Slide Topic 5 Week 14

Hofstede’s Five Dimensions
INDIVIDUALISM-
COLLECTIVISM
POWER DISTANCE
UNCERTAINTY
AVOIDANCE
MASCULINITY-
FEMININITY
LONG-TERM
ORIENTATION
Individualism -
Collectivism
Individual rights and freedoms are fundamental values in individualistic cultures.

Special emphasis is placed on personal career and remuneration. Collectivistic
cultures are built on a foundation of values: harmony between people in the group,
the priority of group needs and interests. Hofstede concludes that all rich countries
are individualistic and poor – collectivist.
This cultural dimension measures the degree of how much individuals in a

particular society care about themselves vs. care about others. Individualistic
societies tend to be more self-oriented where individual performance leads to
individual outcomes. Individual independency and interests are protected and
promoted.
In contrast, collectivist cultures are group-oriented where interdependency and

group interests override individual interests. Individuals are accountable to social
norms and individual performance is measured by social standards.
In societies individualistic relationships can be planned and either party to
terminate them if they replace them with a good offer from elsewhere. In
Power Distance
Each member of the organization defines different levels of owned

by him and other members of the group’s organizational status,
prestige and level in the organizational hierarchy. Various are the
rights deriving from the hierarchical level.
Subordinates carry out the decisions of superiors in a different way.

Use categories: gender, inequality, privilege, social position, status,
power, etc. Studies of Hofstede put Asian and South American
countries together with Belgium, France, Italy and Spain in the
group of countries with a high index of severity of hierarchical
position.
Scandinavian countries and the U.S. have low values of this

parameter, Bulgaria is among the countries that are characterized
by the greatest difference between managers and subordinates.
Uncertainty
Avoidance
There are societies in which the uncertainty of future worries people, and vice versa. For
those societies are characterized respectively high or low depending on the experts in
solving problems as small or large mode of individual consciousness to deal with them.
Societies that do not take the risk and fear of tomorrow, develop pluralism of opinions and
are willing to deal with individual problems. In other societies, people are fighting for the
future, they are nervous and aggressive. They feel threatened by the world around them
because they avoid the risk.
Hence the characteristics of the crop in their respective organizations: subordinates seek
clear instructions and managers, preferring more rules and laws. Bulgaria is among the
countries in which people feel moderately stressed, are more conservative beliefs and value
safety.
Masculinity-
Femininity
G. Hofstede defines masculinity as the extent to which dominant values in society are considered
aggressive, pursuing the goals by all means. The orientation is towards money and possession of
property.
Cultures with a feminine nature, appreciate the relationship between people, caring for others, overall
quality of life.
Dimension masculinity femininity “is important to determine the methods of reasoning in the job, the
choice of approaches to solving is most complex tasks of conflict resolution. Depending on national
cultures are formed organizational value systems and behaviour. Large transnational corporations are
constantly confronted with the problem of national cultures, assessed the compatibility of cultures,
predict the development of their interaction and assign them (incorporate).
These clusters show that there’s a level of cultural attraction between groups of nations so it’s easier to
make a general understanding of management practice. But there are dangers of making groupings of
countries.
Masculinity-
Femininity
The detail of how people behave in certain situations must be discovered by own
experience and discussions with people who have already worked with the particular
country.
Although having an understanding of a nation’s characteristics at a good level is very useful

in international business because in different parts of the world there’s a different
management styles and because each of the main business factors are affected by the
culture and cultural differences.
When a company is creating its international strategy, it should consider where and what is
going to sell, also to evaluate if the product will be accepted, because the future of the
product’s success depends on the cultural understanding of the people who are going to buy
it.
Masculinity-
Femininity
For example for a company selling pork meat will be impossible to sell in Islamic countries
because of the religion restrictions. Also staff should be employed in a variety of adequacy
in the foreign locations. So human resource management need to be sensitive to any
cultural need that might to individual countries. Similarly if a company wants to establish
overseas plants, the culture and cultural difference can easily affect the way of production
and content and format of any financial reports produced to report the firm’s performance.
It’s important to look how culture affects the operations management, international
marketing , human resource management and finance functions.
Long-term Orientation
The fifth dimension is long-term orientation, which refers to whether a culture has a long-
term or short-term orientation. This dimension was added by Hofstede after the original
four you just read about. It resulted in the effort to understand the difference in thinking
between the East and the West.
Certain values are associated with each orientation. The long-term orientation values
persistence, perseverance, thriftiness, and having a sense of shame. These are evident in
traditional Eastern cultures. Based on these values, it’s easy to see why a Japanese CEO is
likely to apologize or take the blame for a faulty product or process.
The short-term orientation values tradition only to the extent of fulfilling social obligations
or providing gifts or favours. These cultures are more likely to be focused on the immediate
or short-term impact of an issue. Not surprisingly, the United Kingdom and the United
States rank low on the long-term orientation.
Long-term Orientation
Long- and short-term orientation and the other value dimensions in the business arena are
all evolving as many people earn business degrees and gain experience outside their home
cultures and countries, thereby diluting the significance of a single cultural perspective.
As a result, in practice, these five dimensions do not occur as single values but are really
woven together and interdependent, creating very complex cultural interactions. Even
though these five values are constantly shifting and not static, they help us begin to
understand how and why people from different cultures may think and act as they do.
Hofstede’s study demonstrates that there are national and regional cultural groupings that
affect the behaviour of societies and organizations and that these are persistent over time.

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Hofstede’s Five Dimensions

Individual rights and freedoms are fundamental values in individualistic cultures.

This cultural dimension measures the degree of how much individuals in a

In contrast, collectivist cultures are group-oriented where interdependency and

Each member of the organization defines different levels of owned

Subordinates carry out the decisions of superiors in a different way.

Scandinavian countries and the U.S. have low values of this

Although having an understanding of a nation’s characteristics at a good level is very useful

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