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...
Ten days of teaching Organisational Behaviour in Yemen provided me with a lot of impressions that were in some way related to 'Arab' or 'Yemeni' culture. If we look at Hofstede's dimensions, the Arab world is often seen as - high power distance - low individualism - high uncertainty avoiding - rather masculin. These easy labels do not tell too much about the culture though. China, for example, has comparable scores. Yet, teaching in Yemen was much easier for me than in China. Why? There are at least two reasons. First, Chinese culture and Arab culture differ on dimensions not accounted for in the Hofstede model. Second, the same dimension means different things in different cultures, so similarity of scores does not tell us the whole story. Let us begin with a dimension that we do not see in Hofstede's model, expressive versus reserved , also called neutral versus emotional or affective versus neutral . Looking at the data of Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, w...
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