Uncertainty Avoidance

Conceptual Framework

Uncertainty avoidance is an important predictor for understanding national differences. Studies of cultural dimensions such as uncertainty avoidance tend to focus on the differences between societies. Such studies help bring into focus the workings of the global world. Hofstede describes cultures with strong uncertainty avoidance as security seeking, nervous, intolerant, aggressive, and emotionally expressive.

For example, when a person enters a store in a strong uncertainty-avoidant culture, the store owner feels nervous because of being uncertain about what the person will do. So if, for instance, a customer picks up a piece of merchandise and handles it, the security-seeking owner may feel intolerant of this person, preferring to stand over the customer to make sure that nothing unpredictable is done. If the customer should become bolder and start to try out a mechanical piece of merchandise, the store owner may become intolerant and aggressive and insist that the potential customer put down the merchandise. The storekeeper may even become irate and insist that the customer leave the store.

In contrast, people from cultures with weak uncertainty avoidance are typified by subjective feelings of well-being, strong achievement motivation, calmness, and risk taking, and tend to be less emotional, less aggressive, more relaxed, more accepting of personal risks, and relatively tolerant. Consequently, store owners in weak uncertainty-avoidant cultures do not mind if customers try out merchandise, handle it, or even break things (they will call someone to clean up the mess), and may even not charge people for breaking the merchandise that they handle.

Cross-Cultural Controversies and Conceptual Support

[Page 850]Although a number of research articles employ Hofstede's conception of uncertainty avoidance, there is a shortage of research using uncertainty avoidance compared with Hofstede's other cultural dimensions. This could be a result of a controversy that arose when Hofstede and M. H. Bond revealed a fifth dimension of culture, long-term orientation (LTO). Specifically, when LTO was discovered, a debate ensued about whether LTO had replaced the uncertainty avoidance dimension in Asian samples. Later, however, Hofstede affirmed that the uncertainty avoidance dimension characterizes whether organizations are tightly controlled (e.g., structured) versus loosely controlled (e.g., open). Support for uncertainty avoidance as a predictor of national differences was also found regarding such concepts as expectancy violations and self-assessed fears.

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