Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Cultural Studies - Basics and Definitions, grade: 1,3, Dresden Technical University, language: English, abstract: Be it in the business world, as a traveller, trying to master a foreign language, or to teach it, nowadays we meet people of foreign cultures more frequently than this was the case just 50 or even 100 years ago. Even though linguistic difficulties are often surmountable through English as lingua franca, meeting people from cultures we are unfamiliar with bears the potential for many misunderstandings. These in turn quite often lead to lack of understanding, conflict, even political disaster, like in 2005 with the Danish caricature scandal involving the newspaper Jyllands Posten, when a fundamentalist Muslim cleric from Egypt living in Denmark felt offended and ridiculed in his religious beliefs by caricatures featuring Mohammed. The Islamic world thereby rallied to the case, and did not only react with outrage and boycott, but with violent attacks, in the course of which 140 people lost their lives and several hundred were injured. Milder reactions, like rejection and hidden resentment are, however, the more common outcomes due to intercultural misunderstandings. How otherwise would there be stereotypes mostly carrying negative connotations, like the obedient Chinese, the superficial American, or the super-punctual German lacking humor? The Dutch anthropologist and cultural scientist Geert Hofstede suggests that the reason for such misunderstandings is a culturally divergent, often concealed moral concept with a direct impact on human actions and thinking. Hofstede has devoted himself to this issue and has developed a model based on a long-time study, elucidating peculiarities of and differences between national cultures in comparison. Thereby Hofstede classified national cultures according to five pillars, also called dimensions, which dependent on the nation vary markedly and in his study are set in relation to each other. The subject and the goal of this assignment is to present the main features of Hofstede’s Model of the Five Dimensions of National Cultures. Following, the practical applicability of this model is briefly discussed.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Cultural Studies - Basics and Definitions, grade: 1,3, Dresden Technical University, language: English, abstract: Be it in the business world, as a traveller, trying to master a foreign language, or to teach it, nowadays we meet people of foreign cultures more frequently than this was the case just 50 or even 100 years ago. Even though linguistic difficulties are often surmountable through English as lingua franca, meeting people from cultures we are unfamiliar with bears the potential for many misunderstandings. These in turn quite often lead to lack of understanding, conflict, even political disaster, like in 2005 with the Danish caricature scandal involving the newspaper Jyllands Posten, when a fundamentalist Muslim cleric from Egypt living in Denmark felt offended and ridiculed in his religious beliefs by caricatures featuring Mohammed. The Islamic world thereby rallied to the case, and did not only react with outrage and boycott, but with violent attacks, in the course of which 140 people lost their lives and several hundred were injured. Milder reactions, like rejection and hidden resentment are, however, the more common outcomes due to intercultural misunderstandings. How otherwise would there be stereotypes mostly carrying negative connotations, like the obedient Chinese, the superficial American, or the super-punctual German lacking humor? The Dutch anthropologist and cultural scientist Geert Hofstede suggests that the reason for such misunderstandings is a culturally divergent, often concealed moral concept with a direct impact on human actions and thinking. Hofstede has devoted himself to this issue and has developed a model based on a long-time study, elucidating peculiarities of and differences between national cultures in comparison. Thereby Hofstede classified national cultures according to five pillars, also called dimensions, which dependent on the nation vary markedly and in his study are set in rel

A masterpiece in intercultural training! Exploring Culture brings Geert Hofstede's five dimensions of national culture to life. Gert Jan Hofstede and his co-authors Paul Pedersen and Geert Hofstede introduce synthetic cultures, the ten "pure" cultural types derived from the extremes of the five dimensions. The result is a playful book of practice that is firmly rooted in theory. Part light, part serious, but always thought-provoking, this unique book approaches training through the three-part process of building awareness, knowledge, and skills. It leads the reader through the first two components with more than 75 activities, dialogues, stories, and incidents. The Synthetic Culture Laboratory and two full simulations fulfill the skill-building component. Exploring Culture is suitable for students, trainers, coaches and educators. It can be used for individual study or as a text, and it serves as an excellent partner to Geert Hofstede's popular Cultures and Organizations.

The landmark study of cultural differences across 70 nations, Cultures and Organizations helps readers look at how they think—and how they fail to think—as members of groups. Based on decades of painstaking field research, this new edition features the latest scientific results published in Geert Hofstede’s scholarly work Culture’s Consequences, Second Edition. Original in thought and profoundly important, Cultures and Organizations offers vital knowledge and insight on issues that will shape the future of cultures and nations in a globalized world.

'The publication of this second edition of Culture's Consequences marks an important moment in the field of cross-cultural studies . Hofstede's framework for understanding national differences has been one of the most influential and widely used frameworks in cross-cultural business studies, in the past ten years' - Australian Journal of Management

The Dutch anthropologist Geert Hofstede is recognized as a pioneer in the fields of international management and social psychology – and his work is a perfect example of the ways in which interpretative skills can help solve problems and provide the foundation for strong thinking and understanding both in business and beyond. Hofstede’s central achievement was setting up an efficient interpretative framework for understanding the cultural differences between one country and another. Working for the international computing company IBM in the late 1960s, Hofstede noted that such cultural differences had huge consequences for international organizations. Up until then, while many inside and outside of business recognized the importance of these differences, little had been done to define precisely what cultural difference was and in what areas of life it was expressed. Hofstede’s insight was that if one could interpret and define the dimensions of cultural difference, it would be possible to measure them and act accordingly. From a vast survey of IBM’s employees in several countries, Hofstede originally defined five dimensions of culture: every society could be rated for each dimension, providing a useful guide to the kinds of cultural differences at play. As ever, good interpretative skills provided the basis for better understanding.

In his bestselling book Culture's Consequences, Geert Hofstede proposed four dimensions on which the differences among national cultures can be understood: Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity. This volume comprises the first in-depth discussion of the masculinity dimension and how it can help us to understand differences among cultures. The book begins with a general explanation of the masculinity dimension, and discusses how it illuminates broad features of different cultures. The following parts apply the dimension more specifically to gender (and gender identity), sexuality (and sexual behaviour) and religion, probably the most influential variable of all. Hofstede closes the book