Geert Hofstede : The Four Dimensions Of National Cultures

Culture is connected to the knowledge , beliefs, customs, and habits, acquired by the members of the society. The impact of culture depends upon on which religion of the world a firm is active. To illustrate further we can see a case study called CULTURAL CONFUSION: AN ACCENTURE MANAGER IN INDIA or HINDU RELIGION AND ITS IMPACT ON BUSINESS from international management book page 36 and page 20. (Ahlstrom, Bruton, 2010).

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines culture as “the beliefs, customs, art etc. of a particular society, group, place or time” (Culture, n.d.). Cultural norms vary around the globe, which can make the global business

1- Based on the definition of Ricky W. Griffin, Michael W. Pustay in their book international business a managerial perspective in chapter four they defined culture in saying, culture is the collection of attitudes, beliefs, values, customs, and behaviors that distinguish one society from another. A society’s culture decides the rules that govern how firms operate in the society. many characteristics of culture are worth noting for their relevance to international business.

Geert Hofstede’s framework is a referenced approaches for analysing culture variations. The dimensions conjointly illustrate the impact of the culture ingrained in society on the values of the members. They also describe the relationship between these values and behaviour and using a structure based on factor analysis. Hofstede conducts a study about the difference in cultural environments in the 1970s and 1980s. He surveyed more than 116000 IBM employees in 40 countries about their work-related values. He also finds about the managers and employees vary on five dimensions national culture. These five dimensions are power distance, individualism versus collectivism, achievement versus nurturing, uncertainty avoidance and long-term versus short-term orientation.

Geert Hofstede is a researcher researching on the global leadership he focuses on how culture affects values in a workplace. He defends that all behaviors are defined by culture. The culture of a place affects how an individual behaves. Hofstede cultural dimensions are power distance index it measures the power of members in an organization it shows how the society handles inequality. Individualism is how an individual is integrated in a group. Masculinity this evaluates the distribution of roles. Uncertainty avoidance tolerance to the society, long-term orientation shows the values of perseverance and finally the

Hofstede defined the culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from that another”. His five types of cultural dimensions are the most popular in many cultural area studies, include: (1) power distance; (2) individualism vs. collectivism; (3) uncertainty avoidance; (4) masculinity vs. femininity; and (5) long-term vs. short-term orientation. These dimensions offer an insight towards behaviors and standards in the cultural context which are useful for many motivators to explore the people in different culture. The text suggested that countries with high uncertainty avoidance will lead to more job security, whereas people with low uncertainty avoidance (for example, U.S.) are motivated by new ideas and innovation. People with high power distance are motivated by relationships between subordinates and their boss, while people with low power distance are motivated by team work and relationships with their peers. On the other hand, individuals from high individualism are motivated by opportunities and autonomy; collectivism (for example, Japan) suggests that motivation should be done with group goals and support. Individuals from high masculine culture are comfortable with the tradition and division of works and roles; in a feminine culture, the motivators help people through flexible roles and work

It is commonly known that different organisations have their individual cultures. Culture describes who they are and what they stand for. It relates to the organisation 's traditions, customs, beliefs, meanings, morals, ethics, norms, language, shared values and practices. The business culture determines how people communicate within the company. There are numerous factors affecting

The second approach is constituted by Hofstede, who makes various researches to compare work-related values across employees working for a multinational corporation IBM in a total of 65 countries. Using the information obtained with these researches Hofstede produced a comparison between national cultures on five dimensions:

The most famous researcher of prevailing cultures in different countries goes by the name of Geert Hofstede. “He conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture” (). With the help of his research team, Professor Geert Hofstede created a model of national culture consisting of six dimensions. “The cultural dimensions represent independent preferences for on state of affairs

Analysing it in depth, several theories exist but this essay is going to concentrate in two main frameworks that suppose a point of inflexion in the study of the culture in the business: Hall’s Model, which is focus in the meaning of context for the culture and time orientations and Hofstede 's Model, which develop a five dimensional scheme to establish cultural comparisons between nations.

Culture is one of the terms that have been becoming more familiar in the 21st century among the multinational companies all around the world. The world has been shrunken by the fasting travelling and communicating technologies which has brought down the barriers for the organisations having business in international market. But still then there are few barriers that make the international business critical and hard for everyone to succeed in it. This is due to the factor that the businesses have direct influence over the culture that is followed in the respective country where the business is carried out. So it would be interesting to

Dr. Hofstede performed a comprehensive study of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. In the 1970’s, as a Dutch researcher Dr. Geert Hofstede, collected and analyzed data from 116,000 surveys taken from IBM employees in forty different countries around the world. From those results, Hofstede developed a model that identifies four primary dimensions of differentiate cultures. These include: Uncertainty Avoidance (UA), Masculinity-Femininity (MAS), Individualism-Collectivism (IND), Power and Distance (PD). After a further study of the Asian culture by researcher Michael Bond in 1991, Hofstede added a fifth dimension in his theory, Long- and Short-term time orientation (LTO), also referred to as the Confucian Dynamism. His research has framed how cultural differences can be used in professional business transactions. Geert Hofstede 's dimensions analysis can assist the business person in better understanding the intercultural differences within regions and between countries.

Hofstede (2003) defined culture as "the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another". Corporate culture refers to the intangible aspects of companies, including the interactions at an interpersonal level, and values, morals and ethics which permeate the way that decisions are made and polices are implemented (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2011). Just as when one undertakes international travel, and sees different cultures where there are different attitudes and traditions, one can also observe different

Interest in the business culture of the world originated over 20 years ago, but that does not mean that it did not exist before. The formation of the culture of any country is influenced by many factors, such as historical events, life, education of parents, lifestyle, ethnicity, tradition and religion. Even the language in which to communicate in the country, has a very important role. It was he who determines the structure of thinking people belonging to the same society. This leads to the fact that people who speak different native languages under the influence of more and different cultural values, often do not understand each other. Many of these factors that people face every day and do not pay attention to them, have a strong impact on them, resulting in the formation in a certain society, its concepts, habits and norms. Different geographical locations and climatic zones as well leave their imprint on the development and formation of different national cultures.

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.