Gerard Hendrik (Geert) Hofstede (2 October 1928 – 12 February 2020) was a Dutch social psychologist, IBM employee, and Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University in the Netherlands,[1] well known for his pioneering research on cross-cultural groups and organizations.
Here he described national cultures along six dimensions: Power Distance, Individualism, Uncertainty avoidance, Masculinity, Long Term Orientation, and Indulgence vs. restraint.
After working in the industry for ten years, Hofstede entered part-time doctoral study at Groningen University in The Netherlands, and received his PhD in social psychology cum laude in 1967.
Since his retirement in 1993, Hofstede visited numerous universities worldwide to educate students on his theoretical approaches and to continue his research in this field.
[6] Hofstede received many honorary awards,[7] and in 2011 was made a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion (Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw).
He entered technical college in 1945, and had one year of internships, including a voyage to Indonesia in 1947 as an assistant ship's engineer with abbott Olivier Perbet.
He was also influenced by a trip he made to England after meeting an English girl introduced to him by a friend of his family Alain Meiar, where he experienced culture shock.
He claims that his description of social situations appeals to a number of people: "I still have the mind of an engineer to the extent that I try to be specific...and be clear about what I am saying".
When he took a two-year sabbatical from IBM in 1971, he delved deeper into the data he had collected from his job and discovered that there were significant differences between cultures in other organizations but got the same ranking of answers by country.
He used existing literature in psychology, sociology, political science, and anthropology to relate his findings in a larger scope of study.
The analysis of his survey data and his claims led many management practitioners to embrace the model, especially after the publication of his 1991 book, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind.
[14] Hofstede replied to this critique,[15] arguing that the second edition of his book had responded to many of McSweeney's concerns and that he viewed the resistance to his ideas as a sign that he was shifting the prevalent paradigm in cross-cultural studies.
[15] McSweeney has rejected Hofstede's reply, arguing that the same profound methodological flaws that characterize the original analysis of the IBM data remain in the second edition.
[16] Another key critique, which largely focuses on level of analysis, is by Professor Barry Gerhart (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Professor Meiyu Fang (National Central University, Taiwan), who point out that among other problems with Hofstede's research (and the way it is widely interpreted) is that his results actually only show that around 2 to 4 percent of variance in individual values is explained by national differences – in other words 96 percent, and perhaps more, is not explained.
[18] Ailon finds several inconsistencies at the level of both theory and methodology, and cautions against an uncritical reading of Hofstede's cultural dimensions.
[20] Finally, d'Iribarne questions Hofstede's implicit assumption of uniformity in complex organizations, let alone entire national cultures.
"[21] Instead, though, d'Iribarne notes that in most situations, "society is split into more or less antagonistic groups"[21] and in any case, "meaning is not only received but produced";[21] in short, Hofstede does not allow for the fact that people do not remain static in how they interact with one another.
Hofstede's culture dimensions and scores are national or "ecological" in nature and do not apply to individual people living in the sampled countries:[23][24] In Hofstede's analysis, the correlations of his culture variables are significant when aggregated to the national level but not significant at the individual level.
In 2004, the Hanze University Groningen, the Netherlands established the Geert Hofstede Lecture, a bi-annual conference in the area of intercultural communication.
[30] In 2008, six European universities united to create the Master in International Communication (MIC), and named themselves the Geert Hofstede Consortium.
In October 2010, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics launched the Geert Hofstede Fund, aiming at encouraging activities around multicultural interactions and research about the impact of cultural differences.