Outliers Culture Gladwell

Chapter seven of Matthew Gladwell’s book Outliers, is written to explain how cultural legacy has an impact on our behaviors related to authority. Culture defines how subordinates interrelate to authority figures, and would create problems regardless of the other correlating set of events. Specifically fatigue, weather and technical difficulties contributed to the accidents noted, but it was because of the cultural differences these obstacles were not overcome.
Geert Hofstede, a Dutch psychologist, analyzed cultural differences through the collection and storage of data gathered from employee interviews. By asking employees questions related to problem solving, how people worked together, and about their attitudes about authority he was able to create a databases of information he could use for this analysis. ( Gladwell, 202-203 check) He also developed the “Hofstede’s Dimension’s”. One of the most important dimensions, The “Power Distance Index” refers to how cultures value and respect authority.( Gladwell, 204-205 check) Gladwell uses these dimensions to argue as to how cultural respect for authority, correlates to communication issues. These issues, negatively impacted the outcome of numerous airplane crashes. Gladwell concludes the chapter by indicating Boeing, a

It is improbable, unless there was a serious engine failure, that one cause would contribute solely and independently of other causal considerations to a plane crash. In the discussion of the Korean flights there is a correlation to the cultural legacy and the plane crashes. While cultural background differences contributed to these accidents and there is a correlation to this variable, accidents do not occur daily in the everyday world. On a daily basis pilots are subjected to other flight crews which do not come from the same cultures. If this was a cause, we would see more accidents each day