Geert Hofstede | Dimensions of national Cultures

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Prehistory ofcultureDimensions ofnational culturesDimensions oforganizationalculturesFuture of culture

Dimensions of national CulturesGeert has operated in an international environment since 1965, and hiscuriosity as a social psychologist led him to the comparison of nations,first as a travelling international staff member of a multinational (IBM)and later as a visiting professor at an international business school inSwitzerland. His 1980 book Culture's Consequences combined hispersonal experiences with the statistical analysis of two unique databases. The first and largest comprised answers of matched employeesamples from 40 different countries to the same attitude surveyquestions. The second consisted of answers to some of these samequestions by his executive students who came from 15 countries andfrom a variety of companies and industries. Systematic differencesbetween nations in these two data bases occurred in particular forquestions dealing with values. Values, in this case, are "broad preferencesfor one state of affairs over others", and they are mostly unconscious.

The first four dimensionsThe values that distinguished countries (rather than individuals) fromeach other grouped themselves statistically into four clusters. They dealtwith four anthropological problem areas that different national societieshandle differently: ways of coping with inequality, ways of coping withuncertainty, the relationship of the individual with her or his primarygroup, and the emotional implications of having been born as a girl or asa boy. These became the Hofstede dimensions of national culture: PowerDistance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism versus Collectivism, andMasculinity versus Femininity. Between 1990 and 2002, these dimensionswere largely replicated in six other cross-national studies on very differentpopulations from consumers to airline pilots, covering between 14 and 28countries. In the 2010 third edition of our book Cultures andOrganizations: Software of the Mind, scores on the dimensions are listedfor 76 countries.

Power DistancePower distance (click to hear it being introduced by Geert in ten minutes)is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations andinstitutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributedunequally. This represents inequality (more versus less), but defined frombelow, not from above. It suggests that a society's level of inequality isendorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power andinequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any society andanybody with some international experience will be aware that "allsocieties are unequal, but some are more unequal than others".

Uncertainty AvoidanceUncertainty avoidance deals with a society's tolerance for uncertainty andambiguity. It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members tofeel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations.Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, different fromusual. Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of suchsituations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures, and onthe philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth: "therecan only be one Truth and we have it". People in uncertainty avoidingcountries are also more emotional, and motivated by inner nervousenergy. The opposite type, uncertainty accepting cultures, are moretolerant of opinions different from what they are used to; they try to haveas few rules as possible, and on the philosophical and religious level theyare relativist and allow many currents to flow side by side. People withinthese cultures are more phlegmatic and contemplative, and not expectedby their environment to express emotions.

IndividualismIndividualism on the one side versus its opposite, collectivism, is thedegree to which individuals are integrated into groups. On theindividualist side we find societies in which the ties between individualsare loose: everyone is expected to look after her/himself and her/his

Geert Hofstede& Gert Jan Hofstede

Geert Hofstede | Dimensions of national Cultures

http://geerthofstede.nl/dimensions-of-national-cultures[14-Sep-15 9:57:11 AM]

immediate family. On the collectivist side, we find societies in whichpeople from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups,often extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) whichcontinue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. The wordcollectivism in this sense has no political meaning: it refers to the group,not to the state. Again, the issue addressed by this dimension is anextremely fundamental one, regarding all societies in the world.

MasculinityMasculinity versus its opposite, femininity, refers to the distribution ofemotional roles between the genders which is another fundamental issuefor any society to which a range of solutions are found. The IBM studiesrevealed that (a) women's values differ less among societies than men'svalues; (b) men's values from one country to another contain a dimensionfrom very assertive and competitive and maximally different fromwomen's values on the one side, to modest and caring and similar towomen's values on the other. The assertive pole has been calledmasculine and the modest, caring pole feminine. The women in femininecountries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in themasculine countries they are more assertive and more competitive, butnot as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap betweenmen's values and women's values.

The fifth dimension: Long-Term OrientationResearch by Michael Bond and colleagues among students in 23 countriesled him in 1991 to adding a fifth dimension called Long- versus Short-Term Orientation. In 2010, research by Michael Minkov allowed to extendthe number of country scores for this dimension to 93, using recentWorld Values Survey data from representative samples of nationalpopulations. Long- term oriented societies foster pragmatic virtuesoriented towards future rewards, in particular saving, persistence, andadapting to changing circumstances. Short-term oriented societies fostervirtues related to the past and present such as national pride, respect fortradition, preservation of "face", and fulfilling social obligations.

The sixth dimensions: Indulgence versus RestraintIn the same book a sixth dimension, also based on Minkov's World ValuesSurvey data analysis for 93 countries, has been added, called Indulgenceversus Restraint. Indulgence stands for a society that allows relativelyfree gratification of basic and natural human drives related to enjoyinglife and having fun. Restraint stands for a society that suppressesgratification of needs and regulates it by means of strict social norms.

Dimension scores are relativeThe country scores on these dimensions are relative - societies arecompared to other societies. These relative scores have been proven tobe quite stable over decades. The forces that cause cultures to shift tendto be global or continent-wide - they affect many countries at the sametime, so that if their cultures shift, they shift together, and their relativepositions remain the same.

Scores around the worldPower distance scores are high for Latin, Asian and African countries andsmaller for Anglo and Germanic countries. Uncertainty avoidance scoresare higher in Latin countries, in Japan, and in German speaking countries,lower in Anglo, Nordic, and Chinese culture countries. Individualismprevails in developed and Western countries, while collectivism prevails inless developed and Eastern countries; Japan takes a middle position onthis dimension. Masculinity is high in Japan, in some European countrieslike Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and moderately high in Anglocountries; it is low in Nordic countries and in the Netherlands andmoderately low in some Latin and Asian countries like France, Spain andThailand. Long-term orientation scores are highest in East Asia, moderatein Eastern and Western Europe, and low in the Anglo world, the Muslimworld, Latin America and Africa. Indulgence scores are highest in LatinAmerica, parts of Africa, the Anglo world and Nordic Europe; restraint ismostly found in East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Muslim world.

Ancient roots of cultureThe grouping of country scores points to some of the roots of culturaldifferences. These should be sought in the common history of similarlyscoring countries. All Latin countries, for example, score relatively high onboth power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Latin countries (thosetoday speaking a Romance language i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, French,Italian or Romanian) have inherited at least part of their civilization fromthe Roman empire. The Roman empire in its days was characterized bythe existence of a central authority in Rome, and a system of lawapplicable to citizens anywhere. This established in its citizens' minds thevalue complex which we still recognize today: centralization fosteredlarge power distance and a stress on laws fostered strong uncertaintyavoidance. The Chinese empire also knew centralization, but it lacked afixed system of laws: it was governed by men rather than by laws. In thepresent-day countries once under Chinese rule, the mindset fostered bythe empire is reflected in large power distance but medium to weakuncertainty avoidance. The Germanic part of Europe, including GreatBritain, never succeeded in establishing an enduring common central

Geert Hofstede | Dimensions of national Cultures

http://geerthofstede.nl/dimensions-of-national-cultures[14-Sep-15 9:57:11 AM]

authority and countries which inherited its civilizations show smallerpower distance. Assumptions about historical roots of cultural differencesalways remain speculative but in the given examples they are plausible.In other cases they remain hidden in the course of history.

CorrelationsThe country scores on the six dimensions are statistically correlated witha multitude of other data about the countries. For example, powerdistance is correlated with the use of violence in domestic politics andwith income inequality in a country. Uncertainty avoidance is associatedwith Roman Catholicism and with the legal obligation in developedcountries for citizens to carry identity cards. Individualism is correlatedwith national wealth and with mobility between social classes from onegeneration to the next. Masculinity is correlated negatively with thepercent of women in democratically elected governments. Long-termorientation is correlated with school results in international comparisons.Indulgence is correlated with sexual freedom and a call for human rightslike free expression of opinions.

Dimensions are widely usedThe Hofstede model of dimensions of national culture has been applied inthe practice of many domains of human social life, from the interpersonalto the national, in public domains and in business, in education and inhealth care. According to the Web of Science, in 2008 more than 800peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals cited one or more of GeertHofstede's publications.Of particular interest are the applications in the field of marketing,advertising and consumer behaviour, in which Dutch scholar Marieke deMooij plays a key role (www.mariekedemooij.com).

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