Geert and Gert Hofstede’s revised book, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind contains three different approaches to understanding cultures and management throughout the world and thus need to be examined separately. The first reintroduces and builds upon Geert’s work in the 1970s on cross cultural differences among IBM’s global network of employees using his five dimensions of High vs Low Power Distance, Individualism vs Collectivism, Masculinity vs Feminism, High vs Low Uncertainty and Long vs Short Term orientation in order to help differentiate national characteristics. Part Two is an attempt to create a similar language for different business cultures in organizations. This is done through documenting similar methods to Geert’s IBM research, measuring the differences between employees within an organization, differing company goals and attempting to show how nationality can influence the value held. Part Three is intended to be a practical guide for recognizing and dealing with cultural differences and shocks and advice for differing groups to use, such as multinationals, politicians, media groups and parents. Its methodology, particularly in the first half of the book is to start from a statistical framework for highlighting differences and then justifying it with real world experience and academic research. This is where its success lies. However, as the book develops it becomes too general and as a consequence holds less authority, as it becomes less scientific, too broad and more effectively covered by other textbooks.
Introductionary Section
The backbone of Hofstedes’ book is that culture mentally programs everybody, both consciously and unconsciously, with society forming peoples values as a result of symbols (words, gestures, pictures, or objects), heroes (people living or not highly prized in a culture) and rituals (unnecessary collective activities carried out for their own sake. Presented in the form of an “Onion” (below), which shows the interrelationship and the steps that form values and how each group is visible (the furthest away from the centre).
Geert’s work considers this to be self replicating, with one generation passing down its fundamental beliefs, which although slightly changing as a result of individual personality and contemporary developments in the world will still continue.
This notion is even stretched into the context of social Darwinism, with a belief that differing cultural patterns exists for different groups of apes and chimpanzees. The differing forces put on man, it is explained forced man to live with differing values to others, as climate and differing challenges forced communities across the world to employ different priorities in order to be more successful. Gradually developing throughout the periods of man, Darwinism sits comfortably with Hoftedes’ cultural reasons as to why some people took on certain characteristics, even explaining why some races disappeared, declined in influence and why there were some major events in history, such as the reformation. This is obviously creates a form of analytical bias, which forms a more of an social evolutionary framework than political, economic or even religious (often too heavily criticized, possibly from a scientific bias) analysis of world events and development.
The attempts to highlight the methods of research draw an interesting insight into the process of analysis. The procedure of validating, i.e. drawing assumptions from the real world in order to justify statistics can be dangerous, as it can result in people seeing validation everywhere, despite having misleading information. However, the text is well research is well balanced, with views from
Part One: Dimensions of National Cultures
Geert Hofstead’s research into IBM employees from around the world was an attempt to understand the differing values that people hold and to create some language or tools for understanding why this exists and how this can effect future actions. The aforementioned dimensions of High vs Low Power Distance, Individualism vs Collectivism, Masculinity vs Feminism, High vs Low Uncertainty and Long vs Short Term provide highly interesting conclusions to different thinking patterns.
The dimension of High vs Low Power Distance has been able to differentiate between countries desire for either highly regarded figures, whether private, public or communal or the ability to question authority and expect more from them. This method was able to differentiate between groups of countries, such as the Scandinavian block, which favored a more democratic process and more authoritarian countries such as
Individualism vs Collectivism highlights how people and groupings prioritize themselves, with individualist countries favoring personal ambition, whereas collectivists put a greater emphasis on group priority. This enables analysis as to why
Masculinity is described as a method of achieving results no matter what the costs, whereas Femininity is the belief in allowing other things to be prioritized in society than material gain. With this tool the book was able to detail why masculine countries such as the
High verses Low uncertainty countries responses to events and groups of people were considered to be highly different as a result of differing needs for stability and fear of unknown groups or events. The data collection was used to justify why it may have been possible for racism in
The fifth dimension, Short vs Long Term Orientation describes how and why some cultures have their eye on the future, such as China, whereas countries such as the United States are very much focused on the now. This assumption is used to justify policies ranging from why Americans do not save enough to factors underlining what people desire from relationships.
The success of this strain of analysis is to highlight not only differences more obvious between continental cultures but also subsets, highlighting differences between (for example) North European and Southern European as a result of different climates, resources, history forming habits. As a result conclusions as to the similarities between
The method of analysis using validation from an evolutionary perspective has been very well used. However, many assumptions, although appearing correct become misleading after detailed analysis. For example, bracketing the growth of Protestantism in England and Germany together as a cultural movement is misleading, as it was politically top down (ie Henry VIII) in England and bottom up (as a result of the Gettysburg Press). So much emphasis is put on culture by the authors that it forgets that there are moments in history where cultures are formed as a result of institutions (such as the growth of English Protestantism) or from major events that cause shifts in cultures (although briefly mentioned more could have been made on the potential effects of the September 11th attacks on America’s uncertainty avoidance for example.
Part Two: Cultures in Organizations
Satisfied by the analysis of why different cultures have alternative beliefs and habits, Part Two attempts to do the same in terms of work culture and management. However, its emphasis on summarizing other works and integrating them into the authors’ own viewpoint shows a lack of confidence and less of a coherent method of cutting across the thinking and processes of individual companies than in Part One.
Highlighting works such as Mintzberg’s Cultural and Organizational Structure help to understand organizations, such as the five configurations (The Simple Structure, The Machine Bureaucracy, The Professional Bureaucracy, The Divisionalized Form and the Adhocracy). This can help highlight how an organization coordinates, standardizes and monitors processes. Again, there is felt to be some sort of correlation between his conclusions and that of the IBM inter country research, with the idea that certain countries would hold preferences for certain structures, such as the
Similarly, the summary of the different Corporate Goals of national companies similarly offers an interesting look as to how companies govern themselves. The rankings of the six greatest priorities of businessmen also seem to correlate well with Geert Hofstede’s Five Dimensions Theory.
Hofstedes’ conclusions over risk and accountancy practices seem to fit rather well, with differences in Power Distances and Uncertainty enabling for a suitable point of discussion for differing accounting practices. The notion of symbols is also used well as a tool to differentiate the differences in the value of money and the conventions held between bankers and accountants.
In their analysis, Geert and Gert Jan reference American management theories very rarely. Whilst discussing leadership and motivation they feel the need to mention it but as European academics are keen to distance themselves, with only one American quotation in the whole text. Their cynicism is seen when highlighting the situations which enable American models to be successful but also showing how the differences that exist between countries (as shown in the 5 dimensions) highlight a poor fit of cultural styles. Later they back this up, citing the failure of organizational culture theories when adapted to
The more original research into organizational cultures find six dimensions, namely Handling People vs Handling Things (comparing the roles or nurses and engineers in who or what they deal with); Specialist vs Generalist (a psychologist would be more specialist than a politician, say); Disciplined vs Independent (a police officer would have less discretion than a shopkeeper); Structured vs Unstructured (a systems analyst would have more of a defined role than a fashion designer); Theoretical vs Practical (a professor would be more academic than a salesman) and Formative vs Pragmatic (where procedures were more important than results, such as in the public sector).
This is built upon when these results were used to distinguish between Elephants, slow bulky but self confident companies and Storks, reliable, caring and transporting companies. Subcultures are more easily understood when tied in with further theories on Alienation, Commitment to work, a personal need for achievement, personal masculinity, orderliness and authoritarianism.
Similar to Geert Hofstead’s 5 dimensions of national cultures the 6 dimensions of organizations are non discriminatory, merely being tools to analyze the differences between companies and possibly help judge the possible suitability. Although useful as a result of not focusing entirely on cultural issues the topic feels like a shoe-in of new management theories into Geert Hofstede’s cultural dynamics philosophy covered in Part One. As a result the theory is useful, although not revolutionary.
Part Three: Implications
The third part offers a range of situations, such as diplomacy or in business, which helps to highlight flaws in cross cultural misunderstanding. For example, dangers to international mergers and acquisitions have been highlighted in situations such recognizing both areas for at least an interim period and the necessity of charasmatic leadership
Problems of culture shock are summarized well in the Acculturation Curve (below), which summarize a tourist or expatriate worker over time. This is divided into Euphoria (A), the positive experience of finding something new, Culture Shock (B) the readjusting to new norms, Acculturation (C), the coming to terms with a new environment and A Stable Set (D), where the experience settles and is either positive, neutral or negative.
Time
The book suggests that failures from cultural shocks are overestimated, with statistics quoted usually being echoed from unreliable sources. It also appears correct in addressing that problems that do occur and suggests useful methods to limit this. In the case of businesses the advice of forcing expats to integrate more and give them adequate cultural teaching (if language training is too difficult given the time) is helpful but not too illuminating.
Conclusion
This book is an interesting and broad introduction to the challenges of organization and individuals dealing with other beliefs and processes. The development of cross cultural understanding using the language of Hofstede’s five dimensions mentioned in Part One can be a highly powerful tool for analysis. The management advice in Part Two for looking at organizations and comparing is useful, although not revolutionary. Similarly, the Third Part creates a useful insight into the challenges created from dealing with other cultures, although it is not as distinct as the advice offered in other texts. Ultimately the three part approach to cross culture is interesting but flawed. The quality of writing at the beginning was so much more thought out than the final two parts that the authors would have benefited from more of an integration of ideas or treated as three separate topics in different books.
This review was written by Jonathan McHugh in April 2006
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