Hofstede - Cultural Model

1.Leadership Dimensions: Culture and Leadership

Cultural dimensions have been around as long as the field of intercultural research (i.e., since the early 1960s). They provide concepts and terminology that enable all of us to become aware of, to measure, and to talk knowledgeably about the values and practices found in a human culture - and about the similarities and differences among human cultures. (Grove, 2005).

Geert Hofstede, a widely known Dutch researcher of culture, has defined culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another."

In the 1990s, Hofstede published results of his research in publication Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. Initially he developed four dimension in culture, but added a fifth dimension in 1991.

His five dimensions of culture are the following:- Power-distance- Collectivism vs. individualism- Femininity vs. masculinity- Uncertainty avoidance- Long- vs. short-term orientation

2.Power Distance Index (PDI) is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. It suggests that a society's level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and inequality, are extremely fundamental facts of any society and Hofstede claims that 'all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others'.

Individualism (IDV) on the one side versus its opposite, collectivism, 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 is 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 loyalty. The word 'collectivism' in this sense has no political meaning: it refers to the group, not to the state. The issue addressed by this dimension is an extremely fundamental one, regarding all societies in the world.

Masculinity (MAS) versus its opposite, femininity, refers to the distribution of roles between the genders which is another fundamental issue for any society to which a range of solutions are found. The IBM studies revealed that (a) women's values differ less among societies than men's values; (b) men's values from one country to another contain a dimension from very assertive and competitive and maximally different from women's values on the one side, to modest and caring and similar to women's values on the other. The assertive pole has been called 'masculine' and the modest, caring pole 'feminine'. The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men's values and women's values.