Malaysia tops Power Distance Index

I was reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success with great interest when I stumbled upon a term called Power Distance Index. In his book, Gladwell correlated plane crashes with the pilots and first officers' power distance rating of their culture. I was so intrigued with what he said that I did a bit of extra research on the internet to find out more about PDI.


Power distance is one of the five dimensions of culture coined by Dutch writer, Gerard Hendrik Hofstede. He studied the interactions between national cultures and organizational cultures, and his study has demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groupings that affect the behaviour of societies and organizations, and that are very persistent across time.

Power distance, in particular, is concerned with attitudes towards hierarchy, specifically with how much a particular culture values and respects authority (click here to see Hofstede's global PDI map and table). It measures the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. To measure it, Hofstede asked questions like "How frequently, in your experience, does the following problem occur: employees being afraid to express disagreement with their managers?" "How much are older people respected and feared?" "Are power holders entitled to special privileges?" etc.

To put it simply, people from low power distance countries are more comfortable with demanding the right to contribute and criticizing the decision making of those higher in power. In an organization with multiple hierarchies, subordinates may treat someone few ranks above them as an equal, regardless of formal positions. Contrary, in high power distance countries, subordinates acknowledge the power of others simply based on where they are situated in certain formal, hierarchical positions. They would be intimidated by those in power, and treat their superiors like, well, superiors.

The United States is a lower power distance country. It is, after all, one of the most democratic countries in the world. US ranks at the bottom of the PDI and this can be easily observed by the way the Americans perceive power differences. Companies like Intel encourage their employees to communicate openly, by implementing open door policy. Issues could be escalated to the top management to get their attentions. Unlike their high power distance counterparts who most of the time use subtle language and mitigated speech in order not to offend their bosses/clients, the Americans usually speak bluntly. This explains why sometimes they are regarded as “rude” and “uncivilized” by others from high power distance countries.

While using subtle language/mitigated speech or speaking tactfully might not appear harmful and are welcomed in certain societies, doing this in the cockpit will certainly yield deadly consequences. A bad decision by the CEO might result in reduced operating income, or worst, bankruptcy. However, a bad decision by the pilot might cause a plane to crash. And what is more valuable than human lives?

The linguists Ute Fischer and Judith Orasanu once gave the following hypothetical scenario to a group of captains and first officers and asked them how they would respond:

You notice on the weather radar an area of heavy precipitation 25 miles ahead. [The pilot] is maintaining his present course at Mach .73, even though embedded thunderstorms have been reported in your area and you encounter moderate turbulence. You want to ensure that your aircraft will not penetrate this area.
Question: what do you say to the pilot?

In Fischer's and Orasanu's minds, there were at least six ways to try to persuade the pilots to change course and avoid the bad weather, each with different level of mitigation.

1. Command: "Turn thirty degrees right." That's the most direct and explicit way of making a point imaginable. It's zero mitigation.
2. Crew Obligation Statement: "I think we need to deviate right about now." Notice the use of "we" and the fact that the request if now much less specific. That's a little softer.
3. Crew suggestion: "Let's go around the weather." Implicit in that statement is "we're in this together."
4. Query: "Which direction would you like to deviate?" That's even softer than a crew suggestion, because the speaker is conceding that he's not in charge.
5. Preference: "I think it would be wise to turn left or right."
6. Hint:" That return at 25 miles look mean." This is the most mitigated statement of all.

Fisher and Orasanu found that captains overwhelmingly said they would issue a command in that situation: "Turn thirty degrees right." They were talking to a subordinate and they had no fear of being blunt. The first officers, on the other hand, were talking to their superior, and so they overwhelmingly chose the most mitigated alternative. They hinted.

In the 1982 Air Florida crash outside Washington DC, the first officer tried three times to tell the captain that the plane had a dangerous amount of ice on its wings. But listen to how he said it. It was all hints.

"Look how the ice is just hanging on his, ah, back, back there, see that?"

"See all those icicles on the back there and everything?"

"Boy, this is a, this is a losing battle here on trying to de-ice those things, it [gives] you a false feeling of security, that's all that does."

The plane ended up plunging into the Potomac River.

Now, the interesting part. If you have already clicked on the link to Hofstede's global PDI map, you should see that Malaysia ranks highest in the Power Distance Index. How could Malaysia, a peaceful democratic country ranks higher than so many other autocratic countries? Is the high population of Muslims (more than 60%) a factor in this? Or has the draconian Internal Security Act(ISA) made its countrymen afraid to speak out and confront the authority?

I wonder.