Moving from a country to another represents for the majority of people a serious challenge while it is for some people as easy as changing a pair of pants. Nevertheless, whether you feel comfortable or not with changing the country, every person faces the same challenges and difficulties. The difference remains in how people do cope with it and how easily they do it. Those challenges are embodied in cultural clashes. Indeed, people are used to different customs and traditions and they differ from a country to another and this also reflects in the ways of doing business. In fact, laws, regulations and standards (whether social or professional) are based on the said country’s culture. In order to assess the cultural differences between different countries, we recourse to two frameworks: the Hofstede model and the 7-D model. In this report, we are going to present the challenges faced in three different countries: Argentina, the United Kingdom and Morocco.
Hofstede model:
Hofstede model, as described by Cullen and Parboteeah, is a model mainly based on differences in values and beliefs regarding world and has become a ‘standard’ to assess cultural differences (Cullen, 2014). This model uses five dimensions to describe national culture: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity and long-term orientation (pragmatism). The figure below shows an application of the Hofstede model on Morocco, United Kingdom and Argentina.

Figure 1: Hofstede Cultural dimensions comparison between Morocco, Argentina and the UK (Hofstede Center)

As we can see above, Morocco scored (70) more than the UK (35) and Argentina (49). This means that in people in Morocco tend to accept inequalities between social classes in terms of power. In order words, do not care about whether power is distributed equally and it is normal that you find power concentrated in the hands of few. The UK on the other hand believes strongly in the fair distribution of power. They think that everybody should be treated equally, as opposed to Morocco.
Concerning individualism Morocco and Argentina are considered as collectivist countries with a score of 46 for both of them. This means that relationships between people are more developed and strong. They can rely on each other and take responsibility as a group and not as individuals. Loyalty and commitment toward other members are very strong in comparison to the UK (89) where the “I” is promoted more than the “we”. This means that the individual comes before the group and are not dependent of other members of the group.
From the observation of figure one, we can conclude that Morocco and Argentina sits on the average (53 and 56 respectively) and thus, even if it shows it is a masculine society, we can’t say much about the masculinity of those two countries. On the other hand, the UK has scored 66 in masculinity, which means that British people are motivated by success and are more ambitious than people in Argentina and Morocco. There a tense competition between people in order to be the “best”.
What we can say about uncertainty avoidance in Argentina and Morocco is that people in these countries are hostile toward uncertainty. They need someone or something, such as laws/regulations, that tell them what to do; although people tend to break the rules in these countries. This explains the high scores in power distance and shows the link between them. They also feel comfortable with familiar environment and tend to be resistant to change and intolerant to abnormality. The UK is at the total opposite of these two countries. They do not feel the need to be guided by rules nor to structure their life. They focus about the goal and do not care about the ‘how’. They prefer to live a day-to-day life.
As for the long-term orientation (pragmatism), Morocco and Argentina are conservative societies that hang on to traditions. As explained earlier, these countries do not like change and find a sense of security in their traditions. Concerning the UK, with a score that sits on the average, it is very difficult to determine the orientation of this country. Based on the Hofstede Model analysis, we conclude that Morocco and Argentina are the same, culturally speaking, to some extent. They both are collectivist countries as well as slightly masculine. Both are averse to uncertainty and have a lot of consideration for their culture, which make them very short-sighted concerning their orientation. The difference is that Argentina is more sensitive to distance power than Morocco, which makes them care about equality between the different social classes. Contrariwise, the UK is very different from Morocco and Argentina. They are individualistic, long-term oriented and are friendly toward uncertainty with the exception of masculinity and power distance. They are a masculine society as Morocco and Argentina but they are promoting equality, unlike Morocco.