Intercultural cooperation

Intercultural cooperation. Cultures - Organizations - Management ( English original title: Culture's Consequences ) is the title of a book originally published in 1980 by the Dutch cultural scientist Geert Hofstede .

Management and National Cultures

In the Organizational Sciences, the influences of national take cultures of the organizations on an increasingly more central position. In the 1950s and 1960s , at least in Europe and the USA, management was seen as a universal area of ​​knowledge that could be used worldwide and across cultures. Linked to this was the notion that national differences in management would lead to uniform methods over time and would subsequently overlay cultural differences. This thesis has become known as the convergence hypothesis and is largely determined by the work of researchers in the Aston group . This contrasts with the divergence hypothesis ( divergence hypothesis ), which proclaimed a strong influence on the management of organizational practices and processes by the respective national cultures. In their comparative studies of English and German organizations, Ruedi and Lawrence (1970) and later Sorge and Warner (1985) observed differences between them, especially in the areas of educational level (higher in Germany), power (in Germany culturally determined view of the organization as Authority structure ) and autonomy (higher decentralization in England).

The advocates of the divergence hypothesis saw themselves confirmed by the stronger networking in the 1970s within the framework of the European Communities on both the macroeconomic and business level. It was recognized that the convergence hypothesis could not be correct. There was no convergence of nature. To the same extent that the convergence hypothesis was invalidated, the focus of the studies shifted to national cultures because:

1. Nations (in the sense of the state) are political units with their peculiar methods, procedures and behavior.
2. Nationality or regionality has a symbolic value for its citizens. It essentially determines "Who we are" and "How we behave"
3. Nationality has a direct psychological influence on the way we think and act. Our thinking is shaped from early childhood and what seems normal to one person appears absurd to another. Consider, for example, the wearing of make-up or differences in the type of clothing (e.g. suits, headscarves or burqas ).

The assumption that such deep-seated ideas penetrate an organization and cannot be handed over at the gate became increasingly popular, but there was a lack of both a theoretical framework and a broad empirical basis to justify these assumptions. Between 1967 and 1978, Geert Hofstede examined around 116,000 questionnaires that had been filled out in 50 different countries by employees in all positions - from workers to managers. His goal was to find a language in which culture can be scientifically worked on without misunderstandings. From the answers Hofstede distilled four determining dimensions for the description of cultures. These dimensions are also used in the assessment of intercultural competence :

1. Individualism vs. collectivism
2. large or small power as distance (Engl. power-distance )
3. strong or weak uncertainty avoidance (engl. uncertainty avoidance )
4. Masculinity vs. Femininity

Individualism versus collectivism

This scale represents the relationship of the individual to society. The individualistic end of the scale describes relationships in which the person has to worry about his own affairs - and those of his nuclear family. Collectivist relationships mean that self-interest is put aside and the clan, tribe, village community etc. come to the fore. Hofstede uses a scale from 0 (strongly collectivistic) to 100 (= strongly individualistic). The scale correlates strongly with the wealth of nations; d. H. the more individualistic a nation was statistically, the richer it was.

Power distance

People differ in their intellectual and physical abilities. In some societies these differences become hereditary, so that they no longer play a role in the position in society. All societies show a more or less pronounced inequality. Hofstede measures this inequality using the power-distance scale from 0 (small difference) to 100 (large difference). In organizations this is expressed in autocratic leadership styles and is an expression of the mental programming of leaders and those being led; d. H. the autocratic leadership style is as pronounced as the balance of power between leaders and those led allows it. Hofstede compares the results from the studies with the values ​​on the Individuality scale. The clusters formed describe countries with largely similar leadership styles.

Avoiding uncertainty

Human consciousness follows causality (cause and effect) but cannot fully anticipate the effects of past and present actions. There are societies that accept this fact. They are mostly tolerant of their dissenting opinions because they do not pose a threat. Hofstede describes this attitude as weakly avoiding uncertainty .

Other societies teach their members to "trick the future". Because the future still remains unpredictable, there is a higher level of nervousness, emotionality and aggressiveness in these societies. Hofstede calls these companies strong insecurity-avoiding .

According to Hofstede, more security can be achieved in three ways:

1. Technology (in the broadest sense of the word; we feel safer when we have houses, levees, nuclear warheads, and life insurance)
2. Laws (also in the broadest sense of the word, i.e. basic democratic order and legislation, tripartite division of state powers, processes perceived as fair, etc.)
3. Religion (again in the broadest sense of the word and thus any fundamental belief, be it Christianity, Islam, Marxism, dogmatic capitalism, meditation teachings or even science)

This scale plots Hofstede against the power-distance scale and identifies groups of countries with similar expectations. For example, Germany is in the middle of the field for avoiding uncertainty in a group with Finland, Austria, Switzerland and Israel.

Masculinity versus femininity

In this last dimension, Hofstede describes the role differences between the sexes in societies. Some roles are inevitable (men cannot bear children), others are not biological but social. Hofstede records the differences using this scale. Some societies are relatively tolerant of who plays which roles; others draw quite sharp boundaries between gender roles. In the second case it is consistently the case that men take on more dominant and more powerful roles; hence the name masculine . The thinking of masculine societies is permeated by this pattern - including that of women in these societies. In such societies, “typically male” activities - bragging, showing off, visibly achieving goals, making money, or being big-is-beautiful are considered important. The societies described as feminine rate “typically feminine” values ​​as important: restraint, relationships, quality of life and environmental conservation, help towards others, especially weak and small-is-beautiful .

As with the other dimensions, Hofstede assigns numerical values, with masculine societies being classified as “high” and feminine societies as “low”. Hofstede plots the results against the uncertainty-avoidance scale. Again, cultural clusters can be determined where e.g. B. Scandinavian countries ( Denmark , Sweden , Norway , the Netherlands and Finland ) with low masculinity-femininity are recognized as belonging together and at the other end of the scale Japan with high masculinity-femininity and at the same time high power distance.

Short-term versus long-term orientation

Indicator relating to the time horizon for planning (time alignment, time orientation, planning). Examples of long-term alignment of values: frugality, perseverance, long-term goals. Examples of short-term alignment of values: flexibility, selfishness, quick results.

summary of results

Jane Henry ( 2001 ) from the Open University summarizes Hofstede's results in a table as follows:

#	designation	Power distance	Avoiding uncertainty	Individuality collectivity	Masculinity femininity	countries
I.	developed Latin countries	high	high	high	medium	Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Spain
II	less developed Latin countries	high	high	low	wide range	Chile, Yugoslavia, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Venezuela
III	developed Asian countries	medium	high	medium	high	Japan
IV	less developed Asian countries	high	low	low	medium	Hong Kong, India, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand
V	middle East	high	high	low	medium	Greece, Iran, Turkey
VI	Germanic	low	high	low	medium	Germany, Israel, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, South Africa
VII	angel-saxon	low	low medium	high	high	Australia, UK, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, USA
VIII	Nordic	low	low medium	medium	low	Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden

The table is based on Hofstede's original recording

swell

1. ↑ David J. Hickson , CJ McMillan: Organization and Nation: The Aston Program IV. Gower, Farnborough 1981.
2. ^ A. Ruedi, PR Lawrence: Organizations in two cultures. In: Jay Lorsch and R. Lawrence: Studies in Organization Design. Irwin-Dorsey, Homewood 1970.
3. ^ A. Sorge, M. Warner: Comparative Factory Organization: An Anglo-German Comparison of Management and Manpower in Manufacturing. WZB Publications, Science Center, Berlin 1986.
4. ^ Geert Hofstede: The cultural relativity of organizational practices and theories. In: Jon Billsberry (Ed.): The Effective Manager - Perspectives and Illustrations. The Open University, 1997, excerpt from J. Drew: Readings in International Enterprise. Routledge and Open University, London, pp. 140-158.
5. ↑ Jane Henry: Creativity and Perception in Management. Open University, Milton Keynes 2001.

literature

• Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede: Think local, act globally. Intercultural cooperation and global management. 3. Edition. DTV-Beck, 2006, ISBN 3-423-50807-8 .
• Geert Hofstede: Culture's Consequence .. 2nd edition. SAGE Publications, 2003, ISBN 0-8039-7324-1 .
• Geert Hofstede, Paul B. Pedersen, Gert Jan Hofstede: Exploring Culture . Intercultural Press, 2002, ISBN 1-877864-90-0 .