Cultural Reflection Paper Example

The cultural dimension can help to identify what sort of differences may occur in each of the dimension. Knowing this is beneficial to deal with the difference across culture and try to find alternatives to solve the issue. For the purpose of this reflection, I would like to focus on the cultural dimension of Geert H. Hofstede (2001), which are power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity.

2. Theoretical reflection

First, power distance is a situation in which people acknowledge that there is different status between them (Geert H. Hofstede, 2001). People from a high power distance country tend to pay attention in hierarchical position and so they should act respectively in a relation between superiors and subordinates. While low power distance countries may encourage equalities among people with different level of employment. Therefore, there is a contrast between countries with high and low power distance, which should be understood when people will try to interact across culture.

Second, individualism is the extent to which people would prefer to be known as her or himself rather than a group (Geert H. Hofstede, 2001). A country with low individualism level may disregard personal performance,

In a high masculinity country, male may be gotten higher position than female as male is perceived to be stronger than female. On the other hand, female may get bigger opportunity for top positions in the low masculinity countries, where gender gap is minimal or may not exist at all. The implication in the cross-cultural negotiation setting that a female representative from low masculinity countries may face difficulty to negotiate with a male representative from high masculinity countries. This is not necessarily because their position is not the same but it is a matter of perception or the way of viewing gender