Introduction
In this book, the author argues that in so-called tight societies (with clearly stated rules) versus so-called loose societies (countries, regions, even families), behavior is highly influenced by the perception of threat. Many reactions to conflicts are metered out in different ways, seemingly dependent on degree of societal tightness.
The author, Professor Michelle Gelfand has studied this phenomenon widely. She is a social psychologist and teaches at the University of Maryland. Her study sheds light on why cultures differ, depending on the strengths of their cultural glues. Tight cultures, with strong social norms and relatively little tolerance for deviances might be seen as rule makers, while societies with relatively weak societal norms and a high degree of permissiveness are rule breakers.
The book falls into three parts, Foundations, Analysis, and Applications. In the first, the power of primal social forces, the author shares her finding that there seem to be relatively fewer norms in loose societies than in tight ones. However, there appears to be a continuum between these two extremes. Amongst her vast array of examples of norms that might differ between tight versus loose societies, she cites: the phenomenon of receiving help from strangers (less so in tight societies), gambling (less so in tight societies), political demonstrations (less so in tight societies), saying of profane words (less in tight societies), … even less waste in tight societies. She goes on to discuss particular conditions regarding when we may find an over-abundance of tightness: not only threats, but also over crowdedness, propensity for natural disasters (droughts, floods, earthquakes, …), as well as likelihood of scarcities, such as lack of food, unstable contexts for dwellings, etc. In contrast, looser societies might often be associated with a relatively open view when it comes to other societies – as well as a propensity to debate and protest.
Moving to the analytical section, tight-loose here, there are everywhere, the author starts off with a compelling analysis of differences among various US regions – relatively tight in the south, with relatively explicit behaviors and rules versus relatively loose in the north-east as well as in California. She argues that such differences might, at least in part, be traced back to how these various regions were colonized – more law-abiding from Scotland and Ireland in the south versus individualistic “protestors” in the north-east and California. The author then extends this analysis to the contrast between working class versus upper class, with the former generally having to fight for survival, with relatively little opportunity to take chances/initiatives, and experiment (tight). In contrast to the latter, which tend to be established in a safer way, being able to take more risks, and appreciate societal diversity (loose).
The author’s next analytical endeavor relates to corporations, an issue of particular interest to most of the members of the Lorange Network as well as to this reviewer. She takes the failed acquisition of Daimler of Chrysler as a starting point and concludes that cultural incompatibility seemed to become the apparent reason. This incompatibility made it particularly arduous and complex to integrate organizational structures. And there seemed to have been a colossal underestimation of this tight-loose divide.
Based on an analysis of several cross-country corporate combinations she also indicates that a large tight-loose division might tend to be associated with lower and more difficult negotiation processes, often a significant fall in stock market values as well as lower ROA than hoped for. Above all, a substantial tight-loose gap might typically lead to substantial and unexpected setbacks.
The author indicates that while in loose cultural settings (e.g., Israel, California, …) there may be a strong resistance when one is told what to do. And the propensity to take risk might be relatively high. Labels such as flexibility, initiative and innovations may apply. In contrast, there might be particularly tight business settings not only in countries such as Germany, but also in Singapore, Japan and Korea, with strong formalities, many rules and hierarchical/organizational firmness: discipline, and predictability!
Although the author does not analyze it, the overriding vision at Daimler seems to have been to develop a global automotive entity comprising of Chrysler (US), Mitsubishi (Japan) and Daimler (Germany), with Daimler in the lead. Large cultural tight-loose differences reflected in irrevocable leadership styles seem to have been the overriding reason why this did not work. More recent stresses, even breakdowns, when it comes to the failing cooperation between Nissan (Japan) and Renault (France), seem to point to the same – Japan: tight versus France: loose.
Leaders might also tend to be primarily tight versus loose, of course, with Jurgen Schrempp and Dieter Zetsche of Daimler being examples of the former versus Ricardo Semler (Brazilian; CEO of Semco Partners) and Bill Gates being examples of the latter – discipline, obedience, autocratic, command-and-control versus with relatively less innovation, risk taking and openness to change.
But, when digging deeper into this dichotomy, when applied to specific firms, the author finds that there might be differences even within a given firm, say, R&D being loose versus a tighter manufacturing function. We may see this not only in firms such as Bale Corporation and Deloitte, but also in many pharmaceutical firms.
The author also builds on the concept initially developed by Charles O’Reilly regarding balancing the need to explore new frontiers with honoring steadfast traditions, structural looseness versus flexible tightness, as she calls it, or a loose-tight ambidexterity. This balance between the two extremes, bother “good”, might be renegotiated on a more or less continuing basis. The author offers the following chart as a guideline to this:
The last chapter in this section attempts to shed light on what type of mindset might be the dominant one for each of us – tight or loose. The author sets out three questions to determine this:
The extent that you notice norms that might relate to other expectations regarding oneself (tight or not?)
The extent to which one is cautious/controlled (tight) versus adventurous/impulsive (loose)?
Preference for structure/social order (tight) versus enjoying less structure and tolerance for ambiguity (loose).
In the third and final part of the book, the author addresses the tight-loose dichotomy in a changing world, covered in these relatively short chapters.
She first discusses the so-called negatively ‘u’-shaped curve, the goldilocks curvilinear principle, for how too tight as well as too loose positions may typically lead to chaos, in biology as well as in society. Avoiding the extremes might be better in creating order, happiness and desirable outcomes. The author discusses a wide range of applications of this, from propensity to commit suicide to child education. While every culture may have their own optimal tradeoff between tightness and looseness, extreme levels should be avoided.
The author then delves into how global disorder might be analyzed for better understanding. She points out that when cultural norms collapse, then extremism might fill the vacuum. Clearly there are cultural divides. The looseness-tightness paradigm might help explaining why international confrontations arise, in large, due to this!
In the final chapter, the author speculates how social norms may be harnessed. She argues that over crowdedness on our planet, getting CO2 emissions under control, reservation of a more normal climate, as well as other current macro-challenges might be better understood when considering them through the loose-tight lenses. While all of this may be good, it nevertheless sounds rather speculative to this reviewer.
The above cautious note having been raised; I shall nevertheless wholeheartedly recommend this book. Above all, the “tight-loose” conundrum might help is to better understand how to develop more effective operations in multinational settings. In this context, it is interesting to observe the strong emphasis that many unsuccessful firms with global operations, such as Nestlé, for instance, seem to put on managing each country, as well as each region separately. Such firms appear to recognize the importance of country-specific differences between tight and loose and seem to be able/ready to modify their managerial practices accordingly. For family-owned business portfolios too, some of whose entities often being entrepreneurial indeed, it is probably important to pay close attention to tailoring the corporate level interaction with each entity in a firm’s portfolio in terms of structured looseness versus flexible tightness.
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