female respondent expressed her dissatisfaction saying

that ‘when her Chinese boss grants leave, the boss asks too many questions’ showing that seems an invasion of privacy for her. On the other hand, one male respondent comment was that ‘no matter how well you work, your position won’t get changed from initial position’.

Not only secondary data produced by Sanduijav (2008) and Tkaczuk et al. (2010) G.

Hofstede and Hofstede (2005) and the stories of workplace conflicts but also my preliminary survey result convince me that differences in PD, MAS and LTO really exist between two nations; therefore, to prioritize those differences from a Mongolian employee perspective might be helpful to a Chinese employer.