Uncertainty Avoidance

I hate uncertainty. When I go to the store, I want to know what I am getting: I have a list and a budget, and I already have an idea of what my trip will cost. I don’t get into browsing much; if I don’t have a conception of what I want or need, I just stay home or do something else. Spending hours walking through stores makes me tired and grumpy. I do not go to the library until I have looked up my items online, printed out the call numbers, check availability, etc; I don’t browse much at the library, either.

I have difficulty getting started on a writing assignment when I do not know exactly how I will start, what points I will make, and how I will conclude. I even have difficulty starting research if I do not already know where I want the project to go point by point. I blame it all on being a “big picture” guy.

However, it is when I veer off the planned route that I often find the best stuff. When I am at the store to buy socks, I sometimes find a shirt that I didn’t plan on buying, but it becomes a favorite item to wear. I may discover a food item, tool, or device that I didn’t know existed and now cannot live without. At the library, I have found some favorites just by looking at the books on the shelf near my targeted title. Recently, I read The Confessions of Max Tivoli because the spine grabbed my attention. It was a fantastic read; one of the best novels I have read in a long time, and one I will re-read in the future.

When I fail to conceive a project from start to finish but plunge in anyway, I find some of my best sources and points. There are times when I start writing and hit a dead end. Just as often, I find a new thread to follow, or I come up with a whiz-bang conclusion. In fact, I think most of my best writing has been spontaneous rather than methodically planned.

The threat of uncertainty has caused me to procrastinate, to let writing ideas go, and to shy away from certain projects and opportunities. That is too bad because most of the times that I was at the mercy of fate, I have been pleasantly surprised at the very least.

As I was mulling this tendency of mine over, I realized that it has been studied in cultures. Geert Hofstede is a well-respected researcher and author in the field of Cultural Studies. He got his start by analyzing the employees of IBM in over 70 countries and categorizing how their culture influenced their values. He has since expanded the study, updated it, analyzed it, exposed it to peer review, defended it from criticism, and updated it with more recent and relevant data. It is a hefty topic, and I just want to touch on a small piece of it here.

One value that Hofstede used to identify and categorize different cultures he called Uncertainty Avoidance. A high score in this category identifies a culture that tries to avoid uncertainty. On his website, Hofstede says:

“Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures, and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth; 'there can only be one Truth and we have it'.” http://feweb.uvt.nl/center/hofstede/page3.htm

I am sure that I have missed out on opportunities and gifts because I avoided uncertainty. I am also sure that I could have accomplished more, and put more quality into some projects, if uncertainty had not been an anchor for me. In light of that, how many opportunities and gifts might some cultures have missed out on by avoiding uncertainty?

Uncertainty Avoidance helps a culture avoid invasion, espionage, sabotage, dangerous ideas that undermine the current system, etc. If the U.S. tended more towards Uncertainty Avoidance, we could have prevented many of the imported poison fiascos with Chinese toothpaste, dog food, and children’s toys. We could have kept out the Arab Terrorists in both attacks on the World Trade Center. We could have prevented the political damage done by communists in the twentieth century.

However, Uncertainty Avoidance would have allowed Germany to benefit from Einstein’s genius, rather than us. It would have prevented us from incorporating many of the ideas, tastes, sounds, sights, and innovations that make our lives great today. As a melting-pot nation of immigrants, we had no choice but to embrace a level of uncertainty and hope for the best.

China avoids uncertainty; most Asian nations do. That has held China back from innovation, economic development, beneficial immigration, and political evolution. Deng Xiaoping had to drag the nation kicking and screaming to the foothills of capitalism. Communism and Maoism were known quantities: they could control the variables and expect certain returns. Capitalism meant that the future economy was uncertain. Whether enough people would work the right jobs at the right times in the right places was uncertain; it was uncertain if “The Market” could be trusted to keep the ship upright and on course. Now they have found that the uncertain conditions of the market has created an economy that is like a Tsunami—it exceeds anyone’s predictions or expectations.

Even so, the Chinese economy and society still have many restrictions and stoppers. If the currency of China (the Yuan) were a floating-rate, market valued currency, it is expected that the value would rise to a realistic value, making foreign products more affordable to Chinese consumers and Chinese products more expensive for other nations to import. However, the future is always uncertain. It is possible that a floating-rate Yuan still beats the pants off the dollar and Euro. Moreover, a floating-rate Yuan may bring in more investment, and increase the demand for Yuan in other countries to the point that exceeds the current system of fixed-rates. A floating rate currency does not require a nation to hold $1,034,000,000,000 in reserves to offset demand, which means China would have some spending to do.

Currently, China retains an oppressive political system based on Communism. It includes a lot of nepotism, corruption, and incompetence; there is precious little accountability or creativeness. Just imagine what the nation of China could accomplish if the people could freely choose honest, effective leaders, analyze and criticize public policies, and demand changes when the need arose. The uncertainty of democracy would, I think, be certain to make China the unchallenged leader of the planet in every category.

The rankings below were listed in Hofstede’s book Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (London: McGraw-Hill U.K. Ltd., 1991, p. 123 and 141) and reprinted International Management by Hodgett, Luthans, and Doh (Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2006, p. 106-7). First, we have cultures that, according to Hofstede, tend to avoid uncertainty more, ranked approximately from greatest avoidance to less:

Greece, Portugal, Guatemala, Uruguay, Belgium, Salvador, Japan, Peru, Costa Rica, Argentine, Spain, Korea, France, Yugoslavia, Panama, Mexico, Turkey, Israel, Austria, Germany, Pakistan, Taiwan, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Iran, Thailand, Equador, Arab Countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, UAE.)

These nations tend to accept uncertainty rather than avoid it, listed approximately from least avoidance to more:

Singapore, Jamaica, Hong Kong, Denmark, Sweden, Malaysia, Great Britain, Ireland, India, Philippines, Indonesia, West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone), East Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia), Norway, Netherlands, Canada, USA, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia.

Hofstede did not include every nation in this study. He was originally limited to nations with an IBM office, though he argued that his data was still validated thoroughly, and it compared well to national samples. That explains why the nation you were wondering about may not be listed above. However, I think the main cultural clusters are represented.

I reordered the nations who tend to avoid uncertainty according to a clustering that made sense to me:

1.Celebrated cultures that feel they must prevent being diluted or assimilated: Greece, France, Austria, Germany, Belgium

2.Predominantly Catholic, most of South America, mainly underachievers, all have been candidates for socialism/communism, and supporters of mythology and mysticism (political, cultural, and religious; i.e. Che Guevara and the Virgin Mary): Portugal, Guatemala, Uruguay, Salvador, Peru, Costa Rica, Argentine, Spain, Panama, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Equador

3. Nations threatened or oppressed by radical and violent Islam (including Islamic nations who are radical because they feel threatened by the west): Yugoslavia, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan, Iran

4. Asian nations, accustomed to a long history of invading and being invaded, each with a distinct culture that they feel needs to be preserved and protected: nTaiwan, Thailand, Japan, Korea.

I will consider this subject further but right now I am thinking this is a problem worth addressing. I have no idea how we get a whole nation, let alone a whole continent, to embrace uncertainty. It does appear to me, though, that there would be many benefits to the global community if more cultures tended to allow, even tended to embrace, uncertainty.