Tylor's Legacy In International Accounting Research

Abstract

When Hofstede published the book Culture’s Consequences - International Differences in Work-Related Values in 1980, he established indices of culture; culture was to be a measurable variable in international business studies. Hofstede's theoretical basis is traced to a comparative approach established by George Murdock. The lack of use of Hofstede’s dimensions in mainstream social sciences is described. This is sourced to the nineteenth-century scholarship of Edward Tylor, and the debate concerning "Galton's problem". Murdock took the occasion of the 1971 Huxley Memorial Lecture “Anthropology’s Mythology” to renounce his own adherence to this method, and to plead for a new association between anthropology and psychology. Such a shift was paralleled by Hofstede in 1991. It is suggested that there are other methods which may better advance international comparative accounting research.