Hofstede's Cultural Approaches

So far as international business is concerned, there are various different approaches in intercultural issue, and the theory of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions is one of the most popular one. Cultural awareness is a main factor leading to the success of a business and lack of it can lead to their failures. Hofstede (1983) pointed out the importance of management a nationality for at least 3 reasons: political, sociological and psychological as these factors affects any issues in our life. Another well-worth mention is that all cultural reflects and common ways of thinking are rooted in the common culture but may be different for other cultures. It also figures out that characterizing a national culture did not mean that every individual within

To analyze a national culture, Hofstede identified four dimensions which represents differently among national cultures, including individualism versus collectivism, large or small power distance, strong or weak uncertainty avoidance and masculinity versus femininity. The first dimensions ‘individualism versus collectivism’ is on the question whether people likely to live alone or belong to a knitted network, which later on shown that wealthy countries are more individualist while poor and developing countries are more collectivist. It is noticeable that Japan, India, Austria and Spain are in the middle. The second dimension ‘Power distance’ defines how society deals with the inequality. However, it is clear that no countries could reach completely equality as human mind still perpetuate existing inequalities. At organizational level, power distance dimension describes the degree of centralization of authority and the degree of autocratic leadership; it also shows a close relationship between power

In terms of leadership, individualism and power distance play a key role to determine the leadership style. For instance, in the United States, the core leadership theory is about leading individuals based on their needs while the leadership theory in collectivist countries is a group phenomenon with businessmen try to bring trust and loyalty to the workplace. Furthermore, higher power distance countries likely lead autocratically while subordinates in individualistic countries are able to influence their leader. When it comes to organizational level, power distance and uncertainty avoidance are the decisive dimensions of culture, as the organization is a hierarchy power system and they always try to avoid uncertainty. Additionally, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity versus femininity dimensions are related to the theory of motivation. In the United States, for instance, the motivation is supposed to stem from their needs to fulfill their needs, with a risky willingness (weak uncertainty avoidance) and a need to assert oneself