Culture and Leadership Across the World

6

Societal Culture and Leadership in Germany

Felix C. BrodbeckAston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

Michael FreseUniversity of Giessen, Germany, and London Business School

“The Germans make everything difficult, both for themselves and for everyone else.”

—J. W. Goethe

“The German Riddle: Is it Solvable?” is the title of the epilogue in the German 1991 translation of Hofstede's (1980) Culture's Consequences. In their epilogue, the translators point toward the potential usefulness of cross-cultural studies to overcome the typical difficulty of Germans in not being able to describe who they are: a difficulty, the French, the ...