Hofstede 's Value Dimensions Of Culture

Nowadays, exploring the differences in overall cultural value structures among different cultures has gradually grew business’s attention across the world. No matter small companies or global conglomerates, how to get involve and maintain their competitive advantages and long-term sustainable success in global business trade has been a heated topic to discuss. To fully understand the ethic differences and cultural influences, the following four aspects will help us to uncover the similarities and differences between the American and Chinese cultures.

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.

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.

Masculinity culture represents a preference towards high achievement, assertiveness, and material rewards for success which display similar characteristic of men. Society is largely more competitive. Countries with masculinity culture such as Japan and Mexico value assertiveness and competitiveness. U.S. is also somewhat a masculine society where individuals highly focus on achievement, strike for success and are motivated by opportunities. IBM’s studies revealed that (1) women’s values are less concerned among societies than men’s values; (2) men’s values from one country to another have a dimension of assertive and competitive that are different from women’s values that are modest and caring. Germany scored a 66 and U.S. scored a 62 on masculine

It is this gap in cultural understanding and increase in globalization that makes cultural models, such as Hofstede’s, that much more important to learn and apply during business relations. Many companies that try to expand beyond their current borders end up failing due to refusing to recognize the differences between cultures. An American company that expands into foreign markets, yet tries to run their operations and marketing as they would in America, is going to have a difficult time. Products and well as company practices need to be adapted to suit the country’s business culture, current market climate, taste/preferences of the citizens, etc.

As we become immersed in our own culture, it can be challenging to grasp the difference in cultural pattern taxonomies orientations of other cultures. Cultural pattern taxonomies has been defined in the textbook, Communication between Cultures, “as the dominant beliefs and values of a culture.” Cultural value orientation varies among cultures and ultimately affects the way we communicate interpersonally.

There are many cultural and ethical differences between countries and it is important for mutual trust and respect that no organization try to strong-arm another into their way of thinking or take a position that their culture is more valuable than the other. According to Pitta, Fung, and Isberg (1999), it is vital for success to have a basic understanding of the culture and the expectations within cultures as they affect all business transactions. Failing to understand and consider the cultural differences will likely result in failure.

China and the United States has its own unique culture. What is culture? According to Kluckhohn and Kroeber ‘Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups’ (Dowling, Festing, & Engle, 2013, p. 24). There are many interesting facts surrounding their culture. In this paper I will compare China’s culture to the culture of the United States to determine if China is a good match for a United States multinational firm who is looking to enter a foreign market. The aspects of culture difference I will be focusing on will include the following: language, religion, music, cooking, social norms and customs. The paper will end with a conclusion of my findings.

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.

     Cultures are varying among different parts of the globe. People with different cultures have different characteristics and viewpoints on the subjects due to diverse understanding and method of learning. During the past few decades, the international trade grows in a very rapid rate due to the advantages that it provides; “increased sales, operational efficiencies, exposure to new technologies and broader consumer choices” (Heslin). Therefore, when considering the culture aspect to current business world, it is crucial for business to understand the culture aspect because of the tremendous growth of international business as well as utilize the international market to its maximum

We all get curious when we meet people from other countries. We start asking ourselves different questions, who are they? where did they come from? what do their countries look like? what are their values and beliefs? all this is part of human curiosity, which leads us to understand different phenomenons in life. America, for example, is the symbol of ethnic diversity. It has often been called a land of immigrants because of the immense numbers of people from all around the world who had moved and settled there. These people who immigrated to America, brought different languages, cultures, beliefs and values. All these factors have a huge influence in shaping the American culture unlike the Saudi culture which has its own traditional cultural values. This article explains the major waves of immigration to America during the 1700s. 1800s,and the 1900s. It also, highlights some of the impacts of the immigration on the American cultural values and how it defines them and represents the important cultural values in Saudi Arabia and how they are different than the American values and whether they share some values . Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the colonial period was a gruesome, life-threatening endeavor for all travelers, regardless of wealth or seamanship. In the early 1770s, thousands of people began migrating from Germany, France, Spain and they all these people lived in the English colonies of North America. Other new immigrants had arrived from the Netherlands,

The aim of the present essay is to examine the strengths and the weaknesses of the “Informational Influence” theory and the “Cultural Value” theory, which are the two major theoretical accounts that attempted to explain the phenomenon of the risky-shift in group processes. At first, the introductory paragraph is concerned with the discovery of the phenomenon followed by a brief description of the two theories. Secondly, empirical evidence in support of the two theories is provided along with a critical analysis. In addition, a short paragraph of this essay is concerned with the evaluation of the methodology which was applied since the 1960s for the study of the risky-shift phenomena.

With the unstoppable trend of globalisation, it becomes extremely significant for international businesses to have a thorough understanding of different cultures. Hofstede (1980, pp. 21-23) defines culture as ‘the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from another’. This essay examines Hofstede’s cultural framework and suggests that Hofstede’s cultural framework is an outstanding and authoritative tool to analyze culture differences. In this essay, cultural frameworks will be discussed firstly, following by a discussion of my cultural scores and background. Finally, recommendations on cross-cultural management between China and Australia will be provided.

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.

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: