Business goals for a new world order: beyond growth, greed and quarterly results

Abstract

Around 1998, junior managers and professionals in 17 countries and regions rated the importance of a number of personal goals for their country's successful business leaders. Across countries, dominant goals were growth, continuity, short-term profits and personal wealth. Goal profiles differed among countries however. The US profile presented the most extreme stress on growth, personal wealth, and short-term results. In hindsight, these findings predicted the 2008 economic crash. Out of the ruins of the present system a new order is bound to emerge, less dominated by the USA. Goal profiles for the emerging economies of India, Brazil, China and Germany are shown to predict where the new world order may differ from the old one: a longer term view, less fascination with growth and personal wealth, and more responsibility towards society.

Keywords:

• Brazil
• business goals
• China
• economic crisis
• Germany
• greed
• growth
• India
• short term
• USA

Notes

1. The data about China were collected along with the other data from Chinese studying in Australia and the USA. Data from 52 respondents at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, were added in 2004 (see Hofstede 2007).

2. Principal component analysis with varimax rotation.

3. r = − .50 across 15 countries, almost significant (.055 level).

4. r = − .59 across 13 countries, significant at the .05 level.

5. The similarity between a country's goal ranking and the average overall ranking was measured as the correlation coefficient between these two rankings. These similarity coefficients correlated with the countries' factor scores on Cluster 5 with r = .73, significant at the .001 level.

6. Hofstede et al. 2002.