HOFSTEDE
Geert Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences (1980, 2001) explores the differences ‘in thinking and social action’ at the country level between members of 50 nations and three regions. Hofstede originally used IBM employees’ answers to a company attitude survey conducted twice, around 1968 and 1972. The survey generated more than 116,000 questionnaires, with the number of respondents used in the analysis being approximately 30,000 in 1969 and 41,000 in 1973.
Hofstede identified and validated four cultural dimensions from respondents’ patterned answers. For each dimension, he presented possible origins as well as predictors and consequences for management behavior.
Hofstede’s cultural Geert Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences (1980, 2001) explores the differences ‘in thinking and social action’ at the country level between members of 50 nations and three regions. Hofstede originally used IBM employees’ answers to a company attitude survey conducted twice, around 1968 and 1972. The survey generated more than 116,000 questionnaires, with the number of respondents used in the analysis being approximately 30,000 in 1969 and 41,000 in 1973.
Hofstede identified and validated four cultural dimensions from respondents’ patterned answers. For each dimension, he presented possible origins as well as predictors and consequences for management behavior.
Contribution to cross-cultural management
Undoubtedly Hofstede’s contribution to management is the fact that he could identify cultural dimensions with hard data, make comparisons across countries and show culture’s consequences in managerial behaviors. Previously, culture was seen as vague and intangible, a soft dimension that couldn’t be quantified nor measured. Hofstede influenced the way culture is perceived in
management: composed of recognizable dimensions, centered on values and relatively stable over time.
Hofstede shows that national cultures contain at least five universal dimensions. These dimensions are said to be universal because they appear to be fundamental problems with which all societies have to cope. Power Distance deals with human inequality, Uncertainty Avoidance with the level of stress caused by an unknown future, Individualism versus Collectivism deals with individuals’ relationships with primary groups, Masculinity versus Femininity relates to emotional role differentiation, and finally, Long-Term versus Short- Term Orientation deals with people’s choice of focus for their actions. Cultural dimensions rest on value systems that are said to affect ‘human thinking’. Culture is consequently presented as consisting of values, organized
into systems (dimensions). Hofstede’s definition of culture presents ‘traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values’ as ‘the essential core of culture’ (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952: 181). Individuals raised in a society have acquired components of the national culture and its implicit values to which they are exposed from early childhood. Culture is learned partly unconsciously; cultural values are deep-rooted. This is what
ofstede calls the ‘mental programming’ that influences people’s thinking action. He argues that this mental programming is at the source of differences in management practices across countries. Hofstede presents possible sources for each of the dimensions and expresses his belief that ‘there must be mechanisms in societies that permit the maintenance of stability in culture patterns across many generations’. He suggests the following mechanisms. First, value systems have been influenced by physical and social factors (e.g. climate, demography). These value systems are then expressed as societal norms that help develop and maintain institutions
(e.g. family, social groups, religion). ‘The institutions, once established, reinforce the societal norms and the conditions that led to their establishment. In a relatively closed society, such a system will hardly change at all.’