A Critical Assessment of Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Model

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In the last 30 years, Hofstede’s (1980) extensive empirical study of cultural dimensions has been intensely cited , discussed, criticized, and expanded. Whereas Hofstede (1980, 314-315) acknowledges that there may be other important dimensions than the four – individualism, power distance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance – he has focused on, numerous scholars criticize Hofstede’s entire concept and choice of typology and present substantially different models (e.g. Schwartz, 1990; 1994). This essay, however, elaborates solely on the inadequacy of several of Hofstede’s (1980) main assumptions and research methods that determine the validity of his findings. Hofstede (1991, 162) inconsistently claims that a common culture is shared by all individuals within a nation. Although he also acknowledges heterogeneity within a culture, this idea is frequently questioned by a great body of literature (e.g. Baskerville, 2003). Even his own results contradict the common culture assumption: For instance, the ‘scores’ of all dimensions for Taiwan considerably vary from those of the PRC (Hofstede, 1980; 1991) while they would have been assumed to be the same if Taiwan had been integrated into the PRC prior to the study . Furthermore, Hofstede (1980; 1991, 252) had first argued that IBM culture as well as the occupational culture is homogeneous across all subsidiaries and that differences must hence be due to national culture. Later, he (1991, 253, 182) acknowledges that there are, in fact, differences in organizational culture (Spender, 1998) which, however, would allegedly (McSweeney, 2002) not reflect differences in values and hence not distort his findings. McSweeney (2002, 99) also questions the remaining assumption regarding universally shared occupational culture that is only determined by national culture and – presumably – not by social or institutional culture.
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