Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions

I am delighted to have the second article from Global Guerrilla Marketing Coach, Alexa Ronngren and today she explains Geert Hofstede's techniques for analysing the cultural differences between countries.

I covered the Hostede theory in my MBA program and since then I have watched with interest as aspects of the cultural dimensions reveal themselves to me when I meet people from different backgrounds.

While I am filing this under Global Marketing, as each country becomes more multi-cultural, these factors will influence the success of your negotiations and relationships even if you never export.

Over to Alexa.

Who is Geert Hofstede?

Born 1928 in the Netherlands, Geert Hofstede started out his professional journey studying engineering.  Some time between 1945 and 1947, he went through a year-long internship that included a trip to Indonesia as an Assistant Ship Engineer.  World War II ended in 1945 and the world was full of change and possibilities.  We can only imagine how intriguing the dramatically different Indonesian culture must have been to this young Dutch student! 

Hofstede returned home and completed a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a tour of duty as a technical officer in the Dutch army.

After a few managerial jobs in industrial companies, he went back to school part-time to earn a Doctorate of Social Science.  This was when he got a job with IBM Europe to found and manage their Personnel Research Department. 

This position would lead him to become one of the world's utmost experts on culture and its influence on the workplace.

Since then, Hofstede has been dedicated to research and dissemination of his theories on culture.  He is a world renowned Professor Emeritus on the subject and has received countless honors within the intellectual community.  His books, which are often used as study material in international management classes, include:

• Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations (2001)
   
• Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (2004), Exploring Culture. Exercises, Stories and Synthetic cultures (2002)
   
• Uncommon Sense About Organizations: Cases, Studies, and Field Observations (1994) 
   
• Masculinity and Femininity: The Taboo Dimension of National Cultures (Cross Cultural Psychology)  (1998)
   
• Culture's Consequences, International Differences in Work-Related Values (Cross Cultural Research and Methodology)  (1980)

What are the Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions?

At IBM, Hofstede's job involved research and analysis on how culture affects the work place.  He had access to a large database of employees from over 70 countries. 

He started off by examining the 40 largest countries and uncovered four dimensions that separate cultures.  Later, the scope expanded to 50 countries and three regions.  In 2001, he combined data from other researchers to expand the reach to a full 74 countries.

Initially, he uncovered four dimensions:

• Power Distance Index (PDI),
   
• Individualism (IDV),
   
• Masculinity (MAS), and
   
• Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI). 

Recently, he added a fifth dimension, Long-Term Orientation (LTO). 

Since the inception of Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions, other cross-cultural studies have verified his results.  These studies include a group of commercial airline pilots and students in 23 countries, a set of civil service managers in 14 countries, and two sets of premium consumer studies in 15 and 19 countries.

Let us take a look at each of these dimensions and how they hold up to scrutiny. 

In order to create a good reference point for readers, each explanation is followed by a chart created with raw data from Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions.  I have chosen ten countries for our reference, including those where most of the visitors of this blog come from. [Thanks Alexa]

Power Distance Index (PDI)

Who decides who gets to be boss? 

Is it the authoritarian him or herself?  Or is it those who follow the ruler? 

According to Hofstede's research, the distance between the powerful and the less powerful is determined from the bottom up. 

So Power Distance (PDI) is a measure of how much "the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally."

Every society has some level of inequality, but that level varies greatly from one country to another.  The higher the value on this index, the more accepting the lower classes are of inequality in power.

 

My personal experience fits well with the results of this index.  Although inequality exists almost anywhere, the countries with a high PDI tend to have a more stringent hierarchy system.

Individualism (IDV)

Do people prefer to integrate in groups and organizations, or are they more prone to self-sufficiency?

The higher the score on Individualism (IDV), the looser the ties between people, and the more people in those cultures are expected to look after themselves. 

English speaking countries tend to rate very high on individualism.  In the US, for example, people are supposed to succeed based on their own personal efforts and merits. 

This stands in stark contrast to collectivist societies which have very low IDV scores.  In those societies, people are expected to help and protect each other and have strong group affiliations.  Often, these societies have a strong family bond that includes extended family, such as aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, in-laws, and so on.  Oriental societies generally score low on IDV.  This shows in the way business is often conducted as a family affair.

Masculinity (MAS)

In this dimension, qualities such as assertiveness and competitiveness are linked to masculinity, while modesty and caring is considered feminine qualities. 

According to Hofstede, "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." 

So Masculinity (MAS) is a measure of the distribution of roles between genders.  The higher the MAS score, the more competitive and assertive women are within that society.  Whereas in lower score countries, men tend to take on the more "feminine" qualities of caring and modesty.
 
 

The definition of the MAS dimension does fit with the results as I have experienced through my travels.  For example, in the US, "masculine" values such as competitiveness are instilled in children early on.  While in Sweden, a strong social system proves "feminine" values like caring.

Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI)

Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) is a measure of how comfortable society is with uncertainty and ambiguity. 

Cultures with high UAI scores socialize their members to feel uncomfortable with unstructured situations. 

Hofstede explains that these cultures "try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures, and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth; 'there can only be one Truth and we have it'."  People in these countries tend to be more emotional. 

On the other side of the spectrum are cultures that have a higher tolerance for change and provide less structure within society.  Low UAI societies lean toward relativism in religion and are more contemplative and less emotional.

There is some controversy with this index. 

Geert Hofstede's son, Gert Jan Hofstede, has continued and expanded upon his father's work.  He co-authored Culture and Organizations with Hofstede and is an Associate Professor at Universitair Hoofddocent in the Netherlands.  On his website, the younger Hofstede addresses an email he received stating that the UAI scores must be reversed.  He argues against this being the case, and tries to explain the scores as society's search for truth.  You can read it here:  http://www.info.wau.nl/people/Gertjan/understanding_dimensions.htm 

After living in over a dozen countries and visiting a few others, I think the situation is more complicated than that. 

I believe that Hofstede tried to correlate too many values into this index.  The countries scoring high UAI numbers tend to be more religious and emotional than low scores on this index.  However, my experience shows that some of the lower scoring countries are actually the ones with more rules and regulations.  Therefore, those societies are less tolerant of uncertainty and expect more structure.

Look at, for example, my two native countries of Brazil and the US. 

Brazilians are indeed more emotional than Americans.  Decisions are more often based on gut instinct and relationships rather than calculations and research.  However, Brazilian society has many less rules than Americans.  Also, rules within that society are looser and more prone to interpretation. 

In contrast, Americans tend to be more pragmatic.  However, US society is regulated in many ways.  Beginning at the neighborhood level there are rules and regulations governing what a person can and can not do on their own property.  Americans operate on a strict time frame.  In the US, rules are often fixed and exceptions are clearly forecasted and built into the regulations.  So, if a new condition arises, Americans are less likely to bend or break the rules. 

Brazilians look at things on a more emotional level.  If a new situation arises that has an emotional appeal against the rules, they will be bent or broken.

Long-Term Orientation (LTO)

This dimension was added based on results from a Chinese study of students in 23 countries.  This study was based on the teachings of Confucius, a Chinese philosopher from around 500 B.C.  However, the dimension is also relevant to countries which were not heavily influenced by the teachings of Confucius. 

Long Term Orientation (LTO) refers to the level of thriftiness and perseverance within a society.

Hofstede explains that a low LTO score, meaning the society has a Short-Term Orientation, represents "respect for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting one's 'face'."  The higher the score, the more a society is prone to saving and planning for the future.  In the chart below, scores were not available for Spain or the Arab World.

 

Here also, I think Hofstede used too many values in one dimension.  From my experience, the chart looks backwards, as the Chinese are very concerned with 'saving face' and have a deep respect for tradition.  Meanwhile, countries that are ranked low in this dimension are societies where planning and perseverance are common. 

You can read about the index and find the raw data at ITIM International's website.  It is a consulting company who has received permission from Dr. Hofstede to use his name and brand.   http://www.geert-hofstede.com/   

So far, I have covered the aspects that make up culture and the Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions in my first two posts as a guest blogger.  The final article of this triage will give advice on how to deal with and overcome cultural challenges.  You can find them all here on The Business Coach Blog.

Alexa Ronngren is the Global Guerrilla Marketing Coach.  She has almost two decades of experience, a BS in Business Marketing, a certification in Pricing, and is a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach.  She is currently writing Global Guerrilla Marketing: Crossing borders & leaping over the cultural divide.  In addition, she is a big fan of the Business Coaching Blog!  Check out her website: www.aldeia-marketing.com

Thanks Alexa.

A very interesting article and I see that you are being controversial and challenging Geert Hofstede's ideas.

If Alexa hasn't featured your country in the graphs, I can recommend the http://www.geert-hofstede.com/ website as the major countries are listed down the left hand side and you can just click and see how your country rates.

When I was first introduced to these ideas, I found it difficult to imagine how countries could be so different but as you become more familiar with the concepts, you will start seeing these factors come through in your dealings with the different nationalities.

Both Alexa and I would love to read your comments but watch out for the confirmation box. It is a bit sneaky in Typepad blogs but you do have to prove that you are human and not a computer spam generator.

Do you have stories to share about how you have experienced these cultural dimensions?

Follow this link if you missed Alexa's first article Global Marketing Understanding Culture & Customs

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Comments

[Saad]

Dear Sir,
Iam doing some research about the cultural differences and i would like to contact Greet Hofstede can you help me

[Wikus Strydom]

Just a thought, do u think Hofstede's cultural consequence theory is relevant in the business world of today?

[Paul Simister]

Wilkus, why shouldn't Hofstede's ideas still apply?

The world has got smaller thanks to the Internet but that has made people more aware of the cultural differences.