Cultural Dimensions in People Management, The Socialization Perspective, Geert Hofstede

Résumé du document

Geert Hofstede (born 1928) is a Dutch writer on the interactions between national and organizational cultures. He wrote several books including Culture's Consequences and Cultures and Organizations, Software of the Mind. He has a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering and a doctorate in Social Psychology. He published studies about employee attitude in the eighties. Firstly Geert Hofstede explains the importance of a multicultural management. He wants to demonstrate, with the results of his studies, the extent to which culture affects our thinking, feeling and acting, what is essential for the current managers, who work in multicultural firms.

Extraits

[...] Managers have to hire managers of business units in countries” who are able to link the culture of the business unit and the corporate culture and “corporate diplomats” who experienced in living and functioning in other cultures, link head offices and can be temporary managers for new ventures. Geert Hofstede gives the definitions the concepts he uses (culture, management, socialization which is important to understand its thesis well. But I think that the studies on which he bases his thesis are weak. [...]

[...] A fourth dimension of national culture differences, the “uncertainty avoidance”, was found by the "Western" IBM and Rokeach Value Survey studies, but not by the "Eastern" Chinese Value Survey. The fourth dimension found in the Chinese Value Survey was the “Confucian dynamism” (that is long vs. short term orientation), that describes the importance attached to the future versus the past and present. The different results concerning this fourth dimension depends on the research instruments chosen for the study and so on the values of people who designed the questions ,and it proves that even theories are products of culturally determined socialization. [...]

[...] Cultural Dimensions in People Management, The Socialization Perspective, Geert Hofstede Geert Hofstede (born 1928) is a Dutch writer on the interactions between national and organizational cultures. He wrote several books including Culture's Consequences and Cultures and Organizations, Software of the Mind. He has a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering and a doctorate in Social Psychology. He published studies about employee attitude in the eighties. Firstly Geert Hofstede explains the importance of a multicultural management. He wants to demonstrate, with the results of his studies, the extent to which culture affects our thinking, feeling and acting, what is essential for the current managers, who work in multicultural firms. [...]

[...] I also don't see how a simple questionnaire can really identify the dimensions of national culture. But he is aware of that and deals with some critics: the basis of this limited sample of units (in terms of types of organizations, countries, and moments in time) we obviously cannot claim that the same six dimensions will be found universally [ . ] Also, the dimensions found partly overlap with the reported results of other studies [ All the more, he raises a major problem of our society: how to deal with multiculturalism in firms? [...]

[...] Secondly he explains the socialization process. The social institutions transfer 4 elements: symbols, rituals and values; Symbols are “words, objects, and gestures that derive their meaning from convention”. Heroes are real or imaginary people, who are models for behavior within a culture. Rituals are collective activities that are socially essential within a culture. Values, the strongest level of a culture, are broad feelings, about what is good and what is evil for example and originate mainly in your family and in your nation, and secondly in your work environment. [...]