"Culture & Organizations", G. Hofstede - personal experience related to the book

Résumé du document

The scene takes place during the last day of January. The first semester students had organised a party in Potatisen, afterwards we all went to the Arena (a night club). The party was planned to start at 8 pm, and everyone had been told to buy some alcohol for himself. The party began a bit earlier at our accommodation and I got to know the people I was living with a bit better.

An hour later, students from other accommodation halls arrived (Campus Futurum and Rosenborg). After everybody arrived and I must admit began to be a little bit drunk we all moved to the Arena at around 11pm. Dancing and drinking in the night club was a very good way of meeting people. At 2 am the club closed and we all went back home together. Once at home, the party kept going on for some of us while others decided to go to bed to be able to wake up to go to class the next day!

The example of this first situation I have been confronted to can highlight different concepts that we studied in the Intercultural Communication class. In "Culture & Organizations" by G. Hofstede, the power distance is defined as "the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally".

This concept explains the differences of equality and inequality in a society in terms of power distirbution, and how people deal with it. Each country has a different approach to this concept that is function of their own history and culture, but also the way people feel with it. This concept refers to the relation between people and the hierarchy that emerge from these relations.

Extraits

[...] The goal of this analysis of the societies is to know if they are more collective or individualist and how each person is situated within society. Hofstede defined both individualism and collectivism: “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 their birth onward are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which through people's lifetimes continued to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty”. [...]

[...] Within individualist societies, members coexist, can work alone and do not need other members to exist or even develop. As Hofstede is developing this concept in his book ‘Culture and organisation' he analyses the specificities of the main work goals for individualist and collectivist persons: “Individualists: Personal time, freedom and challenge Collectivists: Training, physical condition and use of skills” This shows the difference in the approach of their work and the type of workers they will be, it is very important for managing these people to know if they are more collectivist or individualist and what expectations they are going to have of their work life. [...]

[...] But if we analyse more closely these facts it appears that the concepts underlined by Hofstede are true and easily understandable if we take time to observe. Nevertheless, for me the most important is that at the end of the party in the night club we were all having such a good time and even with the problems of language and cultural understandings we were all communicating as if we had been friends for a while. Now the end is more and more close everyday and when I see the result of this melting pot I am quite proud of us. [...]

[...] Which relation is established and how to deal with it is the clue of the way people are related with each other. For example the way how employees are with their boss shows the degree of dependence and hierarchy that exists between them, in some cultures it is considered as usual for an employee to give advices or suggestions to his boss in order to improve the efficiency of the company (participative management). Yet in other cultures the boss can be seen as “untouchable” therefore employees are merely expected to do their work and not to interfere with the boss's decisions or actions. [...]

[...] But hopefully after two weeks everyone had his habits and we all lived together perfectly. The concept of Uncertainty Avoidance is also easily noticeable in the life in community. Some of us are really conscious of the rules and absolutely do not want to break them. For example with the smoking problem, smoking is forbidden in the accommodation, yet some of the French people are smoking in their rooms or in the corridor. On the other hand German people respect the rules and even tell others that they should not smoke, that the music should not be so loud to respect their neighbours, something the Spaniards do not seem to understand because of their habits and their very loud and noisy culture. [...]