United States And Japan 's The Five Dimension

Individualism is often viewed as a positive trait in America, suggesting a certain level of personal confidence. American society tends to reward independent thinkers and those who decide autonomously. To this end, individuality has become a value in many American homes. Although individualism is widely received and respected in American culture, it is not as well respected in other cultures. One culture in particular which frowns on individualism is the Asian culture.

The IBM study of employees from the 70 countries was the basis for the dimensions and has been critized since there was only one company in the data set however, Hofstede’s belief was that using just one company would better reveal the national differences. According to the authors Phatak, Bhagat, and Kashalk (2009), he believed this because the IBM employees were the same in other respects like type of work, job descriptions, and education. This study has been stated to be the most comprehensive study of how values are influenced in the workplace (Itim International, 2012). Itim International, (2012) noted that Hofstede’s work established a paradigm in international economics, communication, and cooperation, from which Hofstede developed the first emphirical model of “dimensions” for national organizational culutre.

Hierarchy and status are considered highly important in both Japan and Mexico in addition to a strong separation between the work and home life. Both Mexico and Japan rely on strong work relationships and loyalty in addition to having top down style of commination and information flow. Both countries have a belief in collectivism over individualism, according to Hofstede’s Value Dimensions, with Japan slightly higher on the index, similarly for the masculinity index. The implications of these characteristics can be viewed in each countries’ management approach. These societal values and characteristics influence each countries’ business behavior and methodologies. (Deresky, 2014)

Leadership and Motivational Strategies Individual/Group Behavior Individualism is the degree of independence a society maintains among its members. It basically has to do with whether the individual in each culture is define their self-image in terms of “we” or “I”. Individualistic societies like the United States and Australia people generally only worry about taking care of themselves and those closest to them. In collectivist society’s people belong to a group that take care of each other.

Individualism is the tendency of people to look after themselves and their immediate family only. This dimension is in direct contrast with collectivism, the tendency of people to belong to groups that look after each other in exchange for loyalty. Hofstede has found that economically advanced countries tend to place greater emphasis on individualism than do poorer countries. For example, the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Canada have high individualism. In contrast Ecuador, Guatemala, Pakistan, and Indonesia have low individualism. Although Hofstede did not measure changes in individualism along with a time continuum, he did find that Japan has a higher individualism score than any other country in the Orient. Given the

While many of the world’s economic powers seem similar, there is no doubt there are some very key differences. Many of these differences can be attributed to cultural differences within each of the countries. While many of these countries work together in global business efforts, cultural differences would certainly have a significant impact on management style, leadership and even work ethic of the employees. The United States and Japan are both strong economic powers that hold to a capitalistic economic system. Their management styles, however, are very different. This can often be explained through the differences in culture and management or leadership styles. Over the years, the two

The comparison between Japanese and North American educational systems is often used. The Japanese system, along with other Asian cultures, places importance on the group and the interdependence of its members (Cole & Cole, 2001, p. 541). The North American model, in contrast, focuses on the ideals of individuality and independence (Cole & Cole, 2001, p.541). This contrast is due to a conflicting cultural/social structure and outlook of the world. Japanese look at the development of self as doubled sided: the inner self and the social or public self (Hoffman, 2000, p.307). Within the Japanese education system, the teacher's goal is to

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.

The cultural value model that is being used in this outline is Hofstede’s Model. Although Japan and America have quite a few economic and technologic similarities, they contrast in many ways. The biggest difference between these two countries is Individualism vs. Collectivism. Hofstede himself finds that both of these cultures differ significantly on most these diminesions (Shah).

y single country in the world has their own cultural dimensions and some are higher than others or more individualistic. There are two countries that are similar but with few differences. One of the countries, Argentina, has one of the differences from the country Japan which is the individualism vs. collectivism and with Argentina they are the most individualist of all the Latin countries in the South American region. This is a result of the early rise middle class and of the migration waves as well. They do have some collectivism in there as well, but are merely in the individualism. Japan is more in the collectivism, but that is what the western views them as and there are the most individualist country of all Asian Countries. They are view as collective because they out harmony of the group first above the expressions and strong logic of dishonor for losing appearance. They are not the number collectivistic countries like all of the other Asian countries because they paternal society system where the first-born son gets the household name and the assets of the family that is inherited from the father. The youngest kids how to make their own lives with their core families to provide for them.

Many westerners view Japan as a collectivist country that differs greatly when comparing it to western countries such as the United States in cultural aspects. One may explain that Confucianism plays a key role in how the Japanese society functions. Others may argue that Japan is distinctively different and no other country share similar traits. People can see the evidence of Japan being a collectivistic country by comparing Japan to other countries in the concept of high-context society versus low-context society.

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.

A Dutch social psychologist and anthropologist named Geert Hofstede studied how different cultures interact with one another. The framework for assessing the many differences between nations and cultures was established by him and called the cultural dimensions theory. The theory uses six cultural dimensions to place a value on them. The six cultural dimensions are power, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, temporal orientation, and indulgence. The data Hofstede gathered was based on surveys conducted by IBM, a US technology and consulting firm (Cultural, 2013).

A Dutch Social psychologist, Geert Hofstede carried out research studies on cross-cultural groups and organizations. He defined culture as a collective programing of the mind that makes the members of one group different from those of another group. His studies were instrumental in the developing of a systematic framework that is used in the assessment and the differentiation of organizational and national cultures. The framework was designed to show how a society’s culture affects the values of the members, and also, how the values relate to their behaviors. Hofstede was born on October 2nd 1982 and was an employee of IBM. At IBM International, Hofstede worked as a trainer in management and also as a manager of research on personnel. It is at this point, when he made a transition into psychology from engineering. He was highly recognized through his work on developing the cultural dimensions theory. His work was found useful by scholars and practitioners who took interest in the relationships between different cultures. His position in IBM International gave him opportunities to interact with and study different cultures around the world. This is because IBM had over 70 subsidiaries in different countries around the world. Hofstede travelled and conducted surveys and interviews in different parts of the world regarding people’s behaviors in their workplaces and how they interacted.

Hoifstede (1984) asserts to have formulated the focal scopes of the notion of culture that affect work practices in varying countries. These differentiating components of culture are: Power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism vs individualism, femineity vs masculinity and short vs long term orientation.