Geert Hofstede
Dutch social scientist who compared national cultures using IBM survey data
Dutch mechanical engineer turned social scientist who analysed employee surveys from IBM subsidiaries in many countries and proposed dimensions of national culture. His 1980 book Culture's Consequences is widely cited and widely criticised.
Why this person matters
Hofstede gave managers and cross-cultural researchers a shared vocabulary of national dimensions, such as power distance and individualism. Michael Bond, Michael Minkov and Gert Jan Hofstede helped extend the model. The criticism of it is a standard example of how country-level comparisons can mislead.
Main contributions
The IBM survey
Hofstede joined IBM in 1965 and founded its personnel research department. The surveys he analysed included more than 100,000 questionnaires from over 70 national subsidiaries, one of the largest cross-national databases of its time.
Dimensions of national culture
Culture's Consequences (1980) described four dimensions: power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity. Long-term orientation was added after work by Michael Harris Bond and colleagues, and indulgence versus restraint in 2010 from Minkov's analysis.
Intercultural institutions
He co-founded the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation with Bob Waisfisz in 1980 and directed it until 1993. From 1985 he held a chair in organisational anthropology and international management at Maastricht University.
Context and limits
Brendan McSweeney called the model methodologically flawed and overly deterministic; Galit Ailon found inconsistencies in theory and method. Gerhart and Fang argued that national differences explain only about 2 to 4 per cent of variance in individual values, and Brewer and Venaik warn of an ecological fallacy. Critics also note that the IBM sample was mostly sales and engineering staff of one firm, with few women.
In your introductory course
Culture and diversity.Appears in culture and diversity chapters and in applied psychology when comparing national cultures at work. Students should read the dimensions as country averages and not as traits of individuals.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 1.3. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1967
Received a PhD (Doctor of Social Science, cum laude) from Groningen University for a thesis titled The Game of Budget Control.
- 1980
Published Culture's Consequences, drawing on IBM survey data analysed in the 1970s.
- 1985
Became professor at Maastricht University, where he was professor emeritus from 1993.
- 2010
Published the third edition of Cultures and Organizations with Gert Jan Hofstede, Michael Bond and Michael Minkov, with scores for 76 to 93 countries.
Sources
- Geert Hofstede, Geert Hofstede's BiographyOriginal work. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Geert HofstedeReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Cultural dimensions theoryReference work. Reference article inspected.