Investigation into Hofstede and Trompenaars dimensions of culture

The past two weeks I have been reading the following two books:

- Trompenaars F. & Hampden-Turner C., 2006, Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business, 2nd Ed., Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London

- Hofstede G., 1991, Cultures and Organisations: Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival; Software of the Mind, Profile Books, London

The two books offer two different perspectives on the dimensions of cultures and I have found that these are the two leading scholars in this field of cultural studies. These two models of dimensions of culture I think will form the basis of my project. From reading these two books I now understand more about how culture can be described in terms of dimensions.

Hofstede originally identified four dimensions of culture in his original study on IBM employees from the period 1968-1972. His four dimensions are:
Power Distance Index (PDI)
Individualism - Collectivism
Masculinity – Femininity
Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI)
The book Software of the Mind, explains in detail these dimensions and how they apply to generic, family, student and workplace situations. These four dimensions can give us an insight into the differences between cultures. Power Distance Index is defined as ‘…the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.’ (Hofstede, Software of the Mind, 28). This relates to Trompenaars dimension of ascriptive and achievement oriented cultures. In the sense that a culture with a high PDI tends to ascribe status to its leaders, whereas cultures with low PDI tends to base status and power on achievement.

Individualism and Collectivism have been covered by both Hofstede and Trompenaars and is defined by Hofstede as ‘Individualism pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family. Collectivism as its opposite pertains to societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive ingroups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.’ (Hofstede, software, 51) The definition for masculinity – femininity are described in terms of poles, with the ‘masculine’ pole having the following features:
Earnings: Have opportunities for high earnings.
Recognition: Get the recognition you deserve when you do a good job
Advancement: Have an opportunity for advancement to higher level jobs.
Challenge: Have challenging work to do, work from which you get a personal sense of accomplishment.

The ‘feminine’ pole features are:
Manager: Have a good working relationship with your direct superior
Cooperation: Work with people who cooperate well with one another
Living area: Live in an area desirable to you and your family
Employment security: Have the security that you will be able to work for your company as long as you want to. (Hofstede, 82, Software of the Mind)

Trompenaars and Hampden-Turners seven dimensions of culture (Trompenaar, Hampden-Turner, 2006):
Universalism – Particularism: universalism is that laws apply everywhere equally, particularism is when the rules can be bent in certain situations.
Individualism – Communitarian: Similar to Hofstedes dimension of individualism and collectivism.
Neutral – Affective: Neutral is not exhibiting emotions, whereas affective cultures are ones in which are very expressive emotionally.
Specific – Diffuse: Specific is when your boss at work is only your boss in the workplace at the supermarket he is just another person. Diffuse cultures regard their boss at work as their boss in every aspect, so at the supermarket will still talk to them like their superior.
Achievement – Ascription: Status is based on achievement and past performance, whereas ascribed cultures base status on education level, age and family background.
Internal – External: how we control and how we react to the environment around, internal means that are inner directed so we derive ideas internally and then apply them to the environment. External means that ideas are derived from the surrounding environment and then applied to individuals.

As can be seen these two scholars offer two different models for classifying dimensions of culture and this will be the starting point for my project. Also after reading these two books it is becoming more clear to me how this topic really is relevant to engineers, as I have been a bit worried about the relevancy of my topic to engineering. However, many engineers end up in management and I have read already many stories where projects fail due simply to culture differences and management styles, as one type of management style may work in one culture yet when tried in a different culture it is a disaster. On the other side of the coin it can be seen that combining certain qualities can enhance the success of a project. Hence this is a very interesting topic with a lot to be revealed in the coming weeks. For the moment I am still working on the proposal.