Hofstede 's Four Cultural Dimensions And Fons Trompenaars

The average point differential between Japan and Canada on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions is 35.6. The largest differentials between the two cultures are pragmatism (52), uncertainty avoidance (43), and masculinity (42). Given that individualism has the largest differential in favor of Canada, as well as being Canada’s highest scoring dimension, it will be included for analysis as well. (The Hofstede Centre)

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.

In this book, Hofstede point out the different six dimensions that describe the national culture of a country. The author note, that even though the six dimensions are considerable, the ones that are highly correlated with individualistic or collectivistic cultures are the dimensions of ‘‘power distance’’ and ‘‘individualism’’, in which United States and Saudi Arabia have totally different punctuations, being United States an individualistic country and Saudi Arabia a collectivistic one.

According to Hofstede definition, it is possible to develop the idea of national culture as a culture for a particular group of humans that includes systems of values and is passed down between generations by learning. (Hofstede G. H., 1980, p. 21)

Individualistic cultures value many things like freedom, privacy, innovation, personal rights and responsibilities, voicing one’s opinion, and self-expression (Sprague, Stuart, Bodary, Verderber, Sellnow, 2015). An example of an individualist culture around the world is the United States. Members of this culture place primary value on the personal and self achievement. Individual

Culture, according to Hofstede (1982), is a “collective programming of the mind which distinguish the members of one category from another”. The term “category of people” can be a nation, a region, a work organization, or even a family.

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?

Over the years, social psychologists try to come up with different dimensions for comparing culture. Hofsteade (1980) suggested a number of dimensions such as power distance, uncertainty

National culture refers to the set of shared norms and beliefs among individuals within national boundaries who are indigenous to that area. Geert Hofstede 's work on national culture is considered significant. He defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others”.

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.

This essay will discuss the influence of cultural dimensions on behavior. A cultural dimension is defined as a perspective of a culture based on its values and cultural norms. In particular, Hofstede’s cultural dimension of individualism vs. collectivism will be discussed. Individualism vs collectivism is defined as the preference of a person only being concerned about oneself and looking after oneself, compared to a person who wants to remain in a closely knitted network. These are some terms with definitions which will be used in this essay: the Asch paradigm, which refers to the studies conducted by Solomon Asch, in which he showed his participants different lines and asked them to verbally judge and respond as to what the length of the

The United States and China boast the two largest economies in the world but, despite this fact, these two countries have very little in common. At first glance, this may seem very obvious to most people but, what exactly is it that makes these two countries so different? How is it that such different perspectives and approaches can both lead to great success? Hofstede’s six dimensions of culture are an attempt to answer these questions and more. Dr. Geert Hofstede, studied employees of the computer firm IBM in over fifty different countries. When he examined his findings he found “clear patterns of similarity and difference along the four dimensions” (Manktelow, Jackson Edwards, Eyre, Cook and Khan, n.d.). The fact that he focused his research on solely IBM employees allowed him to eliminate company culture as a differentiating factor and “attribute those patterns to national and social differences” (n.d.). He used his findings to originally identify four dimensions, later expanded to six, that could “distinguish one culture from another” (n.d.). The six dimensions all on a scale from 0 to 100 are:

Culture has been defined in many different ways and by many different theorists. For instance, according to Geert et al (2010) “it is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others”. Kotter and Heskett (1992) noted that culture is “a set of beliefs, values and behaviors commonly held by a society, being derived from social anthropology as a framework for understanding ‘primitive’ societies”. Finally, Deal and Kennedy (1982) defined culture in short as “the way we do things around here”.

Culture is a broad term which has been described by various philosophers since decades. It has been claimed by Raymond Williams to be “…one of the two or three most complicated words in English language” (Williams, 1976). Different definitions of the term, culture may have distinct descriptive ways and criterion to evaluate human activity. It is important to define the broad base of the sophisticated term ‘culture’, in the sense used later in the paper, to narrow down the discussion on our topic.