Founder Leaders and Organization Culture: A Comparative Study on Indian and American Founder Leaders Based on Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture

Abstract

Organizational culture is created gradually by founder leaders on the basis of their values, assumptions and beliefs. Organizational culture is tangible in terms of the architecture of the company, office layout and exhibits and intangible in terms of behaviour of employees, decisions, policies and procedures. This article aims to perform a comparative analysis of some of the founder leaders of Indian and American businesses and their influence on the culture of the organization.

The study adopts the case method research design where the focus is on the specific interesting cases, articles and interviews of the founder(s) in their formational years and cases when the company had a stable organizational culture. The unit of analysis is the founder leader. The company’s culture is evaluated using Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture while that of the founder leader is evaluated using Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions. This study does not equate national culture to individual’s culture to avoid ecological fallacy of interpreting country-level relationships being applied to individuals.

The study shows that there exist layers of subcultures in each individual. The article discusses an interesting paradigm, that is, the culture in which they are born/trained and the culture they adopt intentionally. When founders adopt other cultures, some traces of adopted cultures are reflected in the organization. The article concludes that founder leaders’ culture needs a better framework in order to see its effects on the organization. Hofstede’s model does not show the relationship between different layers of the culture. Hence, the model seems inadequate to be applied to analyse founder leaders.

Keywords

Organizational culture individual culture values artefacts regional culture paternalism

Introduction

An organization is generally founded by an individual who has the passion to set up a company. At the initial stage, when the company is founded, it is small and manageable. Subsequently, when it starts growing, employees carry forward the decisions and passion of the founder leader. Today, some companies, such as Amazon, Alibaba and Netflix, are still led by their founders while some others are not, such as General Motors, Ford and Disney Corporation. The influence of the founder on the creation of the organizational culture depends largely on the cultural orientation of the founder himself, the environment in which he was brought up and his long-term vision for the company. Schein (1990) mentions that organizations are not built overnight but through the able leadership of the founder who has a vision of creating a mark in the business world. When a group of people starts working for the firm, the formation and dissemination of culture start subtly through the methods the group adapts to realize the founder’s vision. In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Chris Zook (2016) emphasizes three practices and underlying assumptions that can be traced back to the way the founder set up his company. The practices are as follows:

Founder’s attitude towards the ability to learn, observation and usability

The frontline of the business, which includes the passion for being at the forefront of the business

Personal responsibility for risks and costs

It is also discussed that founder-led companies always outperform the rest in the market owing to the owner’s mindset and the willingness to take personal responsibility. The founder leader’s cultural orientation shapes the mentality based on which the business is operated.

Schein (1995) gives a prototype to understand the culture of the organization. He says that the evolution of culture is a multistage process. The first stage is the dissemination of values and beliefs by the founder to the immediate group which are later disseminated to the organization. The ultimate organizational culture reflects the interaction between assumptions and theories the founder brings to the group/employees, for example, one of the values that Wipro Technologies follow is ‘Unyielding integrity in everything’ and it is exhibited as a formal statement on the official website. This is the core group’s collective belief of the important core values of the organization.

Organizational culture is one of the most debated topics in the corporate arena. Studies show that parameters like resilience to stress and emotional intelligence behave differently for Western leaders than leaders from the East. Scholars also argue that factors such as global mindset and external orientation have an impact on the effectiveness. This exploratory study delves into the underlying factor that affects long-term goals and structure of the organization that can be observed using Schein’s model. The next section deals with the literature review of founder leaders and organizational culture.

Literature Review

Organizational culture can be explained in many ways. It is explained as

A pattern of basic assumptions, invented, discovered, or developed by a given group, as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore is to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. (Schein, 1990)

It can be explained as an integration, meaning a consistent interpretation of facts; a differentiation, which is variation in terms of organizational culture and structure; and fragmentation, which is a state of being neither consistent nor inconsistent (Martin, 2002). Harrison (1972) was one of the pioneers to come up with a model of organization culture where he advocated achievement culture and support culture. He shows that family-owned businesses are more power oriented.

Schein (1983), in his seminal work Organizational Culture and Leadership, says that ‘we must come to understand fully what culture is all about in human groups, organizations, and nations so that we can have a much deeper understanding of what goes on, why it goes on, and what, if anything, we can do about it’. He has mentioned the influence of founder leaders on the formation of the organization culture. He states through the examples that there exists a stark difference between the founder leaders and the project managers of the same organizations. The founder leader’s predominant characteristics being achievement-oriented, autocratic and intuitive leadership. While project managers are more dependent on data and practice inclusiveness. Schein opined that the values held by the founders are transmitted through the organization in terms of organization structure, vision, mission, formal statements and other facts that are visible. Schein’s model (1995) has three levels to describe the culture of an organization (Figure 1); they are as follows:

Artefacts: Visible organizational structure and processes (hard to decipher)

Espoused values: Strategies, goals, philosophies (espoused justifications)

Basic assumptions and values: Unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and feelings (ultimate source of values and actions)

Schein’s model was applied to study the US army. Analyses of the army using Schein’s conceptualization of organizational culture have focused on the usefulness of identifying artefacts in pursuit of the underlying assumptions. Unfortunately, a few studies venture into Schein’s basic assumptions simply because the assumptions tend to be difficult to assess in the context of the army.

Schein provides a model for embedding and transmitting culture. Transmitted culture depends on embedding the assumptions and then reinforcing them with observable and unobservable norms, values and artefacts. Hogan and Coote (2014) studied the applicability of Schien’s multilayered culture model which focusses on fostering innovation in organization. Lim (1995) studied how performance can be linked to culture. Schein’s concepts of embedding and transmitting assumptions through observable norms, values and culture actually create the conducive organizational culture.

Figure 1.

Source: Gerras, Wong, and Allen (2008)

Another seminal work is that of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory (2011). According to him, culture consists of unwritten rules of socialization. It is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes one category of people from the other. Figure 2 shows that at the deepest level of culture arises the value system of a person. He emphasized that culture differs from one nation to another, and, within a nation, from one region to another. The first comparison was done on similar organizations in different countries, which generated the dimensions of national culture (Hofstede, 2011). He uses the ‘onion’ diagram to show the manifestation of culture at different levels (Figure 2).

Hofstede concluded from his cross-national research that organizational culture and national culture are different. He conceptualized the six dimensions of national culture (Hofstede, 2011) as shown below.

Power distance. It is the degree to which the less-powerful members of an organization and/or institution (such as the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.

Uncertainty avoidance. It deals with a society’s tolerance for ambiguity. It indicates to what extent a culture programmes its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations.

Individualism versus collectivism. It refers to the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups.

Masculinity versus femininity. It refers to the distribution of emotional roles between the sexes, another fundamental problem for any society to which a range of solutions is found.

Long-term orientation (LTO) versus short-term orientation. Values associated with LTO are thrift and perseverance; values associated with short-term orientation are respected for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting one’s ‘face’.

Indulgence versus restraint. Indulgence stands for a society that allows relatively free gratification of basic and natural human drives related to enjoying life and having fun. Restraint stands for a society that suppresses gratification of needs and regulates it by means of strict social norms.

Figure 2.

Source: Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov (2005)

Hofstede also discussed the six dimensions of organizational culture based on the practices followed not the values: process versus result orientation, employee versus job orientation, parochial versus professional orientation, open system versus closed system, low control versus tight control and constraint society versus unconstraint society. Through these models and dimensions, he gives an insight into how the environment and the foundational years influence thoughts, feelings and actions of founder leaders. Some researchers argue that Hofstede never studied national culture (Baskerville, 2003). The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) studies (House, Javidan, Hanges, & Dorfman, 1991) have extended Hofstede’s theory into nine dimensions.

Schein’s model gives a useful set of variables to measure the cultural orientation and so does the Hofstede model. The applicability of models is also seen at the group or organizational level. When looked at the cultural orientation of individuals, it is defined by personality traits or personality dimensions (Dignman, 1990). But, as they are measured at different levels, drawing causal relationships would be farfetched. One of the interesting studies established a link between Hofstede dimensions and the Big Five personality dimensions (Costa Jr & McCrae, 1992) which shows that 55 per cent of neuroticism can be explained through the combination of uncertainty avoidance and masculinity. This study emphasizes that national culture scores should not be used for stereotyping individuals since individual personalities vary within a country. Some of the findings from literature show that openness to experience has a positive relationship with the dimension of masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. In order to understand consumer behaviour, Hofstede’s model was used by Yoo, Donthu and Lenartowicz (2011) to study the cultural orientation at individual level. The samples included Americans and Koreans. It is noted that a 26-item measure is reliable to understand the cultural dimensions at individual level. The study attempts to connect personality with the cultural dimensions, but they are not done purely on Hofstede’s model or Schein’s model.

Organizational culture influences the parameters of innovativeness, performance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment (Lok & Crawford, 2004) and women leadership experiences (Longman, Daniels, Bray, & Liddell, 2018). Harrison (1972) was one of the pioneers to come up with a model of organization culture where he advocated the four dimensions of role, task, power and person. Role culture tends to follow rules and regulation; task culture gives importance to skills needed to execute plans and projects; power culture exhibits autocracy, and personal culture exhibits their individual influence on the organization. While this model of organization culture is less popular in the context of founder leader, their first generation of organization is influenced by personal culture.

One of the gaps identified is that the culture of individual founder leader and its influence on the larger culture of the organization need consistent/proven scales of measurements to draw correlations. A causal analysis needs to be done through different methodologies. Hence, we adopt the Hofstede’s model and apply it at an individual level in line with Hofstede and McCrae (2004), where they explore the relationship of personality traits with dimensions of culture. But we intend to use case study research methodology, as the method scientifically analyses the incidents that espouse the assumptions of individual and organizational culture. This article adopts Schein’s and Hofstede’s models as the foundation to build on its propositions.

Gaps

The gaps identified in the literature are as follows:

The impact of founder leader’s individual cultural orientation, which is derived from basic assumptions and values system, is not correlated with the culture in his organization

Application of the established model to the individual’s cultural orientation and his alignment to the culture of the organization still needs refinements

We see many studies analysing organizational culture while there are a few studies that explain the founder’s basic culture that might influence his organizational culture

A few studies correlate the instances and incidents with the cultural dimensions of the organization

A systematic approach to find a relationship between cultural orientation of founder leaders and organizational culture has not been attempted

Conceptual Model

This conceptual model attempts to understand the cultural orientation of founder leaders by applying Hofstede’s dimensions (Yoo et al., 2011) at an individual level. While the author has developed a culture value scale (CVS) for the evaluation of the five dimensions at the individual level, this study attempts to analyse the actions, instances and incidents of individual founder leaders and suggests possible variables which these instances can be correlated to. The cultural orientations are adopted from Hofstede model. The main variables being analysed are power distance and LTO.

Schein’s model is used to analyse the organizational culture through possible observable artefacts, norms and values in the organization that reflect the cultural orientation of the founder leader. Both Schein’s and Hofstede’s cultural models are needed to explain the propagation of cultural orientation of the founder leaders. Hofstede dimensions help to evaluate the founder leaders while Schein’s model helps to evaluate how it is being propagated in the organizations. Pattern matching and explanation building methods are used to correlate the cultural orientation of the founder with culture of their organizations.

P-Propositions

Proposition 1 (P1). Power distance of individual founder leader influences the basic assumptions of organizational culture.

Proposition 2 (P2). Artefacts that are representative of the culture of the organization are influenced by the LTO of the founder leader.

Proposition 3 (P3). The LTO (strategy) adopted by the organization is influenced by the founder leader’s value system.

Figure 3.

Source: Authors.

Research Methodology

The study adopts the case method research design and focuses on specific interesting cases of the founder’s formational years; it later looks at the cases where the company has a stable organizational culture. The first step is to do an in-depth longitudinal analysis of events that are related to the founder and the evolution of his company’s organizational culture. The second step is to draw a conclusion on the influence of the founder on the company’s culture. The third step is to group the founder leaders based on their geographical location and compare the factors identified. The outcome of the comparison between India in the east and America in the west would give a clear picture of the differences in the basic values, espoused values and artefacts.

Research Methodology: Flow Diagram

As the research methodology, a literature review was done and research questions were formulated based on the gaps identified in the literature. The propositions were formed based on the research questions. This study attempts to use Hofstede’s conceptual models to analyse founder leaders and Schein’s model to analyse organizations. The founder leaders can be analysed using case studies, interviews, books, documentation and other secondary sources. Hence, we adopted the case study research design for the purpose of analysing the relationships between an individual’s characteristics and the influence on the organization culture. The case study research design method suggests the following steps:

Defining propositions

Case analyses (single or multiple) which include linking of data to propositions through triangulation

Logical linking of data to proposition through the process of pattern matching, explanation building, time-series analysis, cross-case synthesis.

Interpreting the findings

Data Collection

Data is collected for the instances of the founder leaders exhibiting the characteristics that fit various dimensions under study (e.g., power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism). Case studies were selected predominantly from established databases of Harvard Business Publishing and EBSCO. Multiple case studies were used for each of the founders for triangulation to understand the variables under study. The relevant instances, interviews, policies, structure and/or procedures in the organizations were studied to understand the underlying assumptions, espoused values and artefacts. The unit of analysis for the study is the founder of the organization.

Figure 4.

Source: Authors.

Case Studies

For the purpose of this study, two cases are taken: Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Inc., an American multinational company, and Narayan Murthy, one of the founders of Infosys Limited, based in Bengaluru. Both started around the same time in the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. The world was moving towards computers, and application software and technology-related innovations were given importance around the world. These companies were selected as they come from distinctly different cultures of the East and the West. While Apple Inc. focused on being a pioneer in technology and product innovation. Infosys, on the other hand, started with business consulting and diversified into services and software products such as Finacle, Next Generation Integrated AI platform and many more. Mr Narayan Murthy has his roots in India; Steve Jobs is rooted in the West. Their upbringing and growing years are completely different. As mentioned, personality is a product of Heredity and environment (Robbins, 1998). We have studied that the environment in which these founder leaders have grown up has an impact on the organizational culture. We look at the instances of the leaders in their personal and professional lives and, with the help of these, establish causality between the variables considered in the conceptual model.

Linking Data to Propositions

The dependent variables are that of the organization based on Schein’s model applied at the organizational level. The independent variables are that of Hofstede model applied at the individual level. The sources of data collected for both the individuals and their organizations are analysed used triangulation to ensure validity of the variables that are mentioned in all the sources.

At the individual level, the incidents and situations are analysed from different sources to ensure that the independent variables are addressed with similar understanding of the dependent variables.

At the organizational level, the artefacts, instances, situations, and strategies are analysed to ensure that the dependent variables are explained and addressed with the same definitions as Schein’s model.

Based on the findings of the two, we correlate the dependent and the independent variables with the help of literature support.

Yoo et al. (2011) have measured the five dimensions of Hofstede’s model on the individual level, with a 26-item five-dimensional scale of individual cultural values based on power distance and LTO. The study has proved and validated that it could be applied at the individual level as well. Hence the following propositions, to attain a relationship between the constructs and validate it through the case study methodology and conceptual theory building.

Narayan Murthy

Narayan Murthy, along with three other founders, established Infosys in 1981. It is an NYSE-listed global consulting and IT services company with more than two lac employees. From a capital of $250, it has grown to become a $11.54 billion company with a market capitalization of approximately $41.6 billion. In its journey of 35 years, it has used India’s emergence in IT as the global destination for software services talent. The company pioneered the global delivery model and became the first IT company from India to be listed on Nasdaq. It was the first company in India to start employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).

He believed in four business principles (Nanda & DeLong, 2001):

Predictability of revenues

Sustainability of those revenues

Profitability of those revenues and

De-risking model for those revenues

As Ashish Nanda and Thomas J. DeLong (2002) opine, the company culture shows that people are highly committed to the job and to the organization. The organization is built on the value of ‘company of professionals for the professionals and by the professionals’. Infosys has a value system of building trust among the stakeholder (Deshpande & Muthuram, 2014).

P1. The Infosys leader Narayan Murthy believed in participative management and built the organization on mutual trust and mutual benefits where he put professionalism above all (Nanda & DeLong, 2001). Infosys’ vision is to build the company professionally managed and professionally owned and with good corporate governance and good employee management. They promised a fair deal to the stakeholders, including the employees. Narayan Murthy believes in empowerment. He also believes that the synchronization of organizational objectives with individual aspirations is important to the growth and development of the organization. In addition, employees would be given responsibility matching their abilities and aspirations; performance is reviewed and rewards are given on a regular basis. Infosys had a holistic compensation plan which includes financial, emotional and learning part. Hence, we conclude through the Infosys’ cultural attributes that Narayan Murthy had low power distance, where he believed in employee participation for building the organization. His beliefs that lead to low power distance are maybe due to multiple reasons such as his personality, the influence of the middle-class family (Deshpande & Muthuram, 2014) the environment he grew in and his exposure to other cultures. His leadership style seems to be a result of either his different professional career roles or the social norms in the region, which may be called the regional culture (Karnataka, India), or both. According to Hofstede, the regional culture is a subculture, but, in Indian context, culture has many layers of subcultures. It seems inadequate to only call them subcultures. Literature has quoted Indian business leaders treat their employees like their children (De Gersem, 2019; Deresky, 2017). His management approach is similar to that of a father: the way a father manages his family, listens to the members and then takes his decisions. This shows paternalism in the approach of leading a business (De Gersem, 2016).

P2. The second proposition focuses on the artefacts of the organization which represents the visible organizational structure and processes. Infosys leader Narayan Murthy created a company that has a culture of creating wealth and sharing it with everyone (Nanda & DeLong, 2002). The company has created a strong core culture and value system of honesty, transparency and fairness which prioritize pursuit and respect over revenues. They believe in competing in terms of values and quality instead of price. This could be because the founders belonged to the middle-class upbringing and had strong affiliation in sharing their wealth with the employees. Nanda and DeLong (2002) mention that Narayan Murthy had practised and preached integrity in all situations even at the risk of losing the business. Narayan Murthy once said, ‘I am a capitalist in my mind a socialist in my heart’. According to Hofstede (2011), the Indian national culture is more socialistic than individualistic, as seen in the West and which reflects through these instances. So we see that there is an effect of national culture on individual belief systems.

P3. The third proposition proposes that the strategy adopted is influenced by the founder leaders’ value system which could be connected with the espoused values of the organization and hence its influence on the formation of the organizational culture. Infosys was the first company to offer ESOP to its employees which shows the strategy adopted based on their value system. Infosys was also the first company to show its employees as an asset in the annual reports, which reflects on value given to employees and them being considered an integral part of the organization. While we say that they are socialistic, when we get under the skin of ‘Indianness’ being influenced by the scriptures then we see the emphasis given to the concept of ‘world being one family’ or Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Although the concept may influence the paternalism (De Gersem, 2019) in the business leaders, the long-term strategy seems to be of inclusiveness and equal distribution of wealth.

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs has his roots in the West. He is one of the co-founders of Apple Inc. He founded the company along with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne on 1 April 1976. The 21-year-old Steve Jobs moved the production operations to the family garage.

Merchant (2011) describes Steve Jobs’ positive outlook towards life. He wanted to live life his way, did not worry about being weird and only wanted to be himself. Taylor (2009), in his article, writes that despite Apple being the best in cutting-edge quality of products, Steve Jobs’ leadership was strangely unappetizing, often downright retro and that humility was never a part of his it. In an essay, Isaacson (2012) describes the fourteen imperatives behind Jobs’ approach which include focus, simplification, taking end-to-end responsibility, leapfrog when behind, prioritizing products over profits, push for perfection, knowledge of both the big picture and the details, tolerate only ‘A’ players, engage face-to-face, and combine humanities with the sciences. The focus was instilled in his personality, and he would refuse to work until he is ready for the job. He was notably impatient and tough with people around him and had stormy and abusive behaviour towards the employees.

P1. With reference to Steve Jobs, it is found that his leadership style, observed through various articles and case studies, can be termed as an autocratic style: He was the person who wanted to control the team on his terms and did not like appreciating them or their efforts. This could be connected to power distance dimension of Hofstede model, as it can be concluded that he was an individual with higher power distance who wanted to take major decisions and not believe in participative decisions making within the team.

Lashinsky (2011) describes Apple’s culture in the following manner:

To Apple’s legion of admirers, the company is like a tech version of Wonka’s factory, an enigmatic but enchanted place that produces wonderful items they can’t get enough of. That characterization is true, but Apple also is a brutal and unforgiving place, where accountability is strictly enforced, decisions are swift, and communication is articulated clearly from the top.… Apple’s ruthless corporate culture is just one piece of a mystery that virtually every business executive in the world would love to understand: How does Apple do it?

…He’s a corporate dictator who makes every critical decision—and oodles of seemingly noncritical calls too, from the design of the shuttle buses that ferry employees to and from San Francisco to what food will be served in the cafeteria.

Asker (2012), in his article from Harvard Publishing, has described that the management style exhibited by Steve Jobs (Isaacson, 2012; Lashinsky, 2011) was disturbingly harsh. It is also being said that his treatment of employees and partners has been brutal and even cruel; he criticized the ideas and accomplishments of employees. The major issue was he excluding people from ‘secret’ projects and taking all the credit.

P2. In the case of Steve Jobs, the style of handling the processes was visibly strong and focused, and employees knew what they were expected out of the project. Researchers wonder how the best company in the world, which produced one of the top quality products in respect to design and technology, could have such a brutal organizational culture, where the founder leader would criticize the ideas and accomplishments of employees. This could be associated with the working culture and processes of Apple Inc.

Davenport (2011) has described him as a leader who believed in his guts, as someone who would decide that his ideas are better. He would not attempt to ask his team members any opinion, neither he ever believed in team participation. According to the data offered by Overfield and Kaiser (2012), Steve was considered a statistical outlier and a model of leadership not worth imitating.

P3. The third proposition articulates that the strategy adopted was influenced by the founder leader’s value system which could have its roots associated with the espoused values of the organization, and hence its influence on organizational culture formation. Apple’s strategy was to have complete focus on what Steve Jobs had envisioned and he would never give up on his ideas.

Findings

Through the three propositions in both the cases on the basis of conceptual model developed by connecting the factors of Hofstede model of individual leadership style and behaviour towards the employees and team with Schein’s model of formation of organizational culture by founder leaders, it is found that factors of power distance and LTO of the individual have an influence in the formation of organizational culture. For Instance, Steve Jobs’ nature of leadership showed that he had high power distance which reflects in Apple’s organizational culture; in contrast, Narayan Murthy had low power distance and hence Infosys is an employee-oriented organization unlike Apple which is product oriented. This essentially means that Infosys listens to people more actively than Apple, Apple gives the brightest minds the opportunity to exhibit their talent only when they are aligned with the goals of the organization. When we look at the definition of power distance which is ‘the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (such as the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally’ (Hofstede, 2011), we see that this is a perception created by the leaders in their organizations through organizational structures, policies and practices. But it may also be personality trait not necessarily a product of the founder leader’s culture. The dependence of personality traits on culture needs to be explored further here.

In terms of LTO, both leaders have high in values because they believed in the gut feeling while making decisions and had a vision that their product/project will be successful. They envisioned that they will be successful and will have global presence in the market irrespective of few instances of disapproval by the partners or the team. In these terms, there is no difference between the east and west leaders in the cases studied. Every leader will have an LTO irrespective of the place of origin. Hence, we are of the opinion that for studying founder leaders and making comparisons, this parameter may not be a suitable one.

Comparison between East and West

In the broader perspective, we have to make a comparison based on the Hofstede’s national culture graphs for both, the West and the East. While analysing the power distance criteria, we realize that the two leaders have acted opposite to the graph where United States of America is supposed to be low in power distance (the average of responses as per Hofstede’s model being 40) and India which is high in power distance (the average of responses being 77). Different sources support the argument that Steve Jobs had high power distance value, and, in contrast, Narayan Murthy has low power distance, differentiating him from the country’s overall average value of power distance. Similarly, comparing the LTO value, United States of America has a score of 24 and India has a score of 51, which means that Indians think more on a long term than the Americans. Steve Jobs believed in long-term planning and in ‘Karma’ (primarily an Indian belief system), whereas in his life, we have had instances describing him to be a follower of ISKON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), which is contrary to the culture and value of his country. In contrast, Narayan Murthy’s value system and LTO is in line with its corresponding value of India.

The study brings out a very interesting paradigm in terms of culture—belief systems into which they (Narayan Murthy and Steve Jobs) were trained and the culture which they adopted out of their own volition. Steve Jobs seemed to be influenced by the Indian culture while Narayan Murthy was born in it, and maybe these values drive them towards being similar. Steve Jobs had fewer similarities with his country’s culture in terms of power distance. In order to comment more precisely, we may need stronger measures and better models. Hofstede’s model or CVS (Yoo et al., 2011) may not be adequate to understand the founder leaders’ cultural orientation precisely. Hofstede’s model takes central tendencies to understand the cultures and subcultures, but the question is: Can it be used to understand the influence of individual founder on his organization and therefore his organizational cultures?

Although there are studies conducted at the individual level, we see that the instances and the arguments do not align with Hofstede’s model. McSweeney (2002) comments on the generalization of the model since it considers the average tendency based on responses to a survey from employees in a single organization. Hofstede’s model also does not show the relationship between various layers of the culture (Taras, Rowney, & Steel, 2009), and it remains uncertain on whether cultural measures are generalizable across levels of constructs. In line with Taras et al. (2009), this study shows that Hofstede’s model is not sufficient to understand the influence of founder leaders on their organizational cultures.

Limitations and Future Research

The article has looked into only two cultural dimensions of Hofstede’s model. Future studies can explore the other dimensions of the model. We note that instances, which exhibit basic value systems, are hard to find and analyse. A thorough review of all the possible evidence or a direct observation method can be used to find them. The article considered multiple case studies and articles pertaining to each founder for triangulation. This can be extended to multiple founders and can be generalized too. Future research can also explore the applicability of this model for analysing the effect of founder leader’s culture in the creation of subculture within an organization’s culture. The case study also did not consider the business type as a variable since the unit of analysis was founder leader. Future research can consider founder leaders from similar businesses as well.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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