The Degree of Uncertainty Avoidance Present in Croatian and American Undergraduate Students; a Comparative Analysis

Abstract

25 years ago, Culture’s Consequences  was published.  This text, the result of analyzing over 116,000 surveys collected from within IBM, identified 4 cultural dimensions which would go on to become recognized as one of the most important set of cultural dimensions, and which would be replicated and expanded upon on a broad scale (Bass, 1990; Adler, 1997).  Culture’s Consequences contained information from Yugoslavia, information that was later broken down according to the area in which it was collected, resulting in cultural scores for Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia (Hofstede, 1996, 2001).  Since this original research was conducted in 1971, no further testing of Hofstede’s original findings has been carried out in Croatia.  The research presented in this paper focused on one of Hofstede’s four dimensions in particular: uncertainty avoidance.  Research was carried out which tested the degree of this dimension demonstrated by Croatian and American undergraduate students.  In contrast to Hofstede’s original research, the American sample was found to be higher in uncertainty avoidance than the Croatian sample.