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Hofstede's Model

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The fundamental idea on which Hofstede’s model would eventually be based on had already emerged during the first half of the twentieth century. It was then that the view that all societies, modern and traditional, are confronted with the same basic problems and only their way of handling them is different evolved among social anthropologists. Particularly anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead played a significant role in spreading this opinion. Hence, through research, social scientists began to identify those problems all societies have in common (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov, 2010, p. 29). By means of a broad survey on English literature concerning national culture, Inkeles and Levinson (1954) came up with the following issues …show more content…

As they were similar in all regard besides their nationality, they represented an ideal sample to study differences in national culture and thus the influence of nationality was reflected rather well in their answers of the survey. With the aid of a statistical analysis of the survey the following four common problems were identified: “social inequality, including the relationship with authority”, “the relationship between the individual and the group”, “concepts of masculinity and femininity: the social and emotional implications of having been born as a boy or a girl” and “ways of dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity, which turned out to be related to the control of aggression and the expression of emotions” (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov, 2010, p. 30). Quite evidently these results corresponded very well with the findings of Inkeles and Levinson twenty years earlier. As a consequence, the first four cultural dimensions of Hofstede’s model were established: “power distance”, “collectivism versus individualism”, “femininity versus masculinity” as well as “uncertainty avoidance” (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov, 2010, pp. …show more content…

Nevertheless it has also attracted some criticism. Five very common critiques include that surveys are not an appropriate measure of cultural differences, using nations as a unit to study cultures is not suitable, findings resulting from the study of subsidiaries from one company do not apply to whole national cultures, the data from the IBM study is old and therefore outdated and four or five dimensions are not sufficient (Hofstede, 2002, p. 1356). In spite of these critiques, Hofstede’s model is one of the most popular cultural dimension models and is considered to be one of the most important works of corporate cultural studies. It is furthermore considered to be quite reliable as it was found empirically and is based on a fairly big sample that includes a wide range of nationalities from all over the world (Neelankavil and Rai, 2009, pp.

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Some of the pros are that Hofstede provided a definition of culture and how culture can be measured. His research showed that cultural differences matter. Also, Hofstede's model provides managers of cross-cultural relations a tool to help them understand differences in value sets and behavior. Hofstede's model helped people in day to day life by making them understand about different culture. Another pro is Hofstede model negates that one set of principles is universally applicable by confirming that there are multiple ways of structuring organizations and institutions.

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For example, consumers are becoming more similar in terms of lifestyles, income, aspirations and education. In order to clarify my statement, I would like to apply Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture. Masculinity and femininity is one of the Hofstede’s dimensions. The dominant values of masculine culture are achievement and success while dominant values in feminine cultures are caring for quality of life and others. The country that possesses the most masculine culture is Japan, which scores 95 (Geert and Mariake de, 2002).

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The theory of Hofstede says that the framework of cross cultural communication it’s described the effects on the culture of the society on the values of its members. Culture has been unclear in a many ways, Hofstede also says that culture as collective programming of the mind it is distinguished group or category of people from another. Also, he explains culture as the software of the mind and he identifies 3 aspects of human mental: human nature, personality and culture. Trompenaas definition is a model of differences in national cultures that model, it’s included 7 areas that are used to identify how people from different nations and cultures are interrupted with each others.

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However, it can be seen that the higher a country scores in Masculinity the higher is the gender gap in the society. For instance, In China and India this gender gap be easily seen. In these societies Men are more dominant. One can criticise the Hofstede research findings about the Masculinity and Femininity dimension as “the MAS scores are mainly based on men’s answers” (Hofstede G. , 1984).

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