Monumentalism – Flexhumity
Japan has a traditionally flexhumble culture. Individuals in Japan attribute success to external factors
and failure to internal factors. Recent trends suggest that Japan is remaining true to their flexhumility
traits. At least a few big firms, Sony and Nissan, have hired outside leaders as they face severe
competition from abroad (Holstein, 2002). These leaders have had to battle with corporate culture to
formulate their turnaround strategies. In the US, success is the result of ability or talent and failure the
result of bad luck, other’s errors, or lack of effort. This means that individuals from the U.S. tend to
overestimate their own uniqueness. Therefore, the U.S. should fall toward the monumentalism end of the
scale. As mentioned this dimension has no previous measurement, so once again we hypothesize as to
where the U.S. and Japan will fall on the scale in relation to one another. Given the above argument we
feel the U.S. values are more representative of monumentalism and the values of Japan are more
representative of flexhumity.