The exceptional demands placed upon military organizations throughout the world today render comparative analysis of military culture and values important, particularly as defense policies become increasingly integrative and cooperative to combat global terrorism. Using an instrument designed to prioritize value orientations, this study examines value priorities of prospective officers at Japanese and American military academies. Findings suggest that Japanese students are more individualistic and self-directed and American students more benevolent and traditional than popular conceptions suggest. The study discusses the findings within the social and cultural contexts of the service academies and societies at large. The article also discusses the implications for military relations with their civil society and with each other.
John W. Brinsfield, “Army Values and Ethics: A Search for Consistency and Relevance,”Parameters: U.S. Army War College Quarterly28, 3 (Autumn 1998): 69-84.
2.
John P. Hammill, David R. Segal, and Mady Wechsler Segal, “Self-Selection and Parental Socioeconomic Status as Determinants of the Values of West Point Cadets,”Armed Forces & Society22, 1 (Fall 1995): 103-115; Robert Priest and Johnston Beach, “Value Changes in Four Cohorts at the U.S. Military Academy,” Armed Forces & Society 25, 1 (Fall 1998): 81-102; Joseph L. Soeters, “Value Orientations in Military Academies: A Thirteen Country Study,” Armed Forces & Society 24, 1 (Fall 1997): 7–32; J. Soeters and R. Recht, “Culture and Discipline in Military Academies: An International Comparison,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 26, 2 (Winter 1998): 169-189; Gwendolyn Stevens and Fred M. Rosa Jr., “Military Academies as Instruments of Value Change,” Armed Forces & Society 20, 3 (Spring 1994): 473-485; Volker Franke, “Duty, Honor, Country: The Social Identity of West Point Cadets,” Armed Forces & Society 26, 2 (Winter 2000): 175-202; and Volker Franke and Lindy Heinecken, “Adjusting to Peace: Military Values in a Cross National Comparison,” Armed Forces & Society 27, 4 (Summer 2001): 567-595.
3.
Geert H. Hofstede, Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980); Geert H. Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (London: McGraw-Hill, 1991); and Harry C. Triandis, Individualism and Collectivism (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995).
4.
Hofstede, Culture's Consequences.
5.
Shalom H. Schwartz, “Beyond Individualism and Collectivism: New Cultural Dimensions of Values,” in U. Kim, H. C. Triandis, C. Kagitcibasi, S. C. Choi, and G. Yoon, eds., Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Method and Applications (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1994), pp. 85-119; and Shalom H. Schwartz and M. Ros, “Values in the West: A Theoretical and Empirical Challenge to the Individualism-Collectivism Cultural Dimension,” World Psychology 1, 2 (1995): 99-122.
6.
Shalom H. Schwartz, “Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theory and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries,” in Mark P. Zenna, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 25 (New York: Academic Press, 1992), pp. 1-65.
7.
Shalom H. Schwartz, “Are There Universal Aspects in the Content and Structure of Values?”Journal of Social Issues50, 4 (1994): 19-45.
8.
Schwartz, “Universals in the Content and Structure of Values,” pp. 19-45; and Schwartz, “Are There Universal Aspects,” pp. 1-65.
9.
Schwartz, “Are There Universal Aspects,” pp. 1-65.
10.
P. R. Abramson and R. Inglehart, Value Change in Global Perspective (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1995); Shalom H. Schwartz and Anat Bardi, “Influences of Adaptation to Communist Rule on Value Priorities in Eastern Europe,” Political Psychology 18 (1997): 385-410; and P. B. Smith and Shalom H. Schwartz, “Value,” in J. W. Berry, M. H. Segall, and C. Kagitcibasi, eds., Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 3 (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1997), pp. 77-118.
11.
H. C. Triandis, “The Psychological Measurement of Cultural Syndromes,”American Psychologist51 (1996): 407-415.
12.
Schwartz, “Universals in the Content and Structure of Values,” pp. 19-45; and Schwartz, “Are There Universal Aspects,” pp. 1-65.
13.
Ibid.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Shu Kishida, A Place for Apology: War, Guilt and U.S.-Japan Relations, trans. Yukiko Tanaka (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2004).
16.
D. Matsumoto, The New Japan: Debunking Seven Cultural Stereotypes (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 2002).
17.
Chie Nakane, Japanese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); and E. O. Reischauer, The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1988).
18.
Hazel Rose Markus and Shinobu Kitayama, “Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation,”Psychological Review98, 2 (1991): 224-253.
19.
Robert Coles, The Moral Intelligence of Children (New York: Random House, 1997).
20.
Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament Patterns of Childrearing, Religious Experience and the Self in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
21.
Shalom H. Schwartz and Anat Bardi, “Value Hierarchies across Cultures: Taking a Similarities Perspective,”Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology32, 3 (May 2001): 268-290.
22.
Susan E. Cross, Pamela L. Bacon, and Michael L. Morris, “The Relational-Interdependent Self-Construal and Relationships,”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology78, 4 (April 2000): 791-808; and Daphana Oyserman, Izumi Sakamoto, and Armand Lauffer, “Cultural Accommodation: Hybridity and the Framing of Social Obligation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, 6 (June 1998): 1608-1618.
23.
Schwartz, “Universals in the Content and Structure of Values,” pp. 1-65; and Schwartz, “Are There Universal Aspects,” pp. 19-45.
24.
Ibid.
25.
R. N. Bellah, R. Madsen, W. M. Sullivan, A. Swidler, and S. M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and A. Etzioni, The Spirit of the Community: The Reinvention of American Society (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
26.
C. Gallois, H. Giles, H. Ota, H. D. Pierson, S. H. Ng, T. S. Lim, J. Mahler, L. Somera, E. B. Ryan, and J. Harwood, “Intergenerational Communication across the Pacific Rim: The Impact of Filial Piety,” in J. C. Larsy, J. Adair, and K. Dion, eds., Latest Contributions to Cross Cultural Psychology (Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1999), pp. 192-211; and Hiroshi Ota, Howard Giles, and Cindy Gallois, “Perceptions of Younger, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults in Australia and Japan: Stereotypes and Age Group Vitality,” Journal of International Studies 23, 3 (2002): 253-266.
27.
Shalom H. Schwartz and M. Ros, “Values in the West: A Theoretical and Empirical Challenge to the Individualism-Collectivism Cultural Dimension,”World Psychology1, 2 (1995): 99-122.
28.
Schwartz and Bardi, “Value Hierarchies across Cultures,” pp. 268-290.
29.
Hammill, Segal, and Segal, “Self-Selection and Parental Socioeconomic Status,” pp. 103-115.
30.
Priest and Beach, “Value Changes in Four Cohorts,” pp. 81-102; and Stevens, Rossa, and Gardner, “Military Academies as Instruments of Value Change,” pp. 473-485.
