Leadership and Hofstede’s Six Dimensions
Today’s business environment continues to become more of a reflection our society and how we are becoming more globalized. Culture is being looked at from many different perspectives throughout businesses, including Human Resources, Customer Service, and in IT fields. Companies are hiring staff from different backgrounds, range of ages, ethnicities, genders and cultures. The concept of culture is widely used in international management, organization behavior, and human resource development literature to measure effects that can discriminate between countries and ethnic or occupational groups (Kuchinke 1999). Cultural understanding and communication are often seen as some of the most difficult things when working in groups that have different backgrounds and are more familiar working in different types of leadership. This paper will explore what Hofstede’s Six Dimensions, how they are associated with different and effective leadership styles. In organizational cultures, Geert stated that “distinguish different organizations within the same country or countries. Geert 's research has shown that organizational cultures differ mainly at the level of practices (symbols, heroes and rituals); these are more superficial and more easily learned and unlearned than the values that form the core of national cultures.”(Geert, Geert Jan, 2015). Understanding the differences between organizational and national cultures will assist in
The global economy today is made up of many nationalities and each nationality brings with them a unique culture. Part of leadership success is learning who you are working with inside the organization. When a leader is examining what strategy will work best for the organization’s goals, it is important to remember that the terms “leadership” and “success” have numerous definitions depending upon the culture in which you are defining it (Rook). Forming working relationships is just one key in unlocking effective
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.
Leadership is perceived and defined in many ways, but in the end, every concept of leadership is brought back on the focus of people. Followers’ reaction towards a leader decides the effectiveness of his or her specific style of governance. Because of the importance of the subordinate, leaders must treat everyone they manage with dignity and respect. To achieve this feat, the leader must understand the meaning of culture and other aspects which stem from it and social perceptions and biases which lead to schema and ultimately unjust stereotypes. In the leadership textbook Preparing to Lead: Introduction to Leadership and Development written by LCDR Litchford, USN and LT Bryant, USN, it defines culture as “the totality of learned socially transmitted
The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program, or GLOBE, is an extensive research program devoted to understanding how culture influences leadership and different organizational processes (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, Gupta, 2004, pp. 9). This program consists of three separate phases, the first being an empirical study focused on developing research instruments (House et al., 2004, p. 9). The second phase is primarily geared toward the “assessment of the nine core attributes of societal and organization cultures” which are referred to as cultural dimensions (House et al., 2004, p. 9). And the last phase is currently underway as an investigation of the impact and effectiveness of specific leader styles
Cultural differences between countries have strong effects on individual personality and behavior, as well as on organizational culture (Hofstede 2001). These differences can be a significant barrier for an international business leader. Failure to understand and adapt to these differences may
In his book, Schein (2004) aims at clarifying what culture is, how it affects the organization, how to understand and decipher it and how to act on it with culture change. From the book, this paper seeks to review organizational culture influence on leadership effectiveness, identify the elements of organizational culture, and discuss approaches and theories on leadership based on defined cultural typologies and subcultures.
Infusing a specific culture(s) into one’s leadership, by far, is one of leadership’s greatest challenges. It could be said that culture dictates how leaders lead. In the culture of leadership itself, a leader must understand the context of what is happening around them and how information flows from one audience to the next (Barrett, 2014). Time, language, power, spirituality, tradition, and whether or not a specific culture is driven by collectivism or individualism are also to be considered within that culture of leadership (Barrett, 2014). Understanding these concepts drives how we lead, do business, and communicate with others within the melting pot of our own country and people of foreign lands. Culture shapes the leader’s ideals, personality traits, work values, and to a point, determines the pattern of leadership towards a specific culture (Wibbeke, 2014). It is by knowing other cultures that allows leaders to effectively lead and to connect the dots of differences that impact strategy (Soo, 2012, para. 2).
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.
Culture and the environment affect a business in many ways. Culture is not simply a different language, a different shade of skin, or different styles of food. Culture, and the environment in which you are a part of, affect the running of day to day business operations of all companies’ day in and day out. This paper will assess how Linda Myers, from the article, “The would-be pioneer,” (Green, S., 2011) was affected by the huge culture shock of working for a global conglomerate from Seoul, South Korea. We will discuss what went wrong with Ms. Myers approach to business, Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture as it
Managing a diverse workforce assists in creating a vivacious and assorted business team with opportunities and challenges for people of all aptitudes and experiences, besides host country nationals. In addition, by managing a diverse workforce assists in the facilitation of change in a country’s normal operating business practices. According to Hofstede’s dimensions of culture model, one could better understand the challenges faced by multinational managers in regards to human resource management, leadership style, motivational assumptions, decision-making, organizational design, and how culture can affect strategy implementation (Cullen & Parboteeah, 2014, p. 52). Furthermore, one can imagine how important manger actions and behavior are in educating future business leaders on how important it is to have a global mindset (“Social,” 2014). Lastly, although some consider the challenges mentioned obstacles, one could also consider finding opportunities in learning and progressing as a manager by being flexible and knowledgeable about different business possibilities and styles.
Next to it to evaluate the relationship between leadership style and diverse cultural dimensions, we will use Geert Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture and will explain how it can affect our group members’ leadership styles from the perspective of New Zealand culture. Our group consists of four members, from which three hold the nationality of India and one holds of Nepal.
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.
Leadership is a process of influencing subordinates. Leadership behaviors differ in different cultures. As a result, leaders of international organizations should be aware of cultural differences. With so many organizations operating in a multinational environment today, it is easy to assume that the increasing connection among countries, and the globalization of corporations, would result in cultural differences disappearing or diminishing. Scholars and practitioners have identified transformational leadership and organizational culture as important factors that influence the development of the learning organization. Yet, few studies have empirically examined the impact of cultural differences on leadership. This article is a summary of the study of leadership in different cultures. The globalization of many organizations and the increasing interdependence of nations make the understanding of culture and its influence on leadership increasingly important.
In times of rapid globalisation and economic development growth, the environment of business has become more and more complicated as a huge number of firms want to globally expand their businesses. Subsequently, the managerial implications of cross-cultural management is the challenge of this development. As Abbe (2007) states, cross-cultural leadership has developed as a way to understand leaders who work in the global markets. Culture is the “software of mind” that can influence people’s patterns of thinking and behaving.
“Culture has become very important topic of international business”. Lee, Y., & Liu, W. (2012). Imagine a successful organization in the United State wants to enter to another country’s market like India. These two countries have many differences in their culture as general and their individuals are influenced by the national culture. It is important for a leader to know individual’s differences and cultures in order to have an effective leadership, and run a productive and successful business in other countries. Even in inside of a country which has multinational employees, culture differences would be challenging. Human diversity may cause many conflicts; a good leader is the one who knows all the diversities, and manages them toward the