How Culture Influenced The Values Rooted Within The Workplace

Understanding the differences and similarities inherent in other cultures may provide opportunities when working with individuals (or groups) who may have different cultural values, beliefs, and/or norms. There are multiple ways to explore different cultures. One way is through Hofstede’s (2017) cultural dimension; which are currently made up of six broad categories, including high-low power distance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long-short term orientation, and indulgence-restraint. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore all these cultural dimensions in great detail; however, it is important to understand some of the implications of these scores. The scores for both the US and China can be seen in Table 1, along with the differences between each score.

Culture is an observable, powerful force in any organization. “Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well-being and success” (One Page, n.d.).

It is no longer feasible that a corporation can successfully move through the global marketplace without learning to recognize the cultural norms of each country. It falls to the executives and managers to implement these changes and to ensure that their companies are working to move towards a more inclusive, and ultimately, more profitable way of doing business that appreciates and respects all cultures and work

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

According to Greenwood (1957), culture is defined as "The interactions of social roles required by these formal and informal groups generate a social configuration unique to the profession" (p. 52). In any profession, it is important to respect others cultures, beliefs, and values.

The Hofstede Centre (n.d.) defines culture as the “collective mental programming of the human mind which distinguishes one group of people from another.” Chipulu, Ojiako, Gardiner, Williams, Mota, Maguire, Shou, Stamai, and Marshall (2014), note that “culture can be at once tangible and observable; latent and unobservable; or even an abstraction altogether” (p. 367). Culture therefore has many dimensions. Some aspects of culture can be observed by analyzing symbols, ceremonies, dress, and other aspects. On the other hand, some aspects are not observable from the outside, but have to be experienced. Looking only from the outside gives us only a glimpse into the culture values. A large part of culture is the unwritten rules of how things are done. This part of culture is not necessarily observable to an outsider. To fully understand the cultural values of an organization, you need to be inside the organization with access to those with years of work experiences.

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

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.

To show how culture influences the values that exist in the workplace, Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist and international management professor at

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).

It is very important in any professional organization that the values of workers are aligned with that of the organization. In this reference the values of nurses hold a specific importance since it serves humanity and therefore its alignment with its organization is crucial for patient outcomes. Usually the values of any firm depends on things such as networking, educational opportunities provided to its employees, professional and personal growth and so on. Similarly, the values of nursing depend on things such as its technical skills, scientific knowledge and specific human values.

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:

The most recent studies in cross-cultural management reveal that the culture is a very expansive subject for organizations to study, especially for organizations, which hire the most diverse workforce. One definition of a diverse workforce could be as the one, which comes from different ethnic and demographic backgrounds (Plessis, 2011). For studying culture of the diverse workforce, there are two parts to study, the implicit and the explicit culture. The explicit culture includes behavior while the implicit part involves norms and values of individuals (Guang & Trotter, 2012). The explicit culture is already known when workers stay and work in a firm for a length of time, but the most difficult is to understand the implicit culture which is obscured in form of norms and values of the workers. Due to the differences of cultures, workers hold a great potential of variance, variety in terms of their explicit and implicit parts of the culture. The