Geert Hofstede

Measuring organizational cultures: A qualitative and quantitative study across twenty cases.

Geert Hofstede University of Limburg Bram Neuijen University of Groningen Denise Davat Ohayv Institute for Research on intercultural Cooperation Geert Sanders University of Groningen This paper presents the results of a study on organizational cultures in twenty units from ten different organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands. Data came from in-depth interviews of selected informants and a questionnaire survey of a stratified random sample of organizational members. Data on task, structure, and control characteristics of each unit were collected separately. Quantitative measures of the cultures of the twenty units, aggregated at the unit level, showed that a targe part of the differences among these twenty units could be explained by six factors, related to established concepts from organizational sociology, that measured the organizational cultures on six independent dimensions. The organizational culture differences found resided mainly at the levei of practices as perceived by members. Scores of the units on the six dimensions were partly explainable from organizational idiosyncrasies but were also significantly correlated with a variety of task, structural, and control-system characteristics of the units.

Motivation, leadership, and organization: Do American theories apply abroad?

well-known expenment used in organizational behavior courses involves showing the class an ambiguous picture-one that can be interpreted in two different ways. One such picture represents either an attractive young girl or an ugly old woman, depending on the way you look at it. Some of my colleagues and I use the experiment, which deinonstrates how different people in the same situation may perceive quite different things. We start by asking half of the class to close their eyes while we show the other half a slightly altered version of the picture-one in which only the young girl can be seen-for only five seconds. Then we ask those who just saw the young girl’s picture to close their eyes while we give the other half of the class a five-second look at a version in which only the old woman can be seen. After this preparation we show the ambiguous picture to everyone at the same time. The results are amazing-most of those “conditioned” by seeing the young girl first see only the young girl in the ambiguous

Hofstede's Culture Dimensions: An Independent Validation Using Rokeach's Value Survey

Ng et al. (1982) collected data among students in nine Asian and Pacific countries using a modified version of the Rokeach Value Survey. Their data were reanalyzed by the present authors through an ecological factor analysis that produced five factors. Six of the countries covered also appear in Hofstedes (1983) extended study of work-related values among employees of a multinational corporation in 53 countries and regions. For the overlapping countries a correlation analysis was done between the five factor scores of the Ng et al. reanalysis and the four dimension scores of Hofstede. This correlation analysis revealed that each of Hofstedes dimensions can be distinctly identified in the Ng et al. data as well. This article is presented as an example of synergy between different cross-cultural studies.

Cultural differences in teaching and learning

Abstract Teacher and student are an archetypal role pair in virtually any society. When teacher and student come from different cultures, such as in the context of economic development programmes, many perplexities can arise. These can be due to different social positions of teachers and students in the two societies, to differences in the relevance of the curriculum for the two societies, to differences in profiles of cognitive abilities between the populations of the two societies, or to differences in expected teacher/student and student/student interaction. This paper focuses in particular on these interaction differences. It relates them to the authors 4-D model of cultural differences among societies, based on research on work-related values in over 50 countries. Differences in expected teacher/student and student/student interaction are listed with reference to the four dimensions of Individualism versus Collectivism, large versus small Power Distance, strong versus weak Uncertainty Avoidance, and Masculinity versus Femininity. Some effects of language differences between teacher and student are also discussed. The burden of adaptation in cross-cultural learning situations should be primarily on the teachers .

Cultural dimensions in management and planning

The nature of management skills is such that they are culturally specific: a management technique or philosophy that is appropriate in one national culture is not necessarily appropriate in another. The paper describes the scope of (work-related) cultural differences as they were revealed by research in more than 50 countries around the world and discusses how these differences affect the validity of management techniques and philosophies in various countries within the functioning and meaning of planning.

Personality and Culture Revisited: Linking Traits and Dimensions of Culture

“Culture and personality” was a focus of anthropology and psychology in the first half of the 20th century. It was concerned with traditional and preliterate societies and drew many of its constructs from psychoanalysis. In this article, we note that taxonomies of personality traits and cultural values developed independently since 1980 have created new possibilities for exploring the topic. The Five-Factor Model of personality is a universally valid taxonomy of traits. The IBM study (conducted by Hofstede) dimensions of culture represent a well-validated operationalization of differences between cultures as manifested in dominant value systems. In reanalyses of recently reported data, mean personality scores from 33 countries were significantly and substantially correlated with culture dimension scores. We discuss environmental and temperamental explanations for these associations and suggest directions for future research, including replications, experimental simulations, acculturation studies, and research on the interaction of traits and culture in shaping human lives.

Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context

This article describes briefly the Hofstede model of six dimensions of national cultures: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/Femininity, Long/ Short Term Orientation, and Indulgence/Restraint. It shows the conceptual and research efforts that preceded it and led up to it, and once it had become a paradigm for comparing cultures, research efforts that followed and built on it. The article stresses that dimensions depend on the level of aggregation; it describes the six entirely different dimensions found in the Hofstede et al. (2010) research into organizational cultures. It warns against confusion with value differences at the individual level. It concludes with a look ahead in what the study of dimensions of national cultures and the position of countries on them may still bring. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol2/iss1/8

The business of international business is culture

National cultures are distinguished from organizational cultures. The first have been studied from over 50 countries, and described with the help of five dimensions. The differences shown set limits to the validity of management theories across borders. Special attention is paid to characteristics of East Asian cultures that help explain the recent economic success of these countries. Organizational cultures were studied across 20 organizational units in Denmark and the Netherlands; this research identified six dimensions of organizational cultures. The findings lead to a number of suggestions for the management of organizational cultures. Managing international business means handling both national and organizational culture differences at the same time. Organizational cultures are somewhat manageable while national cultures are given facts for management; common organizational cultures across borders are what keeps multinationals together.

Attitudes, Values and Organizational Culture: Disentangling the Concepts:

Sentiments collected through paper-and-pencil surveys are often arbitrarily classified according to categories imposed by the researcher, such as attitudes, values, and manifestations of organizational culture. The question is, to what extent are such classifications supported by the distinctions that respondents make in their own minds? In this paper, distinctions between categories of sentiments are supported empirically from the results of an employee survey in a large Danish insurance company (n = 2,590). The 120 questions used were classified into attitudes, values, perceptions of organizational practices (for diagnosing organizational cultures), and demographics. Perceptions of organizational cultures were measured using an approach developed by the author and his colleagues in an earlier study across 20 Danish and Dutch organizational units. In the insurance company study, employee attitudes were found to be clearly distinct from employee values. Perceptions of organizational practices were unrelated to values, and only overlapped with attitudes where both dealt with communication. In the latter case, both can be seen as expressions of the organizations communication climate. Other perceptions of organizational practices did not form recognizable clusters at the level of individuals, but only at the level of organizational (sub)units.

Convergence and divergence in consumer behavior: Implications for international retailing

Abstract Converging technology and disappearing income differences across countries will not lead to homogenization of consumer behavior. Rather, consumer behavior will become more heterogeneous because of cultural differences. As consumer incomes converge across countries, the manifestation of value differences will become stronger. This phenomenon makes it increasingly important to understand values of national cultures and their impact on consumer behavior. Retailing strategies for one country cannot be extended to other countries without adaptation. Hofstede’s model of national culture is applied to understand differences in consumer behavior across countries. Examples are provided of consumption differences, their relationships with culture discussed, and selected implications for international retailing management detailed.