According to Hofstede’s framework for assessing cultures, power distance describes “the degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.”(Hofstede, 1976)
Mexico has always had a high power distance in their society. Even before the Spanish conquest the Mayan royalty had all the wealth available while the society depended on what their rulers said. After all these year’s people become frustrated about this inequality, but they have always accepted it.
There was a norm that politicians and business people were untouchable; this is why we currently have an extremely high level of corruption. In my opinion most of corrupt Mexican people, share the same values as you and I share. Its most likely they had learned them at home or school and that they used them for a long time. But the problem is when they are confronted by ethics, they don’t have a good ethics preparation. Therefore, they don’t find it difficult to go against their life-values when they have the opportunity to steal.
As days pass by, the anger of Mexican people is making them to start to move and work by means of collectivism instead of individualism. They are starting to raise their voice by making marches or work strikes in order to decrease power distance and to stop corruption.
For the moment all politicians are under scrutiny, and Mexican people are pressing the government and the institutions to put in jail the most corrupt politicians (which is actually working). In some cases, people are taking matter into their own hands, they have thrown tomatoes to corrupt politicians, they confront them in public, vandalized buildings, robbed stores and they have even assaulted them. In the following image we can see the protesters vandalizing a government building.
(Franco ,2017)
As a conclusion we can see how power distance is bad for a society. In societies with high level of power distance, people do not have the same opportunities nor equality. Therefore, people will be not satisfied with the way they live and at any moment they will get tired of living in that situation and they can make a revolution. As stated before, this problem originates because of the lack of ethics.
References:
- Franco, Mayra. “Vandalizan Manifestantes Palacio De Gobierno De Nuevo León.” Vanguardia. Vanguardia, 5 Jan. 2017. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.
- Hofstede, Geert. Measuring Hierarchical Power Distance in Thirty-seven Countries. Brussels: Europ. Inst. for Advanced Studies in Management, 1976. Print.
