Chapter 04 – The Meanings and Dimensions of Culture
Chapter 4: The Meanings and Dimensions of Culture
Learning Objectives and Chapter Summary
1. DEFINE the term culture, and discuss some of the comparative ways of
differentiating cultures.
Culture is acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate
social behavior. Culture also has the characteristics of being learned, shared,
horizons, and stability vs. innovation.
2. DESCRIBE the concept of cultural values, and relate some of the international
differences, similarities, and changes occurring in terms of both work and
managerial values.
Values are basic convictions that people have regarding what is right and wrong,
good and bad, important and unimportant. Research shows that there are both
differences and similarities between the work values and managerial values of
different cultural groups. Work values often reflect culture and industrialization,
with greater emphasis on differences in managerial leadership styles.
3. IDENTIFY the major dimensions of culture relevant to work settings, and discuss
their effect on behavior in an international environment.
Hofstede has identified and researched four major dimensions of culture: power
distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity. Recently, he has
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4. DISCUSS the value of country cluster analysis and relational orientations in
developing effective international management practices.
Researchers have attempted to cluster countries into similar cultural groupings to
study similarities and differences. Through analyzing the relationship between two
dimensions, as Hofstede illustrated, two-dimensional maps can be created to show
how countries differ and where they overlap.
Research by Trompenaars has examined five relationship orientations: universalism
vs. particularism, individualism vs. communitarianism, affective vs. neutral,
Hofstede on clustering countries.
The World of International Management: The Cultural Roots of
Toyota’s Quality Crisis
1. The problem:
Toyota’s recent massive U.S. recalls of many of its vehicles to repair faulty
accelerator pedals and floor mat problems and, later, leaking brake fluid, electrical,
power window switch, and airbag problems highlight how cultural differences may
have contributed to the initial need for the recall as well as how the company has
handled the crisis.
2. The response:
At times Toyota’s president avoided the press and then minimized one of the
problems, blaming it on software rather than admitting it was a defect. The
company failed to disclose malfunctions to the Department of Transportation within
the legal limit. Toyota’s design problems may have been a result of a corporate
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Chapter 04 – The Meanings and Dimensions of Culture
3. Further example of the problem:
When the earthquake and resulting tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima
nuclear power plant in 2011, outsiders questioned the delayed response by both the
Tokyo Electric Power Company and the government. The meltdown was probably
preventable―communication broke down, authority wasn’t questioned, emergency
measures were delayed―and the consequences were disastrous.
4. In a Wall Street Journal article Kingston explored:
The results of a culture of deference
The typical Japanese corporation’s response to a problem
The reasons for their public relations response
5. Further analyses of Toyota:
Bill Fischer: Obsession with growth caused the problems―strategic error in its
global expansion.
Johnson, Lim, and Padmanabhan: Toyota may have inadvertently sacrificed
6. Suggested Class Discussion:
1. Students should be able to identify and discuss the cultural attitudes in Japan
that contributed to the problems cited in the article.
2. Students should be able to identify and discuss the impact of cultural
differences on business (including and beyond Japan) and why MNCs need to
recognize and incorporate cultural differences in their strategic decision
making.
3. Students should be encouraged to consider how a U.S. company might have
responded to a crisis like Toyota’s and indeed whether the need for a recall
would have occurred at all, and identify the differences between the cultures of
Japan and the United States and how those differences influence the behavior of
managers.
3. Related Internet Sites:
BusinessWeek: {http://www.businessweek.com/}.
Wall Street Journal: {http://online.wsj.com/}.
Toyota: {http://www.toyota.com/}.
Tokyo Electric Power Company: {www.tepco. co .jp/en/ }
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Chapter 04 – The Meanings and Dimensions of Culture
Chapter Outline with Lecture Notes and Teaching Tips
The Nature of Culture
1) The word culture comes from the Latin cultura, which is related to cult or worship.
Culture is the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate
social behavior. This knowledge forms values, creates attitudes, and influences behavior.
Most scholars of culture would agree on the following characteristics of culture:
a) Learned―Culture is not inherited or biologically based; it is acquired by learning and
experience.
b) Shared―People are members of a group, organization, or society that shares culture; it
is not specific to single individuals.
c) Transgenerational―Culture is cumulative, passed down from one generation to the
next.
d) Symbolic―Culture is based on the human capacity to symbolize or use one thing to
represent another.
e) Patterned―Culture has structure and is integrated; a change in one part will bring
changes in another.
f) Adaptive―Culture is based on the human capacity to change or adapt, as opposed to
the more genetically driven adaptive process of animals.
Cultural Diversity
1) There are many ways of examining cultural differences and their impact on international
management. Culture can affect technology transfer, managerial attitudes, managerial
ideology, and even business-government relations. Here are some specific examples
where the culture of a society can directly affect management approaches:
a) Centralized vs. decentralized decision making.
b) Safety vs. risk
c) Individual vs. group rewards
d) Informal vs. formal procedures
e) High vs. low organizational loyalty
f) Cooperation vs. competition
g) Short-term vs. long-term horizon
Teaching Tip: The Diversity Database at the University of Maryland provides a wide
array of information on diversity related issues. The site is available at
{http://www.umd.edu/diversity/}.
Teaching Tip: The website entitled “The Web of Culture” features a vast amount of
information on languages, religions, gestures, holidays, and more from different countries
in the world. The site can be found at {http://www.globalbusinessleadership.com/}.
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2) Another way of depicting cultural diversity is through visually separating its components;
Figure 4–1:
a) Outer ring: Explicit artifacts and products of the culture: language, food, buildings, art
b) Middle ring: Norms and values of the society, both formal and informal, that help
people understand how to behave
c) Inner circle: Implicit, basic assumptions that govern behavior
3) A supplemental way of understanding cultural differences is to compare culture as a
normal distribution (Figure 4–2) then to examine it in terms of stereotyping (Figure 4–3).
Values in Culture
1) Values―Basic convictions that people have regarding what is right and wrong, good and
bad, important or unimportant. They are learned from the culture in which the individual
is reared, and they help direct the person’s behavior. (Table 4–2 is an example.)
Value Differences and Similarities across Cultures
1) Personal values have been the focus of numerous intercultural studies. The findings show
both differences and similarities between the work values and managerial values of
2) A study of managers from four countries by England and Lee found that:
a) There is a reasonably strong relationship between the level of success achieved by
managers and their personal values.
b) It is evident that value patterns predict managerial success and could be used in
pragmatic, dynamic, achievement-oriented values, while less successful managers
prefer more static and passive values.
Values in Transition
1) Do values change over time? George England studied the Japanese and the U.S.
environment and found that personal value systems are relatively stable and do not change
rapidly. However, changes are taking place in managerial values as a result of both culture
and technology.
a) Lifetime employment is widely accepted in Japanese culture, but not stateside; job
authority.
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Chapter 04 – The Meanings and Dimensions of Culture
c) Group orientation, cooperation, conformity, and compromise are important
organizational values in Japan. The stateside managers also believed in individuality.
e) Paternalism is very important in Japan. Stateside Japanese managers disagreed.
2) Individualism in Japan is on the rise, indicating that Japanese values are changing—and
not just among managers outside the country. The Japanese are starting to embrace the
“era of personal responsibility.” This current trend may well be helpful to the Japanese
economy in helping it meet foreign competition at home.
3) China is just beginning to undergo a new era and is moving away from a collectivist
culture. The government will have to prove its worthiness to remain in power.
Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
1) Geert Hofstede―Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede found that there are four dimensions of
culture that help explain how and why people from various cultures behave as they do.
These dimensions are:
a) Power Distance―The extent to which less powerful members of institutions and
organizations accept that power is distributed unequally
b) Uncertainty Avoidance―The extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguous
and things.
ii) Femininity is a culture in which the dominant values in society are caring for others
and quality of life.
2) Hofstede added two more cultural dimensions, the first in 1988 and the second in 2010:
a) Time Orientation―Long-term oriented societies focus on the future, short-term
oriented cultures more on the past and present. (Table 4–4)
b) Indulgence vs. Restraint―Measures the freedom to satisfy one’s natural needs and
desires within a society (Table 4–5)
Integrating of Dimensions―A description of the four (plus two) dimensions of culture is
useful in helping to explain the differences between various countries, and Hofstede’s
research has extended beyond this focus and showed how countries can be described in terms
of pairs of dimensions. See Figures 4–4, 4–5, 4–6, and 4–7 in the textbook.
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Chapter 04 – The Meanings and Dimensions of Culture
Trompenaars’s Cultural Dimensions
1) Trompenaar derived five relationship orientations that address the ways people deal with
each other (cultural dimensions analogous to Hofstede’s dimensions). Trompenaar also
looked at the dimensions of time and the environment.
a) Universalism vs. Particularism
i) Universalism―The belief that ideas and practices can be applied everywhere in the
world without modification
ii) Particularism―The belief that circumstances dictate how ideas and practices
should be applied
b) Individualism vs. Communitarianism
ii) Diffuse culture―A culture in which both public and private space are similar in
size and individuals guard their public space carefully, because entry into public
space affords entry into private space as well
e) Achievement vs. Ascription
i) Achievement culture―A culture in which people are accorded status based on how
well they perform their functions
ii) Ascription culture―A culture in which status is attributed based on who or what a
person is
2) Another major cultural difference: Time
a) Sequential approach―In cultures where sequential approaches are prevalent, people
tend to do only one activity at a time, keep appointments strictly, and show a strong
relationships.
c) Another interesting time-related contrast is the degree to which cultures are past- or
present-oriented as opposed to future-oriented.
3) The Environment―Trompenaars also examined the ways in which people deal with their
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4) Cultural Patterns or Clusters―Like Hofstede’s work, Trompenaars’ research lends itself
to cultural patterns or clusters. Table 4–7 relates his findings to the five relational
orientations. Overall, Table 4–7 shows that a case can be made for cultural similarities
between clusters of countries.
Integrating Culture and Management: The GLOBE Project
1) The Global Leadership and organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research
program reflects an additional approach to measuring cultural differences. The project
extends and integrates previous analyses of cultural attributes and variables. Nine cultural
attributes are identified using 17,000 middle managers from 951 organizations in 62
countries, representing three industries: financial services, food processing, and
telecommunications. Table 4–8 provides an overview of the purposes and results of the
three phases studied (phases one and two on middle management, phase three on upper-
level).
Culture and Management
1) The GLOBE project attempted to answer the following questions:
a) Are there leader behaviors, attributes, and organizational practices that are universally
accepted and effective across cultures?
b) Are there leader behaviors, attributes, and organizational practices that are accepted
and effective in only some cultures?
c) How do attributes of societal and organizational culture affect the kinds of leader
behaviors and organizational practices that are accepted and effective?
d) What is the effect of violating cultural norms relevant to leadership and organizational
practices?
e) What is the relative standing of each of the cultures studied on each of the nine core
dimensions of culture?
f) Can the universal and culture-specific aspects of leader behaviors, attributes, and
organizational practices be explained in terms of an underlying theory that accounts
for systematic differences across cultures?
GLOBE’s Cultural Dimensions
1) Phase one identified nine cultural dimensions:
a) Uncertainty avoidance―Strive to avoid uncertainty by reliance on social norms,
rituals, and bureaucratic practices to alleviate unpredictability
b) Power distance―Degree to which members and agree that power should be unequally
loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations or families
e) Gender egalitarianism―Extent of minimizing of gender role differences and gender
discrimination
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Chapter 04 – The Meanings and Dimensions of Culture
f) Assertiveness―Degree of assertiveness, confrontation, and aggression in social
relationships
i) Humane orientation―Degree to which members of a group encourage and reward
individuals for being fair, altruistic, friendly, generous, caring, and kind to others
GLOBE Country Analysis
1) The initial results of the GLOBE analysis are presented in Table 4–9. The GLOBE
analyses correspond generally with those of Hofstede and Trompenaars, although with
some variations resulting from the variable definitions and methodology.
The World of International Management―Revisited
Questions & Suggested Answers
1. What dimensions contribute to the differences between how Americans and
Japanese workers address management problems, including operational or product
flaws?
Answer: Americans tend to migrate toward individualism and masculinity.
Individualism is the tendency of people to look after themselves and their
immediate family only. American corporations allow employees to work
individually, rather than always working as a group. Masculinity is a culture in
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2. What are some ways that Japanese culture may affect operational excellence in a
positive way? How might it hurt quality, especially when things go wrong?
Answer: Uncertainty avoidance is high in Japanese culture, where there is a need
for security and less risk. From an operational perspective, this attitude can
encourage firms to make decisions that are “sure bets,” avoiding more risky options
3. How could managers from Japan or other Asian cultures adopt practices from the
U.S. and European cultures when investing in those regions?
Answer: Managers from Japan or other Asian countries working in the U.S. or
Europe could consider taking a more individualistic approach to business.
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