HOFSTEDE'S WORK ON NATIONAL CULTURE

Hofstede's work on national culture

Hofstede's work on national culture

Introduction

Hofstede's main research on national culture is principally described in Culture's Consequences (1980a; 1984). On a few occasions he has added to his model, but he has never acknowledged any significant errors or weaknesses in that research. Indeed many of his subsequent publications are robust, at times aggressive, defenses of his 1980 methods and findings. As most readers will already be familiar with Hofstede's national culture research, a very brief outline only is given here. Where necessary greater detail is provided in the critique of his research methodology.

Hofstede's work on national culture

Hofstede's primary data was extracted from a pre-existing bank of employee attitude surveys undertaken around 1967 and 1973 within IBM subsidiaries in 66 countries. In retrospect some of the survey questions seemed to Hofstede to be pertinent to understanding the respondents' 'values' which he defines as 'broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others' and which are for him the 'core element in culture' (1991: 35). He statistically analyzed the answers to these survey questions. How does Hofstede conceptualize national culture? He treats it as implicit; core; systematically causal; territorially unique; and shared. These alleged characteristics are first described, and later challenged.

Implicit: The notion of 'culture' has multiple and variously inclusive definitions (Kroeber & Kluckholm, 1952; Bock, 1999). Sometimes the description 'culture' is applied exclusively to what is observable or 'recordable' (e.g. Lukacs (1971 [1922]; Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Crane, 1994; Melville & Readings, 1995). An alternative conception of culture is: 'subjective', or 'implicit'. Hofstede is firmly of this view. He describes culture as 'mental programming', as 'software of the mind', as 'subjective' (1980a). Similarly Rossi (1989) speaks of the: 'unconscious infrastructure', and Schein of the 'basic assumptions and beliefs ... that operate unconsciously' (1985). Cultural 'systems' and social systems are treated as analytically distinct but related - the latter being theorized as the dependant variable.

Core: The alleged distinctiveness of a national culture has been characterized in the literature as an absolute difference between either (a) the total or 'complete' (Mead, 1962: 409) culture of those in one nation and that of others, or (b) more commonly as a nationally discrete part, core, a 'nucleus' (Fromm, 1984 [1949]). Hofstede assumes the latter; that national culture is a 'common component' (1980a: 38) of a wider culture which contains both global and sub-national constituents.

Systematically Causal: Within the wider literature the causal status of culture varies from being a supremely independent variable, the superordinate power in society to, at the other extreme, a mere epiphenomenon, a powerless superstructure (Archer, 1989; Alexander & Seidman, 1990). It is possible to assume the existence of national culture but without attributing significant and unique, indeed any, social patterning effects to such cultures. However, Hofstede credits strong, often absolute, causality to national cultures (e.g. 1991: 170). Essentially he endorses national cultural determinism.

Territorially Unique: The notion of national culture in the work of Hofstede is not merely of culture of ...