Hofstede's Dimensions

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Hofstede’s Dimensions India’s cultural distance of the U.S. can be analyzed by using Hofstede’s four cultural dimension survey data, as shown on exhibit 1. Hofstede’s framework was developed from surveys he administered to global IBM employees in the late 1960s and is concerned primarily with work values, (Ball et al., 2013) p. 99. Hofstede’s dimensions are individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity-femininity. These dimensions will help Eco-Pave senior executives understand how cultural differences of countries in which they have affiliates, such as in India, affect organizations and management methods. According with Hofstede’s dimensions, U.S.-based employees travelling worldwide to different affiliates can find out which country has a culture that is least and most similar to the U.S. culture. With this information in place, they can develop an international strategy1 to leverage the different cultural backgrounds and smooth the socio-cultural aspects in which business across cultures is conducted. For instance, India has a very diverse society, with 18 official languages, 6,000 castes and sub castes, and widely varying regional consumer cultures, and this diversity could prove problematic (Ball et al., 2013) p. 253. This diversity has its roots mostly on region place of birth (language spoken), religion and gender. Furthermore, Indian’s are used to a system of hierarchy in the work-place, which is stemmed from the Indian caste system. For instance, India’s (PDI) dimension scores high, with a ranking of 77, indicating top-down structure in society and organizations [2], and a high level of inequality of power and wealth within the society. Indian’s obey and respect senior colleagues or a person with higher rank in the organization even when they make bad choices. Even though India has a large PDI society, the other

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