cultural influences on leadership

There are five Dimensions of Culture that Hofstede mentions in International Business, The Challenge of Global Competition. These include: Individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity and long-term orientation/Confucian dynamism. Understanding these dimensions will assist a U.S.

The model of six dimensions of national culture, one of the most powerful studies to describe cultural differences, is the result of the detailed research by Geert Hofstede and Geert Jan Hofstede between 1967 and 1973. By measuring the six dimensions on a scale from 0 to 100 the model helps to differentiate cultures as well as explaining work-related values. Hofstede identified the following six dimensions including the Power distance index (PDI), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI), Long term orientation versus Short term normative orienta-tion (LTO), Indulgence versus Restraint (IND) which will be analyzed now. (Griffin & Pustay 2015 p.127); (de Mooij 2010, pp.74-75); (Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov 2010 pp. 55-296)

‘ What are the differences of managers’ leadership styles between the Western and Non-Western cultures ?’

Nordic countries exhibit low masculinity, with Sweden and Norway scoring 5 and 8 respectively. Again, Anglo countries, Japan, and European countries such as Switzerland, Austria and Hungary have high masculinity scores.

Masculinity vs. femininity is another one of Hofstede’s categories. The word ‘masculinity’ refers to countries

According to Models2use, Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory is a framework for cross-cultural communication. It describes the effects of a society’s culture on the

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.

Masculinity values are those who are determined, fierceness, performance, and the acquisition of money and material objects. Whereas for femininity values are focus on quality of life, maintaining personal relationship, and care for the weak and the environment are emphasized (Rees & Edwards, 2011). In Hofstede et al. (2010), masculinity are high in Japan, German, Italy, and Mexico. According to Hofstede 's analysis, if you were to open an office in Japan, you might have greater success if you appointed a male employee to lead the team and had a strong male contingent on the team. In country like Sweden, there are more to feminine side. They will focus a group which can balance in terms of skills rather than gender significance.

This is the degree in which all the tough qualities such as assertiveness and success competition and performance are associated with men in the society. The association of such roles with men as opposed to the soft characteristics such as warm personal relationships softness as well as tenderness is connected with women in the society (Geert-hofstede.com, 2016). Since women roles and men roles differ in different countries, it is definite that this is one of the aspects or dimensions that define the cultural complexity of the different societies. This element measures the concern with possessive values of advancing career goals, salary and respectability as it usually reflects the vanity of masculinity. Masculinity represents quantity while

The masculinity versus femininity dimension does not biologically compare differences between men and women, but focuses on “gender roles”. Masculinity stands for achievement, assertiveness, competition, recognition, challenge, domination, power, toughness and alike. While femininity stands for tenderness, cooperation, security, relationships and care for the living environment. An individual could for instance be both masculine and feminine at the same time, while the culture in a country is either predominantly masculine or predominantly feminine because the majority of the population is either being more masculine or more feminine (Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov, 2010).

Professor Geert Hofstede is a Dutch social psychologist who has extensively studied the interactions between different cultures and their influences in the workplace. His theory is found on the concept that value can be placed on six different cultural dimensions. These dimensions include, power, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, temporal orientation, and indulgence ("Geert Hofstede and cultural dimensions theory," 2011). His data was gathered through surveys carried out by his former employer International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). With his data, he projected a scoring system from one to one hundred and twenty which scores countries based on the dimensions from his

The result from the comparison suggests the similarity of two countries reside on Masculinity versus feminity. Both scored high above 60 (see Appendix A for statistics), China and the U.S are the country both favor masculinity, or males dominate matters

By 2010 the model was completed after a final two more dimensions were added, named pragmatism and indulgence. The research carried out was conducted by Michael Minkov, who studied modern World Values Survey data taken from population samples nationally. Author Robert R.McCrae supports Hofstede’s dimensions by believing that they ‘represent a well-validated operationalization of differences between cultures as manifested in dominant value systems’ (McCrae, 2004). However, as studied on the Geert Hofstede website, only 6 dimensions are needed and necessary in defining culture attributes, resulting in pragmatism being dropped because of overlapping of meanings with long-term orientation.

Masculinity (MAS) versus its opposite, femininity, refers to the distribution of roles between the genders which is another fundamental issue for any society to which a range of solutions are found. The IBM studies revealed that (a) women's values differ less among societies than men's values; (b) men's values from one country to another contain a dimension from very assertive and competitive and maximally different from women's values on the one side, to modest and caring and similar to women's values on the other. The assertive pole has been called 'masculine' and the modest, caring pole 'feminine'. The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men's values and women's values.

Culture can be interpreted as a set of ideas with purpose to design living standards. It is an arrangement of intellectual abilities that governs a person’s behaviour, beliefs, values, language, and more (Weber, 1978). This allows distinguishability between people with different norms. For a developed understanding of the various aspects, Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede has formulated a theory on cultural dimensions. Through this tool, Hofstede explains how culture affects values. Furthermore, Hofstede relates these values to behaviour. For his study, the