Week 4: Measuring Culture

In this week’s class we, basically, approached two topics which were quite interesting in the sense that it made me think that not everybody perceive things as I do, as I have unconsciously assumed in many occasions.

The first topic we talked about was Particularism vs. Universalism, whereas Particularist societies base their social interactions in the relationships established and give a strong importance to the obligations they imply, Universalists are more tied to abstract societal codes, then, when making a decision, Universalists firstly assess what is socially perceived as good or bad. Therefore, the criteria used to judge situations are very different, emerging as a possible source of misunderstanding. An excellent example was the case presented by the teacher in which your friend, who was driving the car at overspeed, runs down a pedestrian: from a Universalist individual’s point of view, no matter if the driver was your friend, he was exceeding speed limit what is not right, and then they would testify the real speed. On the contrary, a Particularist individual would argue that, given the relationship with your friend, they feel sort of a duty to help him by testifying a lower speed. It resulted interesting when we were asked how our positions would change depending on whether the pedestrian was very injured or not; in fact, most of us took us a longer while to think about it.

The second part of the class, we reviewed Hofstede’s dimensions of culture. Even though I had already approached them several times in previous courses, I liked a lot the analysis presented by the professor regarding the implications for communication and negotiation when dealing with someone from a country with a high/low score on every dimension. Besides, it was the first time I heard about a critic of the dimensions, I did not know some issues about the study (that the information had been collected from people from the same company in different countries for example), so now I’ve got a much better perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of the model and how to take them into account when using it as a cultural research tool.

Finally, I found both topics very important not only in a business context but in daily life. Everyday, even within our social circle (friends, family, classmates, etc) we deal either with Particularist or Universalist individuals, and many misunderstandings arise from those different ways of approaching situations. Then, if we are able to identify which orientation our counterparty has, we will be able to hold much better communication and relationships, and it applies from treating with your best friend to negotiating with a partner in other country. Regarding Hofstede’s dimensions, I have always found them as a good tool to get a perspective on a country’s cultural profile, but now I can apply them better knowing the implications and weaknesses they have.

Reasearch Question: What alternative tools, apart from Hofstede’s, does a cultural researcher have when assessing cultural profile?

As one of the most renowned cultural studies in the world, almost every student interested in the cultural dimension of international business knows, even by memory, Hofstede’s dimensions of cultures. In fact, his work has been cited by lots of scholars and practitioners, probably being one of its key success factors that it is a multi-dimensional model. In their work, curiously named “Why not everybody loves Hofstede?”, Shaiq et al. (2011) analyze, for every dimension, its main shortcomings and assumptions, but also present alternative models to Hofstede’s. Unfortunately, many, if not most, models found in literature are dichotomic, it is they present a ying-yang in which the classify individuals, communities and countries, for example: low-context/high-context cultures, particularist/universalist  cultures, monochromic/polychromic cultures, etc. Therefore, a good alternative to Hofstede’s model are other multi-dimensional models that integrate more than a unique dimension. A good choice is the GLOBE Study which studies cultural clusters (comprising 62 countries) by improving and going deeper into Hofstede’s original dimensions and finally presents nine dimensions and six more for cultural implicit leadership. Shaiq et al (2011) also draw their own model that adds, apart from the ones from Hofstede, five dimensions: assertiveness, performance orientation, degree of formality, pragmatism and gender egalitarian.

References

Shaiq, Khalid, Akram & Ali (2011) Why not everybody loves Hofstede? What are the alternative approaches to study of culture?. European Journal of Business and Management.mISSN 2222-2839 (Online). Vol 3, No.6, 2011. Retrieved from:   http://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/EJBM/article/view/539/425