International Business: The New Realities, 5th Edition

Hofstede’s Research on National Culture

Dutch anthropologist Geert Hofstede conducted one of the early studies of national cultural traits. He collected data on the values and attitudes of 116,000 employees at IBM, a diverse company in terms of nationality, age, and gender. Based on this research, Hofstede identified six independent dimensions of national culture, described next.27

Individualism versus collectivism refers to whether a person functions primarily as an individual or as part of a group. In individualistic societies, each person tends to focus on his or her own self-interest, and ties among people are relatively loose. These societies prefer individualism over agreement within the group. Competition for resources is the norm, and ...