Another important framework that has made useful contributions to conceptualizing
culture is a value survey developed by Shalom Schwartz. Schwartz studied the
value orientations from several cultures using multiple perspectives (Schwartz
1992, 1994). According to Hanges and Dickson (2004), Schwartz’s work has two
major strengths: (1) It is theory-driven and based on understanding the philosophical,
religious, and empirical literatures from different cultures and societies (Smith
and Schwartz 1997); and (2) it carefully considers prior works on culture and builds
on them—for example, works by Kluckhohn (1951) and Rockeach(1973).
Schwartz identified seven cultural value dimensions for examining differences
across societies: Embeddedness, Affective Autonomy, Intellectual Autonomy,
Hierarchy, Egalitarianism, Mastery, and Harmony (Schwartz 1994; Schwartz and
Melech 2000). See Table 2.1.