Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind | Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede

Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind | Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede | Monumental Book Well Worth the Read

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Cultures and Organ...

	Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede McGraw-Hill, 2004 - 300 pages average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The landmark study of cultural differences across 70 nations, Cultures and Organizations helps readers look at how they think?and how they fail to think?as members of groups. Based on decades of painstaking field research, this new edition features the latest scientific results published in Geert Hofstede?s scholarly work Culture?s Consequences, Second Edition. Original in thought and profoundly important, Cultures and Organizations offers vital knowledge and insight on issues that will shape the future of cultures and nations in a globalized world.

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Pioneering work

This is a pioneering book, which provides a generalist approach to dealing with cross-cultural issues with many excellent examples. Hofstede was one of the first to bring the study of how culture affects human interaction in the field of business. The quantifying approach is very similar to what cultural anthropologists use. As with all pioneering works there is some criticism about conflict resolution as other reviewers have pointed out. Another central criticisms of this model has been that nation state and culture are always presumed to be the same. Local culture does not follow political boundaries. Globalization has also changed some of the observations initially made by Hofstede.

Some readers might be tempted to think of people in simple categories or stereotypes, which is precisely what Hofstede counsels that we should attempt to avoid. Cultures and organizations gives good insights on how "Groupthink" controls our lives and how we could improve interaction.

Hofstede's tools for understanding different national cultures are widely used by cross-cultural trainers all over the world and taught in many fields.

This is a good book for international managers and students of culture. HR-practitioners working in multicultural organizations might find this a bit theoretical but nonetheless useful for understanding underlying causes for human behaviour.

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Monumental Book Well Worth the Read

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 end result is that nations can be evaulauted on the basis of criteria such as "uncertainty avoidance," "individualism" and "power distance from superiors."

The work is enlightening and helpful to anyone who works internationally. It is also useful to break down one's own nation (for example, some Americans lean toward the British way of thinking while others are more German-like). The same criteria that divide nations also divide families within a society.

Businessmen, missionaries, pastors, counselors, journalists, and social scientists should devour these materials!

This should be required reading for anyone planning to live overseas or anyone who deals with internationals. In short, this book is relevant to our modern "shrinking" world and quite well done.

Like most significant works, this volume has its weak points.

Although the authors claim to espouse a "values neutral" position (which I have always argued is an impossible and illogical position), their Dutch/Swedish preferences ring out loudly and clearly (humanistic, environmnetalist, etc.). Although the authors do make a serious attempt to look at things from other perspectives, they simply cannot divorce themselves from their own cultural preferances. This is not bad -- they simply need to be above board and stop pretending to take the role of the neutral outsider (at least to better influence those of us who are American conservatives; we are big into distinguishing between fact and evaluation of fact; these evaluations are always done through a person's own personal gridwork).

The authors also have occasional trouble connecting a few dots. For example, on the bottom of p. 355, the Hofstedes are tactfully scolding the U.S. for its lack of foreign aid (again, showing their own bias), but on the top of p. 356 they add, "Looking back to half a century of development assistance, most observers agree that the effectiveness of much of the spending has been dismal." They then say those countries which did improve did so because of their cultural values, not foreign aid. But they seem incapable of concluding that good intentions (and even money) is not the most effective way to solve these problems. They just don't get it.

The same is true with contributions through governments to Tsunami relief. It should be expected that individualistic countries would be more prone to give as individuals, not as collective societies. Rather than look at total giving (or perecentage) OF A SOCIETY, they authors confuse a society with its government. Lots of missed "dot connections" in this work.

Despite the books weakspots, it is overwhelming strong and rich with fascinating content. It is a "mind opening" work -- well worth the read. You simply must read this one!

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Excellent insights while entertaining to read

Having just survived a merger of two companies, I was searching to find the right words to explain the differences in cultures I was experiencing. Although this book focuses on national cultures, I found the explanations of the dimensions of culture and how they manifest themselves in different behaviors appropriate for corporate situations. The last few chapters deal explicitly with corporate culture, but I found these chapters less insightful than the others. The book is very well written and organized, with tables summarizing key concepts and entertaining anecdotes to illustrate the points. Because I've traveled internationally for business, I was familiar with other works on culture, but none were as helpful as this book. I now have the vocabulary to articulate the differences I see.

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A must have resource for highly effective multicultural / multinational leadership...

As a combat tested USAF E3 AWACS command pilot (over 1900+ hours of total flight experience), this book is a potent resource for anyone seeking to gain insights on how best to manage a multicultural / multinational workspace.

Wonderful framework for thinking about cultural differences

A must-read for anyone interested in the subject area.

The new and revised content also relate Hofstede's original groundbreaking research to the more recent work of other renowned scholars in the field (such as Ronald Inglehart of the Univ of Michigan and the World Values Survery). These links make his work even more compelling and make you start to think that we may be inching closer to a more universally agreed upon framework for thinking about cultural differences.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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