Hofsteede's Cultural Dimensions (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: A/B, University of Linz (International Management), course: International Management, language: English, abstract: In the globalising world where multinational organisations work across borders the question of cultural differences and mutual understanding seems to be highly relevant and has been discussed by many researches in the last decades. National culture can be viewed as the norms, values and beliefs shared by individuals from a particular nation that distinguish it from other nations (Nový I., Schroll-Machl S. et al. (2001): Interkulturální komunikace v rízení a podnikání). Our cultural environment is natural for us but people from other cultures may not be comfortable with it or may not understand. The behaviors that are consistent with the norms of one culture may violate the norms of another like for example: the time that the German account executive expects the Mexican manager to arrive at their 12:30 lunch appointment is 12:30. When the Mexican manager agreed on 12:30, he didn't know that she would be annoyed by him not arriving or calling before 1:00 (http://tbs-intranet.tees.ac.uk/international/ccd/ccd_block2.htm ,19. 6. 2002).

Therefore when we talk about differences between cultures, then we are speaking in generalities. Therefore we should be aware of expectations that every idividual will behave in a manner consistent with those generalizations, because even within cultures, people differ from each other. Why do we study national culture anyway? The study of human behavior and the practice of leadership and management continually require the use of generalizations. It is still worth to search for models that predict human behavior, even if those predictions can't always be accurate. Some of the most popular models are Hofstede's Theory and the model of Trompenaars.