There is a caveat, what he sampled Is IBM employees from various countries, which represent a particular culture of their own, rather than being representative of the culture as a whole. Rather than look at total giving (or perecentage) OF A SOCIETY, they authors confuse a society with its government. I especially liked the parts that show biases in studies and manuals themselves, as they are made by people who live in a culture.

Now since we associate with various groups that overlap and comingle and fluididate and dance around in this hypermodern metropolis that we’ve created for ourselves, we need to learn how to navigate this unending complexity. The fifth dimension which was later added based on results from the Far East and Asia - Long- versus Short-Term Orientation - is not discussed in this book. But they seem incapable of concluding that good intentions (and even money) is not the most effective way to solve these problems. But culture shock - whether the shocking contact is between an individual and a new country, between organizations, between the sexes, or between opposing diplomats - can be turned to our advantage, Hofstede says - if we understand it.Even when local wars do not destroy the products of peaceful development, forces in society make development difficult to attain. I recommend this book to everyone, specially for those who deal often with people from other countries and cultures.

The father and son team of Geert and Geert Jan Hofstede have done a remarkable job breaking down the (measurable) elements of the world's cultures, usingt the somewhat antiquated IBM studies combined with more recent (less comprehensive) studies. The long and detailed version of his academic work is found in his other book "Culture consequences". He begins with an excellent overview of culture and its levels and explains the concept of cultural `dimensions' - aspects of culture that can differentiate and measure differences among different cultural groups. Simply because the authors present the information and leave it at that; they don’t mention any grand theory about the nature of the universe; apparently that’s just for the Continental French and the Germans to speculate about, the analytic empiricists content themselves with data.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Those things have been found slow to change if at all and so far have proven to have a perplexing and strong impact on the simplest of cultural interactions as you can see in the case presented at the beginning of each chapter. Additional data was later collected from other countries and populations, outside IBM, and used to verify and enhance the original results. INDIVIDUALISM/COLLECTIVISM: Individualism describes societies where the ties between individuals are loose; everyone is expected to look after himself and his immediate family.