Toolkit: Hofstede's cultural dimensions
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The main purpose of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions is to make cross-cultural comparisons.
Just a reminder to keep a record of all the tools in the table below. As long as you can fill in all the cells of the table, you will be able to write a successful IA.
How to
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are a tool for cross-cultural comparisons. It works in any situation when a manager needs to compare different national cultures. For example, when an organisation is considering relocating to a different country, opening a branch in a new country, resolving a conflict between colleagues of different nationalities, or any other relevant situation when comparing national cultures makes sense. Applying the tool is very simple: just understand the six cultural dimensions and compare national cultures.
This tool is for comparisons of national cultures: Russian, Chinese, Indian, American, French, etc. For organisational cultures, please review class 2.5. Don’t confuse national cultures with organisational cultures.
This is the most important link in this class: www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison-tool. You can just go to the website and explore it yourself or continue reading my summary. First, I will introduce the 6 dimensions and will explain what high and low scores mean for each dimension. Then, I will explain how to compare different countries in terms of the six dimensions.
There is no “good” and “bad” in each dimension. These are just differences. For example, individualism is not better than collectivism, and collectivism is not better than individualism. These are just different cultures.
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