Hofstede's National Culture Model the Term Organizational Essay

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Hofstede's National Culture Model

The term organizational culture did not emerge in the literature until the late 1970s and represents a relatively new addition that has gained a lot of attention since its introduction. Hofstede (1990) poses a series of questions that are directed towards organizational culture:

First, can organizational cultures be "measured" quantitatively, on the basis of answers of organizational members to written questions, or can they only be described qualitatively?

Second, if organizational cultures can be measured in this way, which operationalizable and independent dimensions can be used to measure them, and how do these dimensions relate to what is known about organizations from existing theory and research?

Third, to what extent can measurable differences among the cultures of different organizations be attributed to unique features of the organization in question, such as its history or the personality of its founder?

The quantitative measures of the cultures of the twenty units in the research, aggregated at the unit level, showed that a large part of the differences among these twenty units could be explained by six factors, related to established concepts from organizational sociology, that measured the organizational cultures on six independent dimensions (Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders, 1990).

Since Hofstede and his team publish their ground breaking article, it gained a lot of traction in the literature.

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His original research included four dimension and others were added later. These dimensions represent various poles in which there can different points on the spectrum identified. These include (McSweeney, 2002):

Power Distance: 'the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) expect and accept that power is distributed unequally'

Uncertainty Avoidance: 'intolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity'

Individualism vs. Collectivism: 'the extent to which individuals are integrated into groups'

Masculinity vs. Femininity 'assertiveness and competitiveness vs. modesty and caring'

The role of culture was considered to be something of "software of the mind" that operates subjectively and unconsciously. Despite the models popularity, there are many criticisms that have been made of the model. One is that there are typically many subcultures present in a country that would have different characteristics when compared to the primary culture (McSweeney, 2002).

Examples

Brazils Culture

Figure 1 - Brazil's Cultural Dimensions (The Hofstede Centre, N.d.)

The power distance index for Brazil is fairly high when compared to Western Cultures which stems from a large amount of inequality and a fairly strict hierarchy structure when it comes to decision making in….....

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