Power distance

Power distance is the extent to which the lower ranking individuals of a society "accept and expect that power is distributed unequally". It is primarily used in psychological and sociological studies on societal management of inequalities between individuals, and individual's perceptions of that management. People in societies with a high power distance are more likely to conform to a hierarchy where "everybody has a place and which needs no further justification". In societies with a low power distance, individuals tend to try to distribute power equally. In such societies, inequalities of power among people would require additional justification.

Hofstede, the famous business anthropologist, developed the cultural dimensions theory, used widely as a crucial framework for cross-cultural communication. It is the earliest theory that could be quantified and used to explain perceived differences between cultures and has been applied extensively in many fields, especially in cross-cultural psychology, international business, and cross-cultural communication. 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, which are power distance, individualism vs collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs femininity, short-term vs long-term orientation, and indulgence vs self-restraint.

The Power Distance Index is designed to measure ‘the extent to which power differs within the society, organization and institutions (like the family) are accepted by the less powerful members’. It indicates the level of power distance and dependent relationships in a country by assigning a score to each country. The PDI also represents society's level of inequality that is defined from below rather than from above. As Hofstede stressed, there is no absolute value and PDI is useful only as a method to compare countries.

Hofstede derived the 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. The detailed steps to calculate the PDI is as follows:

1. Prepare three survey questions:

2. Pre-code the answers so that they are represented by a number (e.g. 1,2,3,4...)

3. Compute the mean score for the answers of equal sample of people from each country or percentage for choosing particular answers

4. Sort the questions into groups which are called clusters or factors by using a statistical procedure

5. Add or subtract the three scores after multiplying each with a fixed number

6. Add another fixed number

Hofstede’s study made a great contribution to the establishment of the research tradition in cross-cultural psychology. However, limitations still exist.

...
Wikipedia