Limitations of Hofstede's Culture Dimension Model

Writing Assignment III: The Essay

300080 English for the Future Summer term 2014

The limitations of Hofstede's cultural dimensions model

Christoph Hofer ANR: 812338

Tilburg, 17th March 2014

1

Culture doesn’t mean the same to everyone because of its wide range of different meanings. By looking at the recent decades, researchers do not agree on one “right” definition of the term culture.

Geert Hofstede, a Dutch researcher, offered a completely new perception of culture and cultural distinctions between different countries in his book Culture's Consequences (1980). Due to the circumstance, that many different cultures with different values exist in the world, Hofstede developed four cultural dimensions (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity) which should help to distinguish countries regarding their cultural attitudes.

On the one hand, there are many supporters of his model and on the other hand, there are many detractors those do not represent the same opinion as the Dutch author. In this essay, the discussion centers on possible limitations of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model discovered by several researchers.

Firstly, a brief explanation of Hofstede's four dimensions, which should help to distinguish between different cultures, is given. He developed those dimensions after the evaluation of a survey with standardized questions, which was handed out to several IBM workers in several countries in the world. The four dimensions could be described as follows:

Power Distance displays the degree of accepting disparity between a manager or a boss and a subaltern. (Hofstede, 2001). The Uncertainty Avoidance dimension shows how people and communities cope with an uncertain future (Hofstede, 2001). As a third value dimension, Hofstede explains the differences between people who act in an individualistic way and those people who are more group-focused (Hofstede, 2001). Finally, the fourth...