HDM

The man who put culture on the management map: Tilburg University said farewell to Geert Hofstede Dr. Huibert de Man, Maastricht School of Management January 2010 With a small symposium on January 21, Tilburg University said farewell to Geert Hofstede, the renowned researcher of national management cultures. Four lectures gave a balanced view of his contribution to theory building in the field of national and regional cultural differences in organizations and to the practice of cross-cultural management. For someone like me, who is interested in the development of cross cultural management theory, and tries to apply theories of culture in management education and management training, this symposium provided a useful and stimulating view of themes and issues in the field of comparative management research. Here I give some of my personal reflections. Arndt Sorge used the idea of map-making to put Hofstede’s werk in perspective. A map is not a copy of reality, it is a specific represent...

(For the English speaking followers of this blog: if I have time, I will write an English version entitled 'Are islands bad?' In discussies over het functioneren van organisaties en hun strategie het het vaak over de versnippering van organisaties in eilandjes waarin mensen hun eigen definities van de werkelijkheid in stand houden. Deze eilanden kunnen samenvallen met professies of beroepen, met vestingingsplaatsen, met hiërarchische niveaus. Tussen de eilanden zien we vaak stereotypering en slechte communicatie, binnen de eilanden is vormt men vaak sterk defensieve identiteiten. In een wat constructivistisch jargon heeft men het tegenwooordig wel over betekeniswolken - zie het werk van Thijs Homan - en hoewel men pluriformiteit en meerstemmigheid aanhangt, ziet ook deze stroming het bestaan van gesloten betekeniswerelden als probleem. En er zijn inderdaad problemen verbonden met de versnippering van organisaties in eilanden en betekeniswolken. In professionele organisaties, ...

Tim Ambler and Morgen Witzel, in their book Doing Business in China (first published in 2000, with a second edition in 2004) suggest that the liberal idea of laissez faire originates in China. Socialism, on the other hand, has its roots in Western philosophy. This is an interesting idea, because we tend to think that economic liberalism comes from the 'free' Western world, whereas socialism is the legacy of China's own recent past. The connection between Chinese philosophy and economic liberalism, also put forward in an article by Witzel on the internet for European Business Forum ( (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4779/is_20/) is formed by the inspiration some European, notably French, thinkers drew from Daoist (Taoist) writing. Witzel emphasizes the difference between Confucian and Daoist thinking: "While the Confucians believed that virtue could best be achieved through regulation and control, the other great philosophical school of ancient China, the Daois...

Characterizing Chinese Culture: the Poverty of Hofstede’s Dimensions Dr. Huibert de Man Open University of the Netherlands/Maastricht School of Management (Originally written in 2005, adapted in 2009) In many publications on Chinese organizations and management, some attention is given to the influence of the specific business culture in China, which significantly differs, from North American or European culture. The most cited author in this respect is no doubt Hofstede. His analysis of work attitudes of IBM marketing professionals in 40 countries, by means of survey research in 1968 and 1972, formed the basis for a framework for the analysis of cultural differences, which was published in his book ‘ Culture’s Consequences’ in 1980 (Hofstede, 1980). This framework now belongs to the standard view of culture in management. Uncertainty avoidance, collectivism (-individualism), power distance and masculinity (-feminity) have become the standard dimensions in which cultural differences b...

What I always felt to be true, now gets support from neuroscience. We understand other people because we mirror their behaviour in our brains, not because we can find the deeper meaning of what they do in terms of underlying values and concepts. Understanding other people is based on the activity of brain cells that 'copy' what the other person does, so that we feel what the other person experiences. This is the essence of Marco Jacoboni's book 'Mirroring People'. The 'mirroring' concept gives an attractive alternative to the sender-receiver model of communication, in which people pack meaning in words and gestures, and others unpack these messages to find the meaning. Many texts on cross-cultural communication are based on this model. Since people encode their meaning in different ways, we need to unravel the cultural code to understand what they really mean. The popular model of the 'onion', also used by Hofstede, where we have to peel one layer af...

Since his first Wallander books I have been an enthusiastic reader of Mankell's work. Sometimes the left-wing moralism of the old policeman irritated me, but it seemed to fit into the story like the snow, rain and wind of the South-Swedish landscape. 'What is becoming of the old socialist Sweden?' could be read as a piece of attractive folklore that gave some colour to the exciting crime stories. In his last book, 'Kinesen' (the Chinese person), Mankell's comment on the development of society seems to have become the main subject of the book, and the detective story a vehicle for his ideological message. In a fictional small town in Northern Sweden, all inhabitants are brutally murdered. A woman in Southern Sweden, Birgitta Roslin, who works as a judge, finds out that distant relatives of her are among the victims. She starts a sort of parallel private investigation, which brings her in serious danger. The mass murder turns out to be related to what has happened...

Coming back from our holidays in China, I found a pile of unread newspapers. I was curious to find out what these papers would have told the Dutch reader about the country where we had been travelling. Here is the result. 1 China produces dangerous articles of low quality The most important stories were about toys containing poison and the responsible owner who committed suicide. The quality of exports must be improved, says the government. 2 Basic Human Rights are still not guaranteed in China Anomymous blogging is forbidden. One of the scarce opportunities of free speech is now blocked. Protest movements are repressed in the wake of the Olympic games. Slave labour exists in China. The Communist Party accepts no open criticism. 3 Corruption is a serious problem in China Death penalty me be an effective answer to this problem, according to the government. 4 Chinese must learn to behave in a civilised way Spitting is forbidden in Beijjing now. 5 Environmental pollution is...