Culture in the cockpit: do Hofstede's dimensions replicate?
Survey data collected from 9,400 male commercial airline pilots in 19 countries were used in a replication study of Hofstede's indexes of national culture. The analysis that removed the constraint of item equivalence proved superior, both conceptually and empirically, to the analysis using Hofstede's items and formulae as prescribed, and rendered significant replication correlations for all indexes (Individualism-Collectivism .96, Power Distance .87, Masculinity-Femininity .75, and Uncertainty Avoidance .68). The successful replication confirms that national culture exerts an influence on cockpit behavior over and above the professional culture of pilots, and that "one size fits all" training is inappropriate.
Merritt
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Aerospace Crew Research Project, University of Texas at Austin, USA. amerritt@dedale-sa.com
D000337:Aerospace Medicine; D001290:Attitude; D001359:Aviation / Q000193:education*; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D003625:Data Collection; D006804:Ergonomics; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D015279:Organizational Culture; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires