CULTURAL DIVERSITY

Cultural Diversity



Cultural Diversity

Hofstede

Trompenaars

GLOBE

Similarities

Power distance

using a similar definition to Hofstede

using a similar definition to Hofstede

Individualism/collectivism

Individualism vs.

Communitarianism

Same as Hosftede

Uncertainty avoidance

Dynamism

Sequential vs. Synchronous

Differences

Masculinity/femininity

Institutional Collectivism

Future orientation

Assertiveness

Performance orientation

Humane orientation

In-group collectivism

Gender egalitarianism

French (2010) states, that Hofstede is the pioneer of cross-cultural study and the most influential organizational sociologist. Moreover, Hoecklin (1995) praises his pioneering work, and Powell (2006) claims that Hofstede created a milestone of cultural study and a driving force for other researchers to continue researching about culture.

However, there are several other influential and important studies about culture by Trompenaar, Schwartz, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, Hall and Hall, and recently the GLOBE project. These studies deepen the study of culture by making it more feasible and understandable. Hofstede (2001) states, that about 200 external comparative studies, support the cultural differences measured by his indices (Hofstede,1984, pp. 417-433). The most important ones, are the one stated above, which Hofstede uses within his book to support his dimensions. Each study correlates with some of the identified cultural dimensions, but none of them, except of the GLOBE project, which is built on Hofstede's framework, included all dimensions. A comparison of Hofstede's dimensions and other cultural studies is shown in figure.

Trompenaar: Beside Hoistede, Trompenaar's study on national culture differences is probably the second most popular study of cultural differences. Trompenaar and Hampden-Tumer (1997) surveyed 15O0O managers from 28 nations and received around 500 valid responses from each country and developed seven dimensions on which culture diverge. Of those dimensions, five are used to describe how people deal with each other while the other two refer to 1he concepts of time and environment. The seven dimensions are:

Several of those dimensions have overlaps with some of Hofstede's cultural dimension. Individualism versus Communitarianism relates to Individualism versus Collectivism, Achievement versus Ascription to Power Distance and Sequential versus Synchronous to Long-term orientation. However, Hofstede (1996) criticized Trompenaar's study for being cultural biased and questioned the representativeness of his study (Luthans & Doh, 2010, pp.111-180).

GLOBE project: The 'Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness' research project (GLOBE) reports the result of a ten-year research program and is designed to conceptualize, operationalize, test, and societal, organisational and leadership effectiveness. 170 investigators from 62 cultures worked on this project and obtained data from 17,300 managers in 951 organisations. The third round of obtaining data from over 17,000 managers is taking place right now in the year 2010/2011. The origins and foundations of the GLOBE approach are derived from the models and dimensions described above (Hui & Triandis, 1986, pp. 225-248). The GLOBE dimensions mainly adopted Hofstede's (1980) cultural dimensions and hence identified the following dimensions out of their huge amount of data:

Resulting from the Table, it is obvious that Hofstedes (2001) cultural dimensions have got always one or more counterparts in several other studies and especially GLOBE is supporting every single dimension of Hofstede and even adding further ones. Thus, GLOBE can be seen as the contemporary, Intensified and broader version of Hofstedes cultural dimension. However, the appliance is not as simple as Hofstedes ...