National cultures and new forms of work organisation in EU countries: convergence or divergence?

In Europe, anthropocentric organization models had their maximum expression in the Swedish model, which came to be known as “uddevalism” or “volvoism”. There are several factors that were presented as conditioners of this success (cf. Durand, 1994). Some critical factors to the success of that organization models were pointed out for the special case of LIMS (Less Industrialized Member States), such as Portugal. However, in both cases, it wasn’t paid much attention to the importance of cultural factor. The purpose of this paper is to assess the viability of the hypothesis that culture of countries is a determinant factor to the success of different organization models. This assessment will be based on the confrontation of Portuguese and Swedish cultural characteristics using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Some concluding remarks are made, namely that the cultural environment on which the Swedish model emerged is very different from the Portuguese one, which can help to explain the lack of success of anthropocentric models in Portugal.