Just briefly, for an educational organisation, the power distance can be measured operationally by how easy/ difficult it is to talk to the head; how often it is that suggestions from staff are heard and considered by the head; and maybe how many routes of access that staff and students have to make their suggestions heard and considered.  

Outcome Indicators of Power Distance in Organizations are

Hala Abdulqader Sabri (2010), Do Power Distance and Uncertainty-avoidance

Determine Organizational Structure?: A Culture Bound versus Culture Free Debate, The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture, & Change Management, Volume X, Number X, 2010

Dear Debi,

I take this whole notion of the low power-distance to be only a reflection of the phenomenon of  the so-called "Spring"--as opposed to Fall!

Agree with Kamal!

Preference for a 'flat-structure' of organisation....!!!

When employee empowerment is practiced through diverse means such as participating them in decision making related to their field of work, appear to have more committed and satisfied employees with positive perception toward justice in the organizational interactions and readiness to accept job responsibilities ... Defiantly are good indicators for measuring the incidence of power distance in an organization.

Education level is a key factor. PDI is low in an organization if staffs have an academic degree. 

Hofstede’s Power distance Index refers to the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept that the power is distributed unequally.

This represents inequality (either less or more), but defined from down upwards.

One could define power in the organisation over-simplistically as the level of the person in the hierarchy. Thus people in the same level nominally have the same power.

Power might be better operationalised as the number of subordinates plus their subordinates; that is, the number of employees directly and indirectly managed.

However, I believe that it would be much better to weight the higher level employees more. I would do this pragmatically by switching to total salaries supervised, directly and indirectly. I would then define power distance between two people as being the numerical difference between their powers.

People on the same staff level will typically display similar, but not identical powers.

The nominal power distance is also influenced by secondary factors such as caste, working class, gender, age, old-boys' club, organisational culture, etc.

Dear all, Thanks for the  excellent responses, which will be of great help in finalizing a comprehensive list of indicators in this regard. Dear Kamal, your list is very apt and precise. Dear Miranda's list is most appropriate in the context of educational institutions. So we have a general as well a specific list from these two leading answers.

Meaning of power distance as used by G. Hofstede comes from dear Mahfuz's thread.  Yes, it does measure the presence of inequality in an organization. Dear Jeanan's thread leads us to know that low power distance through employee involvement will facilitate  employee commitment.  Dear Marwan rightly reminds us in a similar vein that low power distance helps in bringing out spring or happiness in the organization.

Some useful indicators such as openness and  infrastructure can be found in dear Barbara's thread. But I am not sure if satisfaction with cooperation can truly be an indicator in all situations; for it could be promoted through satisfaction through paternalistic behaviour,  which in that case should be seen as an indicator of high rather than low power distance (PD). Dear Ian talks of primary and secondary factors of PD which  is an interesting aspect. Somehow,  I could not understand dear Krishnan's thread. May be, he makes it clearer.

Power Distance Index the higher, the higher the authoritarian society (the gap between the wealthy and the poor). The map of the world. Germany has a 35 on the cultural scale of Hofstede's analysis, Austria- 11, the USA- 40 .http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/power-distance-index/

And our countries- with Arabic language,Russia, India, China. Those with low scores include Japan, Australia, Canada. http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/map/hofstede-power-distance-index.html

1.Fear of the head

2.The head is a petty tyrant

3.The preference of the head - consultant

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/intercultural/power-distance-index.html

HOFSTEDE’S 5 DIMENSIONS POWER DISTANCE (The degree to which power differentials within society and organizations are accepted.) - is fine paper describing deeply Hofstede's approach to this issue! Fine statistics was done!

A critical discussion of Hofstede’s concept of Power Distance by Annelise Ly   critically describes and discuss the concept of power distance developed by Hofstede!

My dear @Debi, the third link is THE HOFSTEDE CENTRE! Many available resources here and also on his personal link, the fourth attached!

http://home.sandiego.edu/~dimon/CulturalFrameworks.pdf

http://www.academia.edu/3438154/A_critical_discussion_of_Hofstedes_concept_of_Power_Distance

http://geert-hofstede.com/

http://geerthofstede.nl/geert.aspx

The greatest challenge facing all business corporations is to acknowledge the cultural differences in every host country and to manage the business cohesively in order to achieve corporate objectives and enhance performance. Current literature indicates that culture is an important determinant of organizational performance in host countries. This is because for success of business operations, managers have to understand the prevailing culture (power distance) in each of the host countries they operate in. In any organization, power distance influences the amount of formal hierarchy, the degree of centralization, the amount of participation in decision-making and the performance level. According to Hofstede (1984), culture varies from one country to another resulting in management performance variations hence, the need to understand its effect on host countries and thus, include it in the empowerment - performance equation.

Power distance is the extent to which a society accepts an unequal distribution of power in institutions or organizations within a hierarchy; it means the degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.

There are two types of power distance:

1-High-power distance culture means that large inequalities of power and wealth exist and are tolerated by the culture of the people. Such cultures are more likely to follow a class or caste system that discourages upward mobility of its citizens. High-power distance culture are highly dependent on their superiors for direction and further suggested that employees manage their work according to what the managers stipulate (respect for hierarchy). In this case, the employees are more co-operative dealing with the superiors and are, frightened of disagreeing with them, but are reluctant to cooperate with their peers. Therefore, employees of multinational corporations operating under high power distance country culture may not feel comfortable making decisions that had previously been made by their superiors. That is, they may be slower to take on greater problem- solving and decision-making responsibility. The workers in such a culture will expect their supervisors to control information, provide clear boundaries, make decisions and tell them what to do.

In a high power distance culture, employee empowerment is low, and the organizational performance is likely to be low. To this extent, employees in a high power distance culture show a high level of dependence on their superiors for direction within the organization, and a multinational corporation is likely to experience low performance.

High-power distance culture societies are characterized by:

•Centralized authority;

•Autocratic leadership;

•Paternalistic management style;

•Many hierarchical levels;

•Large number of supervisory staff;

•Acceptance that power has its privileges;

•An expectation of inequality and power differences.

2-Low- power distance culture indicates that the culture of the people discourages differences between power and wealth. These societies stress equality and opportunity. A multinational firm operating in a low-power distance country culture is likely to rely on high employee empowerment. This is because the job factors may be favorable leading to high organizational performance since the employees are willing to use their discretion in decision-making to achieve higher goals.

But, in some instances, high employee empowerment may not lead to high organizational performance, especially if the right employee skills and equipment are not put in place.

Low-power distance societies are characterized by:

•Decentralized authority and decision making responsibility;

•Consultative or participative management style;

•Flat organizational structures;

•Small proportion of supervisory staff;

•Lack of acceptance and questioning of authority;

•Rights consciousness;

•Tendency toward egalitarianism.

There has been no study conducted to establish the influence of power distance on the relationship between employee empowerment and performance throughout the world and more so, for the less developed countries.

A good thread that touches an important issue of contemporary society and the ever increasing  separation between peoples of power (political, social, managerial, financial, etc ) and others. Lowering weights of power of the top and making them accessible and distributing their power to lower units and departments are healthy acts and just ways of running institutions, companies  and societies in general.

These power distribution includes financial - instead of paying millions of dollars for one CEO or few individuals of a company or institution and paying all employees with meager amount, is an indicator of  how people of power can be completely illogical, unreasonable and go off the right and just system to empower and enrich self unjustly with impunity and want to live unnecessary luxury at the expense of their subjects.   

The thread of dear Jorge, as usual, is an excellent exposition of the the indicators of  power distance (PD). It includes both indicators of high and low PD. Dear Ljubomir, thanks for your excellent attachments which help clarify some issues collateral to the issues under discussion; they would be of good help. Dear Irina in her three threads has cited some good examples of high PD. Dear Dejenie's thread can be seen as posing an important question i.e. whether pay differentials can be an indicator of PD. 

In general, we can see two types of power distance: high-power distance culture which refers to the large differences of power and wealth exist by the culture, and low- power distance culture which refers to the culture of the people discourages differences between power and wealth. These organizations concentrate on equal opportunities and depend on high employee empowerment.

Dear Debi. Many thanks for your opinion about my comment. It is always a pleasure to participate in this kind of debate.

Very well said by all previous opinions, the added values of Kamal, Miranda and Mahfouz are perfect.

A super question Debi. I was tasked to re-engineer a firm I was VP of (Visa) and for that I needed to measure exactly this PD and to reset it so the firm could function better. I have to admit that it is impossible to measure unless there is an open door policy (a true open door policy) as Kazmal suggested way above.

Visa was not an open door policy and so I found it impossible to find the PD because everyone was holding secrets of survival within the firm.

I had a similar problem before Visa where I was to measure PD just in one segment, which was in the procurement part of Intel. At Intel, even though most of the organization was open door at the time in terms of communication, I bumped into huge resistance with mini kingdoms within. In fact one was so nasty and bad that I decided to publicize it (without name) to bring shame to that division by mass emailing my findings to all in the organization noting that "with the exception of one division that obviously has something to hide..." and that division turned around at that point.

But as you can see, even within presumed open door policy, the PD is not always possible to analyse since, by definition, in an open door policy organization the PD is 0 in terms of communication but in reality it is not 0. 

Now power distance in terms of decision-making is an entirely different concept and the two cannot be studied under the same roof. So my response assumed communication only since human resources was a previous discussion so I made the assumption we are talking about communication PD only. 

Dear all, It is fascinating to read Angela's thread. She has posed some very realistic complexities in studying PD in actual settings. I know, when people hide the information unto themselves, and play tacit games, even a researcher/analyst  may not be able to come out with the appropriate causality of the malaise that such an organization suffers from. Thanks my dear Angela for opening my eyes by sharing your experiences. Your thread must caution every researcher and consultant who wishes to understand the nuances of an organizational governance structure. .  

Besides, the indicators of PD, we do need to address the risks to the psychological health of the organization if high PD is allowed to be internalized in the organization by the top management. Dear Shanmugasundaram in effect reminds us that the leadership in academic organizations must ensure that  the reasonable aspirations of the academic and research community must be met if we pursue academic excellence. 

@Debi, my answer is from a person who has no expertise in the field. However, I just want to post a comment: is it relevant only the power distance in an organization or also the transparency of power management? This last point is a real problem worldwide, I see. Expecially in this period of echonomic crisis. Sorry for my lack of competence, mine is he comment of the "man in the street" who no longer has confidence in the institutional bodies

Indeed, your comment on the institutional crisis in today's era in general is so genuine, my dear Lerardi. And, all right-thinking persons must feel concerned about the lack of transparency in institutional governance.. You know, despite the dismal picture, the show has to go on, and we live our life including by being an active  member of the RG. Surely, when we worry about transparency, we are trying to understand power distance. You will agree that the job of an academic is basically only to unravel the realities and knit them in a web of operational truths. It is for the concerned legislator/s to take note of these  writings on the wall  and act on them if they have the conviction and the political will. 

In organizational system, the power distance is based on the principle that power flows the path of least resistance, which implies that transparency, communication, employee engagement and ethical decision making are required to be essential characteristics. At the same time short-circuit in organizational power system will cause disruptions, implying that formal communication channels are required to be strengthened and informal communication channels are required to be avoided. Employer's branding is established through ethical management system, vibrant organization culture, organizational power sharing and organizational talent management.

The boss must attract subordinates' trust by the show of competence, integrity and charismatic leadership, when this happens, subordinate will be free in communicating with superiors and that will reduce power distance. A research on the topic: the mediating influence of managerial competency on the association of trust and power distance is current in press-by me and a colleague.

Dear  Jaharkanti Dattagupta and Justin Gabriel ·...

I am learning from your comments and all previous answers. Thanks

I agree many of the views expressed; the most important points seem to me:

- a clear hierarchical organization, understood by all members

- the transparancy of strategic decisions

- ethical principles shared by all members and everywhere

- knowledge of the organization by its members

- meetings and training sessions bringing together members of the organization

- methods, rules, and communication tools are shared

- authority cannot be shared but can be delegated (rules to be defined)

Thank you very much for the informative links proposed.

I think that distributed leadership is likely to be the best way forward in creating successful organisations. 

Perhaps how decisions are made would give a fair indication. Teams or groups can discuss about the decision and who makes the decision? Three scenarios emerge:  senior manager or leader making the decision, group discusses and come to a conclusion and then leave it to the manager to make a decision, and third, decision is a consensus decision.

Another indicator could be delegation of authority, responsibility, and accountability. 

These two factors, to some extent, let you know the power distance situation and to what extent teams are self-managed.

Hofstedee create a measurement for all organizational culture dimension including power distance.

Regards

How much do I think before saying anything in front of my Manager or Manager of Manager or how comfortable do I feel when interacting with those in power

The boss must be humble, cooperative, highly ethical, within reach, popular among the employees, and has reached the post on the basis of merits only. By enlarging those under his/her command, s/he will become larger.

Power distance is described using two indicators showing the attitude to politicians, two indicators related to institutional trust, and three indicators describing  work-related power distance. All seven indicators loaded into one factor.

Attitude to politicians

• Politicians care what people think
• Politicians interested in votes rather than in people's opinions

Institutional trust

• Trust in country’s parliament
• Satisfied with the way democracy works in country

Work-related

• Allowed to influence decisions about work directions
• Allowed to decide how respondent’s daily work is organized
• Allowed change your work tasks

Anneli Kaasa et all (2008) HOW DOES CULTURE CONTRIBUTE TO INNOVATION? EVIDENCE FROM EUROPEAN COUNTRIES, University of Tartu, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

On top of anything else, the boss' style of working helps us know the power distance in an organization, as has been observed in the threads dear of Nizar and Shweta. In the same vein is the thread of dear Keiran who believes that if an organization has distributed leadership , it is likely to have acceptable degree of PD. Similarly, dear Justin talks of what is called "transformational leadership" for lowering the power distance in an organization.

Dear J Parriot , many thanks for your very comprehensive list of features that help one to measure the PD in an organization. Indeed, employees in general wish to have a dignified presence in the organization, and want to work at a workplace that is  transparent, caring, and is led by competent and honest leadership.

Many thanks Debi.

Greet Hofstede developed an index called, Power Distance Index (PDI), giving numerical values to five cultural dimensions: power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation (long-term vs. short-term values). Comparatively, the U.S. has a low PDI (40) compared to Mexico (80), France has a high PDI (68) vs. the UK (35).

There are high and low power distances, which can be summarized as follows:

• High power distance countries: People in these countries do agree with the decisions of their leaders. Leader-subordinate relationships are not close and leaders are expected to earn more money and respect.

• Low power distance countries: Subordinates in these countries are considered nearly equal. Supervisors trust subordinates with important jobs and eader-subordinate relationships are more close.

The art of delegation is most important. It is vital to get it right. If you delegate too much, mistakes will be made. If you don't delegate enough, people will feel disempowered. 

Yes, I agree that  the incidence of delegation is an important indicator of PD in an organization as dear Kieran has identified; but standing by itself may not be enough to know whether PD is low or high. Often, even highly authoritarian managers also delegate work as they can not take all decisions by themselves. Therefore. perhaps, we need to look for other indicators in addition to the incidence of delegation.

Hello Debi,

Project GLOBE developed and validated scales based on a standardized questionnaire. I have attached both the questionnaire and the syntax fyi that I downloaded from the GLOBE website a few years back. Specifically, questions 5, 13 and 25 in Section 1 were used to operationalize Power Distance within an organization.

I hope you will find this information useful.

http://business.nmsu.edu/programs-centers/globe/

Thank you very much Jürgen for the links to connect; particularly for the GLOBE project who introduce a globale and interdisciplinary comprehension of the situation and research of innovative solutions.

Level of interaction, level of sharing in the decision making processes, level of transparency, level of delegation and  decentralization of authority, and frequency of  meetings with different levels of employees, level of the managers competence etc. are  the measures that explain the level of the power-distance mode of any organization. When the managers are autocrats and subordinates accept it and remain satisfied, is the extreme example of high power distance. India is a high power distant country.

When I think about this question, I ask myself how often do I see high powered board members on the wards - walking around and talking to people at the coal-face. If you dont see them or see them very rarely, then I suspect that is a sign that this is not a very healthy organisation.

The project GLOBE standard questionnaire that dear Jurgen has attached is a great source of help in understanding the indicators required. Thanks Jurgen. Your attachments are of great help in knowing the issues quite comprehensively. 

The indicators mentioned in dear Subhash's thread are very thoughtful, and are at the core of any exercise in measuring the state of power distribution in an organization. I think, without transparency, honesty and involvement of people, one can not think of dispersing power across ranks and hierarchies. Kieran, if Board members can walk around and ask the organizational members as to how they feel, there can not be a better indicator of power sharing than that. But I have not heard of any organization in my country--India, except to some extent the Tatas where this is practiced. Some people might consider it as Board's interference in the day to day working. I would think that,  if the CEO practices MBWA (management by walking around) that would be a good indicator of low power distance. 

I fully agree with the statement of  dear  Kieran Walsh: ( The art of delegation is most important.). I also fully agree with the excellent contribution of dear Prof. Subhash C. Kundu.When all the powers are in the hands of one person, s/he becomes a dictator remembering the wisdom (authority corrupts). This person will start to think of the organization as his/her kingdom or backyard garden. The dictatorial boss will rule the organization by a system of fear with many spies around to serve the "big" one. The regime, under this type, will only count achievements while, in reality, the organization is heading for a disaster. Haven't we seen large companies collapsing in recent years? Have been there brave scholars in (modern management) who did researches on the "real" managerial misconduct which led to the downfall of  large businesses?   

in well led organisations, leaders know what to do and how to do it. Management is knowing how to to do things - leadership is is knowing what to do as well as how to do things properly. 

Dear All,

I have looked the URL on PDI world map http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/map/hofstede-power-distance-index.html Irina mentioned. I have found the Hungarian PDI as 46. I do not know how this index was calculated and how reliable is. I know only that however leaders in my country can be contacted, suggestions coming not from their level – generally - are not respected. Not even in little and direct questions. Today somebody informed me on the number of a subject I have to teach. Unfortunately, this quantity of classes is not sufficient to properly teach them. However, I am the official lecturer of this subject, I accredited this subject and I am the only person at this university who have got a habilitation (official acknowledgement to teach a subject at university level) degree for it, nobody asked me about it.

It is good that we can get a lot of useful information, maps and URLs. It is good to formulate desires.

However, my question is what can we achieve lamenting like that? How can we change a bad culture and structure?

Interestingly, PDI seems to be parallel (with a high standard deviation) the degree of democracy in various countries. Certainly, I repeat, I cannot evaluate the reliability of this map.

Dear Kieran,

I have never met a leader who did not think to know what to do and how to do it.

Dear Dr. Nizar Matar,

What you have written is an ideal picture of a boss. This imaginary human should be an angel.

„The boss must be humble, cooperative, highly ethical, within reach, popular among the employees, and has reached the post on the basis of merits only. By enlarging those under his/her command, s/he will become larger.”

Unfortunately, power even the littlest degree of power destroys the personality and very easily makes a petty despot even of a wo/man with good intentions.

Dear Mahfuz,

Dear All,

I am very sorry that most of bosses do not read this thread. I apologise who are present here.

There is a positive relationship between power distance and autocratic and democratic tendencies, among the research assistants and prospective teacher. 

http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1379766545_Terzi.pdf

Power distance refers to the degree of employee’s involvement in a firm’s strategic planning activities. A firm can have a high or low degree of employee involvement. 

A high degree of involvement (deep employee involvement in decision making) means that all categories of employees are involved in the planning process. Conversely, a low degree of involvement (shallow employee involvement in decision making) indicates a fairly exclusive planning process.

Speaking about the issue of power distance...., I do find the following resource  EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT IN DECISION MAKING AND FIRMS PERFORMANCE IN THE MANUFACTURING SECTOR IN NIGERIA  is the one that belongs here! And it is not the only one!

http://www.academia.edu/4387385/6_1_1-15

http://www.academia.edu/6351663/V_m_mngomezulus_proposal

Indonesia is a country with high power distance and low uncertainty avoidance, it is likely that organizational culture that fit with this condition is parochial type. Parochial culture is characterized by the tendecy to give much attention to some factor such as family relationship, social relation, and personal backgroud, and less attention to capability and competency needed to perform the task. 

Parochial culture is just like a family culture, where the superior-subordinates relation is imbalance. In this culture, hierarchy is not just division of responsibility and duty, but it symbolized power and authority. The main power is on the one hand, a powerful person such as the owner or the founder of the company, where “the destiny” of an employee depends on the hand of the most powerfull person (the boss). There is a division of work, the boss is the planner, the other are the doer. In the high power distance society, good leader or good manager in the eye of the employees, is someone who can act like a good father (Hofstede, 1997). This type of relationship will lead to less participative management in decision making.

http://www.ukessays.com/essays/management/the-impact-of-culture-on-human-resource-management-practices-management-essay.php

Here is the original paper, full version that was mentioned in previous response. The Impact of Culture on Human Resource Management Practices: An Empirical Research Finding in Indonesia! It is very good resource!

Dear Sir,

The power distance of a country can be measured by using Power Distance Index (PDI). A similar kind of parameter can be developed for organizations as well.

Sanjib Biswas

can you explain how i can develop similar parameter for power distance for organizations?

There's great recent work on hierarchical flexing in startup teams (Greer et al., in press). It shows that efficient teams can have fluid hierarchy: depending on the type of decision they have to make, they either follow a formal structure with hierarchy, or become egalitarian in their input. The former is typically used when there's a need to decide quickly, the latter when they do postmortem sessions. A cool subtle phenomenon and a potential operationalization for PDI maybe.

Power distance is the degree to which a society or an organization accepts that power is distributed unequally,

it is the hierarchy of power and authority.

Indicators are:

• The level of subordinates involvement in decision making.
• The level of the usage of authority of the leaders.
• Subordinate attitude toward a leader’s decision on the scope of work.
• The leader’s acceptance of suggestions and opinions from the subordinates