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Hofstede 's Dimensions Theory

Introduction

Business Culture is the most important element that keeps the day to day work going in a smooth way. When comes to International Human Resource Management, Understanding the Cross culture business Behaviour is important when comes to Multinational Enterprises. 

Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory is one of best theories which illustrates the cultural values of its member may help to develop the work behaviour of him and able to motivate and increase the productivity as whole. Cultural values are analysed into four major dimensions and later added two more dimensions.

Basically it has been woven around differences in national values that multinational co-operations possess and it created a hypothesis helped by an international survey study.

Using the elements which qualify all these dimensions have an Index to itself to calculate how much it balances to the both sides of the scale.

   

  Critical Analyse of Dimensions of Hofstede’s Theory

   

Power Distance

 In Organization, the people in lower in hierarchy has less power when comes to elements like pay grade, responsibilities, line of communication etc. So this difference called “power distance”. And it’s accepted with differently as power is distributed unequally.

Cultures has lower low power distance are more democratic and consultative. Cultures have high power distance acknowledge the status of the people with their formal position.

But this scale or defined Power Distance Index does not affect the objectives and performance on subjectively.

In Western Cultures have less power distance comparing to Eastern cultures where people in low hierarchy consume much more independence. But Eastern cultures have this command system where people are given command by the higher hierarchy.

Some countries like USA have a middle index result. It could be due to their mixture of nationalities of industries due to capitalism.(“What About USA”,2008)

Individualism vs. Collectivism

Degree that individuals are integrated to a group will define whether it’s an individualistic or collectivist culture. When it says a group, it could be part of the department section or the organization as whole. Individualistic society’s people stand for themselves to protect their rights. Performance and motivation based on personal achievement.

Collectivistic cultures individuals work as cohesive group. Their goals are made taking the organization or group as a whole. It even could lead to unquestioned royalty.(mindtools,1996)

Developed countries have more individualistic cultural background when Developing countries have more collectivistic values. For example Canada (Western) has a higher score in the index where African countries have fewer score which makes a collectivistic culture. Japan and Arabia enjoys a balance scale in the index.

Uncertainty Avoidance

How tolerance of society for uncertainty and ambiguity are defined in Uncertainty Avoidance Index. How it does react to anxiety and try to minimize or avoid uncertainty. Cultures with higher uncertainty avoidance are more emotional. In business terms, it’s sensitive to risks and plan strategies and implements rules and regulations to avoid those circumstances. In high tolerance environments they are pragmatic and cope with changeable environment in an unstructured methodology.

Fewer countries comparing to other dimensions score lower scores where countries like Germany and Japan scores higher scores. Chinese cultures and Anglo, Nordic culture countries take higher risks comparing to countries which speaking German which scores higher.

Masculinity vs. Femininity

As the term defines, distribution of emotional roles between the genders is defined in this dimension. Cultural values in Masculinity are competitiveness, assertiveness, materialism ambition etc. Feminine cultures define its values in a qualitative way like relationship and Quality. In Cultures with femininity, gender has same values and emphasising modesty and caring. Opposite to that in Masculine cultures gender has strong role and tasks and works divided to that.

This dimension also known by users as Quantity of Life vs. Quality of Life, due to gender generalization. (“Quantity versus Quality”,2011)

Nordic countries like Norway or Sweden has less masculinity in its cultural blood where Germans speaking countries and countries like Japan have much more Masculine qualities.

Long Term Orientation vs. Short term Orientation

According to Independent research done by Hofstede in Hong Kong, he came with idea of another dimension called Long term vs. Short term orientation.

It was named as “confusian Dynamism”. In long term culture brings what’s more valuable to the future. A sustainable approach rather than looking at a past theoretical way, it approaches to realistic future. Capacity for future adaptation for future.

But in Short term orientation, It looks at theoretical way of how past values contributed to present. So keeping steady rules with respect to tradition, fulfilling social obligations as given.

So where Long Term creates future values Short term reciprocate the past values.

Eastern Asian countries like Japan, China have more futuristic vision while Muslim and African countries have a Short term orientation.

It has moderate scores in European countries.

Those could be derived due to their risks levels and what kind of position the employee or the member playing. (Vandaley, 2013)

                As a theory it’s accepted that these elements of each dimensions or the values of the culture has developed with geographical proximity, shared language, related historical background, religious beliefs and practices and political system.

And it could be fuzzy to derive a solution from a theory which has lot of dimensions.

‘This is exciting, but it can also be frustrating and fraught with uncertainty. How do you relate to someone of another culture?’

(http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_66.htm)

For example countries which has capitalistic political system tends to have a lower power distance and have more individualistic cultural norm comparing to countries with socialistic political system enjoys a collectivistic cultural values with high power distance where people as a group have more power and one is there to delegate others. Bribery corruption is very common on those norms. 

Theory of Hofstede has a greater practical use comparing to others and it’s pragmatic to culture sociology. It’s widely used in businesses in many domains. When comes to International or Multinational Co-operations it brings a greater help to motivate and work effectively with people when understanding one cultural values by people who have different values comparing to the previous. It’s very helpful if the two communicating parties have exactly opposite values. Example High power distance vs. Lower power distance. And it helps to make transactions and deals successful for companies who have international clients. So communication and negotiation becomes easy because people tend to know what the supplier or the customer expects rather than the price and the quality of the product.

It talks about more than twenty cultural norms and it has a broader definition, it helps to bridge the gap and increase productivity, decrease failures of transactions and communication, Increasing the innovation , decrease of loss of resources due to internal competition , giving space for new comers and create more enjoyable workforce and workplace.

When comes to business rather than other models Hofstede tried to capture the essence of the cultural values which has a commercial benefit and advantages even though he is a psychologist. So applying them in a practical manner is easy. For example when dealing with a country which has a Long Term Orientation, bringing sustainable products or product solution is more viable where in Short Term Orientation culture the solution is simply to bring the price down.

But it has it’s drawback a lot too. It focuses on one country’s culture and checks how it difference from other and divide a line between it. But one country may have many subcultures and it may have different values. Also some regions may have different values or ideology than the country itself.

Hofstede generalises about the entire national population in each country solely on the basis of analysis of a few questionnaire responses. The respondents were simply certain categories of employees in the subsidiaries of a single company: IBM. What evidence does he have that they were nationally representative? None. He just assumes it. Sometimes he supposes that every individual in a nation shares a common national culture. At other times he claims to have found in the IBM data a "national norm" or "central tendency", or "average [national] tendency." Both claims are problematic. (McSweeney.2002)

This is justified by a survey. It’s difficult to guarantee the accuracy of the data. For example the way the data was taken could be questionnaires. Questionaries has its own drawbacks.

It’s standardised, people cannot explain what deviates from it and people tend to forget important points before give the answer. As for example as an individual person could give an answer which reflect the country has individualistic culture but if it was asked as a group it may be exact opposite.

Some argues that the way it was programmed the respondents were already mentally programmed with cultural non interacting influences. Cultures were Organisational, Occupational and National Cultures.

How does Hofstede claim to have identified national culture in IBM subsidiaries? As well as supposing the existence of such cultures, and the typicality of what he could identify in that company, he had to make a number of other and equally implausible assumptions in order to be able to assert that he could describe, indeed measure, these cultures.   

                                                              (Geert-hofstede.international-business-center.com)

Also data is not up to date. With the globalisation and technology culture changes and it could be expired in the long term.

And also it creates a line whether it’s low power distance or high power distance; individualistic or collectivistic but it may have a mix of opinions, the mix of opinions only catch in a quantitative method when comes to Index but it becomes unclear or fuzzy when it’s practically used.

Summary

So basically what we did in this analyse is to look at the Hofstede theory in Cultural Values in different countries in a critical way and how it could be explained and how the dimensions has  been brought up by its elements.

It has given how countries have different scores in the indexes of dimensions and how it may have similarities with each other countries and differences.

It exercises the advantages of its practical uses and limitations as a theory and the drawbacks of the way the theory was brought up.

Conclusion

It’s clear that most standardised theory for cultural norms and it’s use when comes to International Organizations could be Hofstede theory but it has its drawbacks but those problems could be reduced with using good problem solving mechanisms.

Creating a date amendments to the theory could help an organization to create a good internal and external cultural environment.

References

Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Understanding Workplace Values Around the World. Retrieved May 28 2013, from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_66.htm

Retrieved on 27 May 2013 from Wikipedia.org

Retrieved on 27 May 2013 from geert-hofstede.international-business-center.com

Dimensions.  Retrieved May 12 2013, from http://geert-hofstede.com/dimensions.html

Trice H.M., & Beyer J.M. (1993).The Cultures of Work Organizations. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Davis K., & Newstorm J.W. (1989) .Human Behaviour at Work. USA: McGraw-Hill.

McSweeney B. (2002). Hofstede's Model of National Cultural Differences and Their Consequences: A triumph of faith - A failure of analysis". Retrieved 2013 May 29, from http://geert-hofstede.international-business-center.com/.