Course Description In this course, we will explore the question of the actual and potential connections between democracy and education. Our focus of attention will be placed on a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers. We will survey and deal critically with a range of competing conceptions of democracy, variously described as classical, republican, liberal, radical, marxist, neomarxist, pragmatist, feminist, populist, pluralist, postmodern, and/or participatory. Using narrative inquiry as a means for illuminating and interpreting contemporary practice, we will analyze the implications of different conceptions of democracy for the practical work of civic education.

Democracy and education.

This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. The authors present a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions - and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.

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Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence

Individualism and collectivism

The East Asian miracle: Economic growth and public policy: By the World Bank. (New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1993. 389 pp. $19.95, paper.)

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Contributors Acknowledgements Prologue Culture's consequences revisited, Pieter J.D. Drenth 1. Cultures and dimensions. Classic perspectives and new opportunities in 'dimensionalist' cross-cultural studies, Henk Vinken, Joseph Soeters & Peter Ester 2. Dimensions of culture beyond Hofstede, Harry C. Triandis 3. Mapping and interpreting cultural differences around the world, Shalom H. Schwartz 4. Individualism, autonomy, self-expression, and human development, Ronald Inglehart & Daphna Oyserman 5. Methodological problems of value research, Wolfgang Jagodzinski 6. The structural roots of values. An anthropological interpretation of Hofstede's value dimensions Hans-Peter Muller & Patrick Ziltener 7. Cultural nationalism in Japan. A starting point for comparing cultures, Kazufumi Manabe, Henk Vinken & Joseph Soeters 8. Dimensions of culture in intra-cultural comparisons. Individualism/collectivism and family-related values in three generations, Gisela Trommsdorff, Boris Mayer & Isabelle Albert 9. A cross-cultural analysis of immigrant and host values and acculturation orientations, Karen Phalet & Marc Swyngedouw 10. Making maternity care work. The consequences of culture for health care systems, Raymond De Vries, Sirpa Wrede, Edwin Van Teijlingen, Cecilia Benoit & Eugene Declerq 11. The cultural relativity of employee empowerment. A comparative study in the European hotel industry, Antonios K. Klidas 12. Integrating the Hofstede dimensions and twelve aspects of negotiating behavior. A six country comparison, Lynn Metcalf & Allan Bird Epi-dialogue, Geert Hofstede References

Comparing cultures : dimensions of culture in a comparative perspective

In this article, the authors examine how, when and to what extent HR practices affect performance at the employee level. As performance is a multi-faceted and complicated concept, HRM outcomes were used as mediating factors between HR practices and employee performance. The data were collected among civil servants in Eritrea, Africa's youngest and poorest country. Although the results generally are in line with previous studies using Western data, their implications in this particular country may be different. Therefore, the challenges and prospects of HR practices in Eritrean civil service organizations are critically analysed and discussed. In the authors' opinion, that the Eritrean economic and political environment within which HR practices operate has not been conducive in maximizing the impact of HR practices on performance. These findings highlight the situation of most developing countries.

Challenges and prospects of HRM in developing countries : Testing the HRM-performance link in the Eritrean civil service

Leadership research to date has mainly focused on leaders' subjective effects. In this study, we examine the effect of different leadership styles on two financial measures of organizational performance and three measures of organizational climate in 50 supermarket stores of a large supermarket chain in the Netherlands. Our findings show a clear relationship of local leadership with the financial performance and organizational climate in the stores. The findings also show that the leadership styles have differential effects. Charismatic leadership and consideration have a substantial effect on climate and financial performance in the small stores, suggesting the relevance of personal leadership of the store manager in these small stores. Initiating structure leadership had no effect on financial results or organizational climate, either in the small stores or in the large stores. Based on these findings, we have formulated some avenues for further research.

Leadership effects on organizational climate and financial performance: Local leadership effect in chain organizations

This paper reports the results of an empirical study of the interaction between national and organizational cultures at the firm level. Using Hofstede's Value Survey Module, the concept of culture was operationalized in six accounting firms in The Netherlands. Three of these firms were local offices of international “Big Eight” accounting firms with a strong U.S.-orientation in their organizational philosophies and policies, whereas the other three firms were Dutch in origin and organization. All six firms work virtually entirely with Dutch employees. We were specifically interested in any influences of the U.S. culture upon the Big Eight firms. For two Hofstede's four cultural dimensions, i.e. Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity, significant effects of the U.S. culture upon the organizational cultures of the Big Eight firms were found. Further analysis showed that these results may rather be due to (self-)selection than to socialization mechanisms.

The interaction between national and organizational cultures in accounting firms

Internationalization is becoming a pervasive feature of military life. Therefore, empirical information on national cultural differences in the military sector is becoming increasingly relevant. One way to collect empirical data on this subject is to study value orientations of student officers in military academies. A comparative study based on this idea is reported in this article. The results indicate that national differences between the student populations of military academies are as large as in the civilian sector. At the same time it emerges that one international military culture exists. Compared to the civilian sector, this international military culture in general is institutional and bureaucratic. However, in some nations the military culture, as measured in academies, is far more bureaucratic and institutional than in others. The article ends with a discussion of managerial implications and suggestions for further research.

Joseph Soeters

Papers

Comparing cultures : dimensions of culture in a comparative perspective

Challenges and prospects of HRM in developing countries : Testing the HRM-performance link in the Eritrean civil service

Leadership effects on organizational climate and financial performance: Local leadership effect in chain organizations

The interaction between national and organizational cultures in accounting firms

Value Orientations in Military Academies: A Thirteen Country Study