“Geert Hotstede (www.geert-hofstede.com) has identified National Cultures in 5 Dimensions. What are each of these cultural dimensions? Compare and contrast each of these dimensions between Malaysia and a chosen Western country of your choice. Critically, discuss the implication for each pair of comparison in the sequence of 5 main national cultures.

Answer

Hofstede’s research, which was conducted prior to the GLOBE project, is based on 116,000 people in 50 countries. Nonetheless, all of the research was conducted in a single firm—IBM. As such, the result should be interpreted with caution.

The five cultural dimensions are as follows:

1. Power Distance Index The extend to which the less powerful members of organization and institution (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more versus less), but defined from below, not from the above. It is suggest that a society’s level on inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts on any society and anybody with some international experience will be aware that ‘all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others.

2. Individualism The one side versus its opposite, collectism, that is the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups. On the individualist side we find societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone expected to look after him/ herself and his/ her immediate family. On the collectivist side, we find societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in- groups, often extended families (with uncles, aunts and grandparents) which continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning royalty. The word ‘collectism’ in this sense has no political meaning: it refers to the group,