Alternative Cross-Cultural Theories: Why Still Hofstede?

Abstract

Ignoring culture can lead to bad policy, and culturally-based analyses substantially enhance the understanding of economic behavior. However, culture is a collective phenomenon which is so broad that it is hard to design testable hypotheses for research. The primary achievement of Hofstede, a pioneer in intercultural research, was that he formulated an empirical mapping of countries across certain cultural dimensions. He moved the concept of culture to the cross-cultural arena based on variations in culture across countries. His dimensions have been extensively used by researchers in a variety of settings. Subsequently, a number of cross-cultural theories have been proposed in the literature to operationalize national culture empirically. This paper gives an overview of the alternative cultural theories, along with a brief summary of Hofstede dimensions, and identifies the areas of key strengths of Hofstede model. It also looks at the common criticisms of Hofstede theory and their pragmatic rebuttals.

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Proceedings of ISERD-Science Globe International Conference, Jakarta, Indonesia, 30th -31st December 2018
4
ALTERNATIVE CROSS-CULTURAL THEORIES: WHY STILL
HOFSTEDE?
1MOHAMMAD ZAINUDDIN, 2IDA MD. YASIN, 3ISHTIAQUE ARIF, 4ABU BAKAR ABDUL HAMID
1,2,3,4Putra Business School, Universiti Putra Malaysia
E-mail: 1mohammad.msc_hp17@grad.putrabs.edu.my, 2ida@putrabs.edu.my, 3ishtiaquearif@gmail.com,
4abu.bakar@putrabs.edu.my
Abstract - Ignoring culture can lead to bad policy, and culturally-based analyses substantially enhance the understanding of
economic behavior. However, culture is a collective phenomenon which is so broad that it is hard to design testable
hypotheses for research. The primary achievement of Hofstede, a pioneer in intercultural research, was that he formulated an
empirical mapping of countries across certain cultural dimensions. He moved the concept of culture to the cross-cultural
arena based on variations in culture across countries. His dimensions have been extensively used by researchers in a variety
of settings. Subsequently, a number of cross-cultural theories have been proposed in the literature to operationalize national
culture empirically. This papergives an overview of the alternative cultural theories, along with a brief summary of Hofstede
dimensions, and identifies the areas of key strengths of Hofstede model. It also looks at the common criticisms of Hofstede
theory and their pragmatic rebuttals.
Keywords - Cross-Cultural Theories, National Culture, Hofstede Dimensions
I. INTRODUCTION
Hofstede, a pioneer in intercultural research, moved
the concept of culture to the cross-cultural arena
based on variations in culture across countries. He
defined culture as “the collective programming of the
mind which distinguishes the members of one human
group from another” (Hofstede, 1980, p. 25). Such
collective phenomenon, however, is so broad that it is
hard to design testable hypotheses. The primary
achievement of Hofstede, in fact, was that he
formulated an empirical mapping of countries across
certain cultural dimensions. His dimensions have
been extensively used by researchers in a variety of
settings. In recent years, more data have made it
possible to systematically analyze the impact of
national culture and to relate it to different aspects of
national economies.
II. HOFSTEDE DIMENSIONS
A dimension is a particular aspect of a culture that
can be measured in relation to other cultures
(Hofstede, 2011).
Each country is positioned with regard to other
countries through a score on each dimension. In his
groundbreaking book Culture’s Consequences,
Hofstede (1980) identifies four dimensions of
national culture:
1. Power distance – relates to the willingness to
accept unequal distribution of power in
organizations and institutions (e.g., family). In a
society with large power distance, hierarchy is
clearly established and people do not question
authority. Index scores for this dimension tend to
be lower for English-speaking Western countries
and higher for Asian, African, Latin and East
European countries.
2. Uncertainty avoidance – relates to the extent to
which a society is tolerant towards uncertainty
and ambiguity. Societies with strong uncertainty
avoidance have strict behavioral codes, rules and
laws, whereas uncertainty accepting cultures
impose fewer regulations and have more
acceptance of different opinions. Index scores for
this dimension tend to be lower in Nordic and
English-speaking countries and higher in Japan,
Germany, and Latin, East and Central European
countries.
3. Individualism versus collectivism – relates to
the extent to which individuals in a society are
related to each other. Individualist societies have
loose ties and emphasize self-interest and ‘I’
consciousness, whereas collectivist societies
have strong social bonding and emphasize group
harmony and ‘We’ consciousness.Individualist
cultures prevail in Western and developed
countries, while collectivist cultures prevail in
Eastern and less developed countries.
4. Masculinity versus femininity – relates to the
extent to which the dominant values of a society
are male-typical or female-typical. Masculine
societies have a preference for assertiveness and
competitiveness, whereas feminine societies have
a preference for modesty and caring. It is
however important to note that both men and
women share modest and caring values equally
in feminine countries; but in masculine countries,
women are not as much assertive and
competitive as men, and hence exist a gap
between male and female values. Masculinity is
high in Germany, Japan, Mexico and Italy;
moderately high in Western countries;
moderately low in countries like Portugal, Spain,
France, Thailand and Korea; and low in the
Netherlands and Nordic countries.

Alternative Cross-Cultural Theories: Why Still Hofstede?
Proceedings of ISERD-Science Globe International Conference, Jakarta, Indonesia, 30th -31st December 2018
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Hofstede later added two more dimensions to his
original model: long-term versus short-term
orientation, based on the research by Canadian
psychologist Michael Harris Bond, and indulgence
versus restraint, based on the research by Bulgarian
scholar Michael Minkov(Hofstede, 2011). While his
previous four dimensions have been replicated and
validated in a number of studies, these two
dimensions have not yet been widely adopted.
Moreover, the validity and usefulness of new
dimensions have been doubted. For instance, Fang
(2003) extensively scrutinizes the basic premise on
which the fifth dimension is founded as well as the
way its index has been constructed. He argues that
there are methodological weaknesses and inherent
philosophical flaws in this new dimension. As a
result, the original framework of Hofstede (1980)is
still very popular and widely used.
III. CROSS-CULTURAL THEORY: WHY
HOFSTEDE?
Several cross-cultural theories have been proposed in
the literature to operationalize national culture
empirically. Geert Hofstede—a Dutch social
psychologist and one of the most influential cross-
cultural theorists—describes national culture, in his
1980 seminal work, along four measurable
dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance,
individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity
versus femininity (Hofstede, 1980).
US sociologist and WVS director Ronald Inglehart,
on the other hand, theorizes that socioeconomic
development gives rise to two main cross-cultural
dimensions: traditional versus secular-rational, and
survival versus self-expression (Inglehart, 1990). The
first dimension correlates negatively with Hofstede’s
power distance, and the second one with a
combination of individualism and masculinity
(Hofstede, 2011).
An alternative cross-cultural theory, developed by
Israeli psychologist Shalom Schwartz, identifies
seven dimensions at the country level: embeddedness,
intellectual autonomy, affective autonomy, hierarchy,
mastery, egalitarianism, and harmony (Schwartz,
1994). Schwartz’s country scores for teachers
significantly correlate with Hofstede’s scores for
uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity
(Hofstede, 2011).
Another large-scale study, namely, Global Leadership
and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness
(GLOBE), was led by US management scholar
Robert House. The GLOBE project replicates
Hofstede’s landmark study and expands his
dimensions to nine: power distance, uncertainty
avoidance, institutional collectivism, in-group
collectivism, assertiveness, gender egalitarianism,
future orientation, humane orientation, and
performance orientation (House, Hanges, Javidan,
Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004). It splits Hofstede’s
collectivism into institutional and in-group
collectivism, and masculinity-femininity into
assertiveness and gender egalitarianism. The GLOBE
data, in spite of a very different approach, reflects the
very structure of the original Hofstede model
(Hofstede, 2011).
In addition, The choice of Hofstede (1980) model of
national culture over others is usually motivated by
three factors. First, Hofstede data allows to include a
larger sample of countries than other datasets. For
example, Hofstede measures the national cultures of
all European Union (EU) member countries, which is
not the case with GLOBE. Second, the number of
dimensions originally used by Hofstede (1980) are
fewer—four compared to seven by Schwartz (1994),
for instance—which is surely an advantage, but most
importantly the dimensions are statistically distinct.
GLOBE has nine dimensions but high inter-
correlations have been reported among them, and
therefore, multicollinearity problems can result when
all are used in the same model (Laskovaia et al.,
2017). Third, Hofstede dimensions have been
replicated by many researchers and the replications
show no loss of validity, indicating that the cultural
differences his dimensions describe are basic and
enduring. Kirkman. Lowe and Gibson (2006) review
180 empirical studies published between 1980 to
2002 and observe that Hofstede dimensions
successfully predict cross-country variations and
links between culture and organizations.
However, the Hofstede theory is not free from
criticism. One important criticism is that the study of
a single company cannot provide information about
entire national cultures, as the framework was
developed using only IBM data in the 1960s and
1970s. But it is important to understand that what was
measured were differences between cultures, and the
use of one company eliminates the effect of
management policy and practices of different
organizations influencing behavior differently.
Moreover, extensive validations show that Hofstede
country scores correlate highly with all kinds of other
data (Hofstede, 2002).
Another criticism is that the IBM data are old and
therefore obsolete. But the data have since been
validated against all kinds of external measurements,
and subsequent studies prove that Hofstede country
ranking remains valid. A good reason is that his
country scores do not provide absolute positions, but
positions relative to other countries (Hofstede, 2011).
As a result, his measures retain validity even after
changes like the advent of new technologies that
affect all countries together but not their relative
positions.
CONCLUSION
Any basic cultural change to invalidate Hofstede
country rankings or his model requires either a much
longer period or extremely dramatic outside events,

Alternative Cross-Cultural Theories: Why Still Hofstede?
Proceedings of ISERD-Science Globe International Conference, Jakarta, Indonesia, 30th -31st December 2018
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as his dimensions are assumed to have centuries-old
roots (Hofstede, 2002, 2011). Against this
background, it is no surprise that Hofstede model is
by far the most established and widely used in the
international business literature and his dimensions
have become the standard tool for measuring and
comparing cultural differences (Breuer et al., 2018).
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