Deciding
決定
Whether decisions are reached by group agreement or made by the person in charge.
Deciding: JP −3, NORD −2 (DK −2, SE −2), NL −2, DE −1, UK 0, IN +1, US +1, FR +1, BR +1, CN +2.
No source: South Korea, Israel, Poland, Ukraine
NORD is drawn as a span over its members: DK −2, SE −2.
Source: Erin Meyer, The Culture Map (2014) and her country mapping charts. Positions are approximate, read off her charts onto a seven-step grid.
Positions as text
| Country or region | Step (−3 to +3) |
|---|---|
| Japan JP | −3 |
| The Nordics NORD | −2 (DK −2, SE −2) |
| Netherlands NL | −2 |
| Germany DE | −1 |
| United Kingdom UK | 0 |
| India IN | +1 |
| United States US | +1 |
| France FR | +1 |
| Brazil BR | +1 |
| China CN | +2 |
The two ends
- Left end Consensual
- Decisions are made by the group through unanimous agreement. It takes longer, but the decision is then fixed.
- Right end Top-down
- Decisions are made by individuals, usually the boss. It is fast, and the decision stays open to change.
What it is built from
Who makes a decision and how final it is. Consensual cultures take longer to decide and then hold the decision fixed; top-down cultures decide quickly through the person in charge and revise later. It differs from Leading: Japan is hierarchical yet strongly consensual.
Eight scales from Erin Meyer's The Culture Map (2014), built from her interviews and teaching with international managers. She publishes charts, not numbers, so each country is read off her chart onto a coarse seven-step grid. The positions are relative: a country is direct or indirect compared with the others on the line.
Limits: the scales are not a validated survey instrument, the source population is mostly managers in multinational companies, and neighbouring steps are not meaningfully different. How to read these scales