A community with a high power distance is one in which there is a high degree of deferential
respect between those who are told what to do and those who tell them. Typically these highly
differentiated relationships are maintained with a clearly hierarchical social system that makes it
easy for anyone to know in a give situation whether she is the teller or the one who can be told
what to do. Because the rules are clear, it can be said that one person holds power over the other.
A community with low power distance, on the other hand, encourages widely dispersed and even
overlapping methods for the group to tell individuals what to do. Many people share the power,
and roles can shift quickly with the circumstances.
Perhaps because the climate is harsh and people have to cooperate to survive, countries in the
Northern latitudes tend to have looser rules about who is in charge of making decisions.
Meanwhile, communities in more tropical environments, traditionally facing more challenges
from human than environmental sources, have created larger and more carefully organized
cultures that rely heavily on strict adherence to a chain of command (Hofstede, 1991 45).
Nevertheless, both kinds of cultures are trying to achieve the same purpose: social relationships
that guarantee the most effective and efficient decisions in the typical situations they encounter.