GUNG HO! CULTURAL ANALYSIS
Michael Hamilton

MKTG 3852 – Second Summer 2012
7/22/12

GUNG HO- CULTURAL ANALYSIS
Cultural differences influence how business is conducted in today’s rapidly expanding global market. These cultural barriers affect human interactions through our perspective of one another, credibility, time frames, as well as through communication. The success of international business depends upon the ability to set aside our differences, unite and strengthen one another. Many of these challenges can be seen throughout the movie Gung Ho. The movie portrays the relationship between the Japanese and Americans in a lightly comically point of view through an auto factory. However, when comparing and contrasting the interactions of these two cultures, both in and out of the film, they’re dynamics of become more apparent. The connections and exchanges between the Japanese management team and the American workers throughout the film present examples for each of the five dimensions in Geert Hofstede’s cultural dynamics analysis: Individualism/Collectivism, Uncertainty Avoidance, Power Distance, Masculinity/Femininity, and the later added Long-term Orientation. I. Hofstede’s Cultural Dynamics
The results from Hofstede’s analysis for the United States and Japan are in the following table. When comparing the two we see that the Americans have a highly individualistic, male reinforced, ambiguous, society with a slight hierarchy with a weak connection to tradition. Japan is highly male reinforced, high structure, hierarchy with a strong connection to tradition. The two are on opposite ends of the scale in each category, except for the Power Distance where they differ slightly.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dynamics Scores U.S & Japan | Category | IDV | UAI | PDI | MAS | LTO | United States | 91 | 46 | 40 | 62 | 29 | Japan | 46 | 92 | 54 | 95 | 80 |