Hofstede Model

Completing a personal analysis of a positive and negative cycle of occupational behavior facilitated a greater understanding of occupational behavior and the Model of Human Occupation (MOHO). Findings indicated the addition of the role of OTD student resulted in both negative and positive cycles to my life. Consequently, the negative cycle included an imbalance in roles and habits while conversely the positive cycle included embracing learning with immediate application to my area of practice. I identified strengths and weaknesses within all three subsystems. Within the Volitional system, I identified weaknesses related to returning to college after 30 years which caused feelings of incompetence and concerns regarding the ability to complete

Geert Hofstede is a professor who came up with a theory after researching how people from different background/ countries interact with each other, he based this on six different types of dimensions. Which were, power distance, individualism vs collectivism, masculinity vs femininity, uncertainty avoidance and long and short term orientation. This theory was created so that society could come into terms with issues that needs to be organized. Geert Hofstede theory has become more important as society is continuing to become an integrated global economy.

     In business, successful communication is the key to success, and being able to relate to a customer is the best form of communication. This is why cross-cultural communication is so important as the business world continues to globalize itself. Unfortunately, “A lack of awareness about the culturally prescribed rules and norms of communication behaviors can cause public relations projects to fail, or worse, backfire.” (Zaharna, 2001, p.135).

Theirs four models of church structure discussed over the course of this class: Traditional, Attractional, Organic, and Hybrid. Each one has its own unique quality and goals to ultimately make disciples and fulfill the great commission. The traditional is one that I’m most familiar with because I was born and raised in the traditional church setting.

Lisette Model began her creative life as a student of music. Through avant-garde composer Arnold Schönberg, with whom she studied piano, she became exposed to the Expressionist painters of early twentieth-century Vienna. She never formally studied photography but took it up in the 1930s while living in Paris. An early piece of advice received from a colleague--"Never photograph anything you are not passionately interested in"--became her

Both models have strengths and weaknesses. One is simple and could be filled out my hand. The other is complex, yet allows the owner to gather more information. Simplicity and superior are locked in a conflict of usefulness. In other words, based on each models’ strengths and weaknesses we have to understand which will be more useful, in spite of their flaws.

Communication – verbal and otherwise – remains an important dimension of international management, and there are different communication styles, how communication is processed and interpreted, and how culture and language influence communication and miscommunication (Luthans & Doh, 2012).

It will be of great benefit to learn the preferred form of communication of the people we will encounter. Many of us will not have business dealings with those from other countries, but it is important to know that even in our day to day contact that others may perceive our form of communication differently than we intended. We also may perceive others communication in a way other than they intended.

There are three ideal models of society that could best help Vespuccia with their issues of extreme economic inequality, poverty of many, and the lack of political representation for the working class. The three models are the ideations of Plato, the ideations of Confucius, and the Ancient India, Hindu religious beliefs. All three of these models have their own strengths and weaknesses. In order to determine the best ideation of thought I will need to compare and contrast the three ways of thought and will need to evaluate them based on how they can best fit the needs of Vespuccia.

The Beckers need to follow the GO Model phase 1 through 6. They need to begin with knowing their situation clearly. Then, they should formulate a new goal by separating between unacceptable alternatives and acceptable alternatives. Then, choose the best alternative that they both agree on. They should take the action and see the results. The results would be either acceptable or unacceptable.

Geert Hofstede developed the widely applied Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, which mainly focuses on how different countries with different cultural backgrounds handle different anthropological problems that occur in cross-cultural communication (Hofstede 1980). The first five Hofstede’s dimensions will be discussed in following paragraphs. It should be clear that there is no good and bad between two elements in each dimension since every culture has its unique features and ways to function.

Hofstede had analyzed data, which he collected from more than 117,000 IBM employees working in 40 different countries, and had found out that there were four statistically independent dimensions that examined the inter-country variation through his survey questionnaires (Drogendijk, and Slangen, 2006). His value of dimension was accepted by studies and had proven to be of help to understand the difference in cultures (e.g., Silverthorne, 2005) suggesting that Hofstede dimension of culture categorizes is elevated and it has given important steps to improve theoretical basis of understanding culture and also its effect on organization. We could see that people appreciated his work and his understanding of culture helped many in their own flied of work but they were researchers who had criticized his dimension (e.g., Schwartz, 1994; steenkamp, 2001; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta, 2004).

Geert Hofstede is an influential Dutch researcher in the fields of organizational studies and more concretely organizational culture, also cultural economics and management. He is a well-known pioneer in his research of cross-cultural groups and organizations and played a major role in developing a systematic framework for assessing and differentiating national cultures and organizational cultures. His studies demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groups that influence behavior of societies and organizations.

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.

Understanding the influence of culture in business practices and managerial decision-making requires explaining the differences between cultures. This is why, Hofstede (appendix 1) presents a well-known model based on four dimensions of culture: