Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

1.0 Introduction "Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are nuisance at best and often a disaster." - Dr. Geert Hofstede Dr. Geert Hofstede conducted perhaps the most comprehensive study of how Values in the workplace are influenced by culture. From 1967 to 1973, while working at IBM as a psychologist, he collected and analyzed data from over 100,000 individuals from forty countries. From those results, and later additions, Hofstede developed a model that identifies four primary dimensions of differentiate cultures. These include: Uncertainty Avoidance, Power Distance, Masculinity-Femininity, Individualism-Collectivism, and Confucian Dynamism. These dimensions were arrived in his 1980 publication, "Culture's consequences International differences in work-related values." The study took existing survey data (Sample size of 116,000) collected from a multinational corporation. The result was a score in each of the dimensions for 40 different countries. After a further study of the Asian culture, Hofstede added a fifth dimension in his theory, that of Long- and Short-term time orientation (LTO) .As with any generalized study, the results may or may not be ap