Culture, in my own opinion, is a unique system of values and norms that are believed by a group of people who live in the same society. Since culture is unique, Geert Hofstede tried to study the differences. After the study, he proposed five dimensions to measure the cultural difference between nations. The following parts will explain Hofstede Framework briefly. The first dimension is Power Distance. It is a tool to measure the power difference between levels in organization. In a group with high power distance, the majority of people would tend to respect in authority and establish hierarchy. When observing their behavior, they would have a great esteem on the class of social level. By contrary, a society with a low power distance …show more content…
So, management can change the culture easily in this situation. However, in the low-index nation, it will not only hard to build up, but also hard to break down the culture as they emphasize to view themselves as equal with equal, especially to rebuild. Therefore, management should follow these three advices when they change to culture. Firstly, form a discuss group and invite staff to show their views and concern before decision making. Secondly, try to use more statistics to seek their support within the discussion. The most important is the management must keep the eyes on the behaviors and emotion of the staff the change started. If the negative reaction was found, the management should stop the change and review. If the management follows it, it is easy to change the culture. The second angle is Individualism vs. Collectivism. As the said before, the society would have strong group concept if there is Collectivism. On the other hand, they would emphasize the self-benefit when they prefer Individualism. For this, the main focus should be “Benefit”, there are two different reactions when they meet the change of culture. In the Individualism society, “Self-Benefit” is their main focus. If changing the culture will bring the “Self-Benefit”, they will support the change. Then, Culture is something easy to build up and break down. However, if
Is the level of interdependence a society maintains among its people (Hofstede). This is about a society in which everyone looks out for him or herself while collectivism the opposite of individualism is a society that embraces people being integrated into a strong cohesive in-groups including extended families. Germany is an individualistic society with a high score of 67 on the cultural scale. People expresses themselves based on personal achievements and individual rights. Likewise, the United State is also considered to be an individualistic scoring a high 91 on the culture scale. This is evident in the society by the saying “American dream” which encourages individuals to work hard and be whatever they chose to be in life. Countries like
“Acknowledges the fact that in individualistic cultures, ‘people are supposed to look after themselves and their family only’ while in collective cultures, ‘people belong to groups or collectives which are supposed to look after them in exchange for loyalty’”. (Theriault, 2016)
In the individualistic subculture, there are many ways that it can differ from that of the moralistic and the traditionalistic subcultures. The way that people can differentiate them is by knowing the characteristics of each of them. In the individualistic subcultures,
Culture is defined by a construction of one's world-view, and it is transmitted by individuals and collectives through socialization and enculturation (Pederson & Ivey, 13). It contains values, beliefs, language, and perception. In studying cultural differences among members of distinct national, ethnic groups researcher have examined the concept of collectivism and individualism. People form individualistic cultures tend to view themselves as unique entities and independent form one another (Coon & Kemmelmeier, 348)
Looking at the chart the first dimension of culture plotted is individualism-collectivism. This dimension addresses how people define themselves and their relationships with others. Cultures that fall on the individualism side of the continuum share four characteristics. First, such cultures consider the individual to be the most important entity in any social setting. Second, individualistic cultures stress independence rather than dependence. Third, individualistic cultures reward individual achievement. The last characteristic is; individualistic cultures value each individual’s uniqueness.
Leadership and Motivational Strategies Individual/Group Behavior Individualism is the degree of independence a society maintains among its members. It basically has to do with whether the individual in each culture is define their self-image in terms of “we” or “I”. Individualistic societies like the United States and Australia people generally only worry about taking care of themselves and those closest to them. In collectivist society’s people belong to a group that take care of each other.
n For the very purpose of clarity, I had liked to define culture according to (Bauer & Erdogan, 2009) “as the values, beliefs, and customs that exist in a society.” (p. 39). On the other hand, individualistic culture refers to a “Cultures in which people define themselves as individuals and form looser ties with their groups.” (p. 40). In other words, someone who is individualistic tends to focus attention on what he can achieve without the influence or assistance of any group or friends. Doing things independently characterizes the behavior of an individualistic culture.
Individualism is an ideology or moral stance where the personal worth, freedom, ambitions and goals of an individual is valued above the good of everything else. In this ideology, the individual does whatever is best for him or her. Self-sufficiency and self-actualization is held at a high standard and valued in this ideology. Individualism is usually defined in contrast to collectivism, which promotes the goals and values of the society above the individual. The concept of individualism is woven into the fundamental foundation of the United States of America. In this outline, the historical framework, that is how and why individualism became a part of western culture, the contemporary issues, that is how individualism manifest itself in the
Using Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions as a point of reference, what are some of the main cultural differences between the United States and France?
Individualistic cultures tend to favor feeling free and less responsible for the members around them. In class, we discussed our own experiences of living in an individualistic culture. For example, if a parent were to become ill and more dependent, it is not uncommon for the children to send the parent to a nursing home. The ill parent would feel embarrassed if their child had to help them use a restroom or bathe themselves.Whereas, in a collectivism
Communication is one of the most important aspects of our lives. It is a process that ties us together and helps us to get most of our work done. Communication plays a big role in transmitting cultural values from one generation to the next. Communication can be categorized as two; verbal and non verbal. In a multiracial country such as Malaysia good communication can be considered as a savior to keep everyone united. Being a multiracial country, it shows the existence of cultural diversity in Malaysia. Cultural diversity often leads to society’s biggest challenge.
| The fundamental issue addressed by this dimension is the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members. It has to do with whether people´s self-image is defined in terms of “I” or “We”. In Individualist societies people are supposed to look after themselves and their direct family only. In Collectivist societies people belong to ‘in
When a business decides to venture internationally into different countries with its products, services, and operations, it is very important that the company gains an understanding of how the culture of the different societies affects the values found in those societies. Geert Hofstede conducted one of the most famous and most used studies on how culture relates to values. Hofstede study enabled him to compare dimensions of culture across 40 countries. He originally isolated four dimensions of what he claimed summarized different cultures — power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity versus femininity (Hill, 2013, p.110). To cover aspects of values not discussed in the original paradigm Hofstede has since added two more dimensions — Confucianism or long-term orientation and indulgence versus self-restraint (Hofstede, n.d.). Because of the way Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are given an index score from 0-100, it is easy for a company to get a general comparison between the cultures they are expanding into and the culture they are already in.
Expanding on that, a person is immeresed in his/her culture since birth, and has no choice but to adopt the values necessary to survive. An individualistic community encourages a person to make his/her own choices; moreover, one would be less concerned about the “we” and more concerned about the “I”. This lowers conformity levels, because each person is willing to do what he/she wants and is more concerned about self-surival than harmony in the community. A strength of this study could be participant variability because it eliminates the possibility of this behavior only being limited to one type of person/community. Accordingly, a limitation could be the lack of ecological validity (one will not be asked to identify the length of a line in real life), and the multitude of confounding variables including the time and place, which could influence the results. Overall, the study demonstrates how individualism affects behavior, since a person who demonstrates indivdualistic behavior would exhibit less conformity, as seen above.
First, Individualism vs. Collectivism. Individualism is the social function of the relative likelihood of a free and individual means only take care of themselves and their families. By contrast, collectivism is the tendency of social functions relatively tight where each individual to identify themselves as a group with loyalty not need to be asked. The main problem of this dimension is the degree of interdependence of individuals in a