Differences between Sweden and Italy - Seminario sulle Differenze culturali tra Italia e Svezia (Universita' di Stoccolma)

Hello Claudia,

here is an abstract of a seminar which I assisted last year at the University of Stockholm. It has been taken from a paper written by an Italian who lives and work in Sweden, Marco Cenderelli (or, at least, at that time was working here), for a seminar held at the University about differences in job cultures between countries (I report just the overall conclusions and findings) . It is very interesting, and i am sure It could be helpful for you. It was also big fun listening to Mr. Cenderelli talking about the differences between Sweden and Italy, expecially for many hilarious anectodes he told us happened to him in these last years as an Italian in Sweden. If you want, i can provide you with the whole paper (it is about 200 pages...) and with his e-mail address, since you may want to contact him personally.



Provo a tradurre (scusa il mio italiano...) : questo e' un estratto (solo conclusioni e risulti) da un seminario tenuto da Marco Cenderelli qui a Stoccolma anno scorso, sulle differenze culturali tra Italia e Svezia. Se vuoi puoi dare il suo indirizzo e-mail e tutto il paper. Cenderelli ha lavorato come manager a Stoccolma molti anni. Ciao!



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The collected data allow us now to answer all the five research questions listed at the beginning of this seminar and to draw general conclusions about our findings. All these questions will be reported here below one by one, and a concise answer will be provided.
First question:

1) What is the extent of the cultural differences between Sweden and Italy?

The results of the most relevant surveys about the cultural distance between Italy and Sweden (mainly those from the two Dutch researchers, Geert Hofstede and Fons Trompenaars) reveal that these two countries have substantially different cultures. In particular, Hofstede’s findings show how the Italian and Swedish cultures could be considered as the most “distant” to each other, amongst the European countries, at least in relation to some specific parameters surveyed. It can be certainly concluded that also the results from the fieldwork carried out for this dissertation have both totally validated Hofstede’s methodology and completely confirmed Hofstede’s findings. Even though the findings of this field research have slightly “shortened” the cultural distance measured by Hofstede, the Swedish and the Italian cultures can still be considered the most “opposite”, at least within a broad empirical sample of countries, which include all European nations and the US.

2) How do these national cultural differences affect the way of doing business when companies from the two countries interact?

This research has also shown how the culture of a country has an immediate influence on its managerial culture, corporate culture and the way of doing business of its inhabitants. Consequently, in a business context too, Italy and Sweden have proved to be culturally very distant. It has been evidenced how these differences are mainly transferred in certain important aspects of their corporate cultures, both inside the organisations (corporation structure, hierarchical relationships between senior managers and subordinates, internal communication flow, planning systems) and in the relationships with the external world (international partnerships and trades and relationships with unions and stakeholders).

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As a result, all these cultural elements have to be taken into consideration whenever an Italian manager interacts with a Swedish counterpart or partner (and vice versa).

3) Are there substantial differences between the Northern and the Southern regions of Italy?

Here too, the answer is positive. By means of a comparison between two identical and statistically representative samples of managers, belonging respectively to the Southern and the Northern regions of Italy, it has been possible to prove remarkable intra-national cultural distinctions within Italy. This “cultural regionalism” (which is most remarkable in its two geographical extremes) is an aspect which must also be taken into consideration in international partnerships with Italy. This has also highlighted two other aspects of the Italian culture, both confirming the author’s preliminary assumptions. One is that the location of a company in a certain region of Italy may imply substantial differences in its organisational culture and approach to business, so that it may often be misleading to refer to a unique “Italian business culture”. The second aspect is that Southern Italian culture has proved to be even more distant to the Swedish one.

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General critics to the used methodologies:

I try now to “quantify” the cultural difference between two different countries, trying to hold the point of view of a completely external and neutral observer. It means that the purpose has been to avoid as much as possible any kind of personal interpretations, and to always refrain from adding personal considerations or discretional interpretations of the findings, which could have somehow distorted the results.

That because this work was intended to represent an opportunity for me to confute the findings of this research with the perception and the opinions about the cultural differences between Italy and Sweden he had elaborated during its six years permanence as Italian in Stockholm.

It can be stated that the findings reflects almost totally the impressions about the cultural distance between the two lands. Out of my personal experience in Sweden, the only one criticism which could be done about the methodologies of intercultural comparison utilized in this paper is concerning the effective comparability of the quantitative data obtainable from closed questions implying numerical scales, rating or ranking system answers (i.e.: Likert scale), when they are obtained by respondents from different cultures.
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