Hofstede 's Five Dimensions Of Culture Essay

The theory of individualism/collectivism refers to the values and nature of a society. Those cultures deemed as individualist place high

Hofstede uses the words masculinity and femininity to refer to the degree to which masculine or feminine traits are valued or revealed (Samovar, Porter and McDaniel). The United States rates as a moderately masculine. Countries that favor masculinity stress equity, competition, and performance(Yates). They also strive for material success and expected to respect whatever is big, strong, and fast. France values femininity and stress equality, solidarity, and quality of work life (Yates). A feminine worldview maintains that men can assume nurturing roles while promoting sexual equality. One major difference in masculine/feminine cultures is the role of the woman in the workplace and at home. Feminine societies expect women to work and often provide the necessary social support systems. Although the United States is more masculine than France both countries treat females as equals.

“Organization and societies differ markedly in how power is distributed. Alderfer (1979) and Brown (1983) offer that power is displayed in either an overbounded and underbounded systems. In an overbounded system, power is high, concentrated and everything is tightly regulated. In an underbounded system, power is diffuse and the system is very loosely controlled. An overbounded system regulated politics with a firm hand; an underbounded system openly encourages conflict and power games” (Boleman, L & Deal, T, 2013, p. 200).

Question 1. How might the troubles with the tourism company be explained by Hofstede’s dimension of culture. Make sure to look at both Japanese and American cultures.

A world of system designed to keep people in unjust and unequal positions is held in place by several interrelated expression of "power over": political power, economic power, physical force, and ideological power (Bishop, 1994: 36). So, we can say power is defined as a possession of control, authority or influence over others. In terms of power of dominant groups over subordinate groups, we define power as domination of one group of people over another in major important spheres of life. Power inequities have been in existence throughout the history of humanity and the ways of manifestation evolved from extreme overt oppression to subtle, covert oppression. Three major forms of power inequalities discussed in this paper are

Masculinity-femininity measurement is tended to as a society, not an individual's trademark and alludes to the conveyance of qualities between the sexual orientation. Masculinity is the inverse of femininity; together, they form one of the measurements of national societies. The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness and material rewards for success. Society at large is more competitive (Geert-hofstede.com, 2010). Masculine cultures have a tendency to be goal-oriented and need to exceed expectations. In masculine societies, men are relied upon to be competitive. A society is called feminine when there is not a solid separation between the sexual orientations for passionate

The world average for the Masculinity Dimension is 50, with both the United States and Australia having a higher ranking. Traits associated with masculinity are assertiveness, material success, and individual achievement. The female population has adapted these traits and begun to shift toward a more traditional male role, with an increasing number of women continuing to enter the workforce. The direct communication style of the United States illustrates the masculine traits. The U.S. places heavy emphasis on getting their point across rather than getting to know those they are doing business with. This dimension is closely related to both countries’ rankings in the individuality dimension.

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?

This dimension deals explains how society prepares and deals against the unknown. In a country with a high uncertainty avoidance, people do not like change, thus rules are placed to avoid such situations. Countries with low uncertainty avoidance, people accept change, and more likely to take

This essay aimed to evaluate and critique the paper written by Geoffrey Williams and John Zinkin. It was divided into seven parts. First of all, I would brief introduce what the essay is about, followed by giving the description of the paper being evaluated. Then, theory and literature would be evaluated, with highlighting the theoretical frameworks used by the authors in developing the paper. Research design and approach would come to the fourth part, in which I would explore the research design and methods and discuss the benefits and limitations. Afterwards, benefits and limitations of the research design and approach would be given, and finally comes the suggestions of alternative research strategies/method and the

This paper will be about the relation between the cultural dimension ‘power distance’ and three management principles we chose and will also be about the applicability of these management principles. This is quite interesting because even though we know that the cultural dimensions, by Geert Hofstede, and the management principles, by Fayol, have something to do with each other, the more the cultural dimensions differ, the more the ranking of the management principles will differ in the compared countries. We will now try to find out if some of these principles are more linked to a certain cultural dimension, in our case Power Distance, than others and we will find out whether these

As far back as history can be told mankind has struggled between balancing culture, power and politics. Many wars have been fought and many people have placed their lives on the line in order to stand up for what they believe in. The combinations of culture, power and politics have spilled over into the workplace. In today’s business environment individuals have much more to worry about than just completing their assigned tasks. Organizational culture, power and office politics influence day to day operations as well as govern the atmosphere within the organization. The amount of impact that power and politics have in the workplace, directly reflect the organization’s culture formally as well as informally.

| 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

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.

1. Power distance index (PDI): The degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.