Critique of the claims by Hofstede et al. to have identified causal, enduring, uniform national cultures.

1. A Post-Hofstedeian Notion of
Culture
Professor Dr. Brendan McSweeney
Chair in Management, Royal Holloway, University of London/
Visiting Professor in Business Administration, School of
Business, Stockholm University

2. Why bother?
 Why is the cultural research of Geert Hofstede,
and similar work, a desirable/useful object of
review?
 Diversity/inter-culturality presents huge
intellectual and practical challenges.
 Within the business school communities and
management consultancy arenas Hofstede’s, and
similar work, has an immense following.
 As of this morning, Hofstede’s work has been
cited almost 61,000 times.
 Is his work a road-bridge or a road-block?

3. Hofstede’s Claims
 To have empirically identified “found” the national cultures (or differences
between such cultures) of numerous countries.
 The cultures or differences between them are described on the basis of the six
[bi-polar] “dimensions” of national culture viz.
Power-distance – attitudes about power distribution
Uncertainty Avoidance – high-low uncertainty tolerance
Individualism vs Collectivism
Masculinity vs Femininity
‘Confucian Dynamism’ – long vs short-term time orientation
More recently (2010) Indulgence vs. Restraint
 And that these dimensions strongly influence national thinking, feeling,
and acting, as well as organizations, institutions, etc. in “predictable ways”

4. • “The data obtained from within a single MNC does have the power to
uncover the secrets of entire national cultures” (Hofstede,1980).
• “[N]ational values” are “given facts, as hard as country’s geographic position or
its weather” (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005)
• In ... masculine cultures ... there is a feeling that conflicts should be resolved by
a good fight ... The industrial relations scene in these countries is marked by
such fights ... In feminine cultures ... there is a preference for resolving conflicts
by compromise and negotiations” (Hofstede, 2010; Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005:
143)(Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov, 2010), and elsewhere.
• Freud was an Austrian; and there are good reasons in the culture profile of
Austria in the IBM data why his theory would be conceived in Austria rather than
elsewhere” (Hofstede, 2001; 1980).
• “The five main dimensions along which the dominant value systems in more than
50 countries can be ordered and that [they] affect human thinking, feeling, and
acting, as well as organizations and institutions, in predictable ways” (Hofstede,
2001: xix

5. This particular notion of culture and its
supposed consequences is not unique to
Hofstede
 The claim that populations (civilizations,
regions, countries, organizations, ethnic (and
other sub-national groups) are
distinguishable on the basis of distinct,
shared, enduring, causal, and identifiable
cultures (defined as subjective values) has
considerable following both as an explanation
and a guide to action.

6.  According to David Hickson and Derek Pugh national
culture “lie[s] beneath [a society’s] characteristic arts,
clothes, food, ways of greeting and meeting, ways of
working together, ways of communicating, and so on”
(1995: 17).
 Nancy Adler, states that a national “cultural orientation
describes the attitude of most people most of the time”
(2002: 19).
 David Landes, states that: “culture makes almost all the
difference” (2000: 2)

7. Many varieties of culture as enduring,
identifiable, subjective value
configurations

8. A long-standing view
 In 1797 the French counter-revolutionary Joseph de
Maistre declared “I have seen Frenchmen, Italians,
Russians. But for man, I declare I have never in my life
met him.”
 W. B. Yeats claim that there was a national "Collective
Unconscious or Anima Mundi of the race" (1922)
 W. W. M. Eiselen – the intellectual architect of apartheid
- stated in 1929 that “culture not race was the true basis
of difference, the sign of destiny”
 A. J. P. Taylor pronounced that: ‘The problem with Hitler
was that he was German’ (in Davies, 1999)

9. Understanding and managing
diversity
 As academics or/and advisors/consultants
we seek to, or are expected to, identify,
teach, and otherwise communicate methods
of management that create enduring success
for uninational and multinational
organizations – whether for- or not-for-profit.
 But there is a gap between the speculative
generalisations/practical expected of us
about complex worlds and what meets the
standards of rigorous scholarship (March &
Sutton, 1997) .

10. Conditions
i. the world is not ‘flat’; ii. performance
advantages are unstable; iii. the causes of
success are complex; iv. atomistic
explanations of action are not
comprehensive; and v. causes are not always
reducible to the exterior/materialistic.
Because of these (and other) conditions,
understanding and/or managing transnational
business activities is immensely challenging.

11. Cultural values theories therefore address
major intellectual and practical challenges,
but how realistic and/or useful are these
theories?

12. My view, in short ...
 As an academic, and also as someone engaged
in managing across many country borders, in my
opinion, partitioning populations (civilizations,
regions, countries, organizations, ethnic (and
other sub-national groups) on the basis that they
are distinguishable from other populations on
the basis distinct, shared, enduring, causal, and
identifiable cultures (defined as configurations of
subjective values) is an intellectual cul-de-sac;
lacks scholarly rigour; and is not merely useless,
but is misleading.

13. ‘Good’ theory?
 Theory as surprise: defamiliarising – Hofstede et al. perhaps once useful
against the global one best way view – but overfamiliar now. And best
achieved through descriptions of real differences
 Theory as covering laws? Every good theory does not consist of covering
laws, but the culture as values theories claim to have identified such
generalisations and thus should be judged against that criterion.
 Theory as a predictor: temperate or imperious versions – some level
important if it is to be useful as a guide to action – case-study of predictive
failure of Hofstede’s claims.
 Theory as narrative: an explanation (story) that describes the process, or
sequence of events, that suggests a relationship between factors/variables.
Distinct from stories/cases presented as evidence of a covering law.
Examine one of Hofstede’s alleged cases.

14. 8 Tests of a Theory of Causality
1. Well Specified or Too Vague: Is its definition/description precise/demarcated? Or is
it underspecified or a composite?
2. Internally Uniform or Heterogeneous: If causal, is it represented as a coherent
(homogeneous) force or as incoherent (heterogeneous)?
3. Identified by Valid Methods or a Product of Inappropriate Processes:
Assuming it exits, is it identifiable and with sufficient degrees of accuracy and/or by
justifiable means? Or are its descriptions imprecise and/or the product of unsound
processes ?
4. Causal at One Level or All levels: Assuming they are accurate, are the
descriptions accurate about/useful enough at one societal level only or valid for all
levels?
5. Strong, Weak, or Nil Causality: If causal (i) how strong is that influence; and (ii) is
that influence distinguishable from other causes? Or is action usually an outcome of
multiple and complex factors?
6. Enduring or Changing: If causal, are outcomes stable or variable?
7. Uniformity or Diversity in a Domain: Is it uniform in content and consequences
across its claimed domain (country, or whatever)? Or is there intra-domain diversity?
8. Strong or Weak Predictive Power: Do the depictions provide good predictions? Or
are many false predictions observed?

15.  A broadly similar debate is taking place within
the institutional, neo-institutional, community.
 For an overview see: special issue of
Economy and Society 38, 4. 2009.
 See also the journal Socio-Economic
Review and books by Colin Crouch,
Wofgang Streeck.

16. Test 1:
Well Specified or Too Vague?
2. From a particular academic/management
consultancy firm, is the definition/description of
culture employed precise/demarcated enough?
Or is it underspecified or a composite? and
4. Generally, is there even a broad consensus
about what the term culture means – or is there
a multiplicity of meanings?

17. Which notion of culture?
There is no consensual definition of ‘culture’.
 As early as the 1950s, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde
Kluckhohn estimated – in a survey of English
language sources only - that there were already over
160 definitions of culture (“and its near-synonym
civilization”) in use.
And those multiple definitions are usually
underspecified.

18. Which/What Culture?
 Widely used to indicate that societal context is
influential.
 Johns (2006), for instance, describes ‘national
culture’ as “a contextual imperative”.
 Of course, context matters – useful counter to pure
notions of individuality - but that does not get us
very far. What are its/their properties, degree, and
type of influence?

19. Identity
 Also confused with the notion of ‘identity’.

20.  It is used in an objective sense: rituals of daily life,
ceremonies, art forms, fashion, customs, means of
social differentiation, and so forth
 And in a subjective (psychological) sense.
In the latter, views of the causal influence of culture
ranges from that as a supremely independent
variable, the superordinate power in society to, at
the other extreme, a mere powerless
epiphenomenon.

21. Subjective
• A variety of implicit or explicit definitions of ‘culture’ are employed
by management/business academics/consultants, but the
dominant one is that of: (a) “mental programming” – subjective
values.
• A notion of culture long out-of-favour in most other disciplines,
including anthropology.
• And as (b) highly influential – even the exclusive cause –
thus inappropriately neglecting other cultural and non-cultural
influences.
• And (c) reductive - the notion of ‘mind’ is unclear and complex,
and not reducible merely to ‘values’ (of which, in any event, there
is no consensual definition).
• A notion of ‘mind’ needs also to consider: preferences, desires,
goals, needs, norms, traits, aversions, tastes, assumptions, and

22.  That is not to criticise studies which focus exclusively on
just one of: values; preferences, desires, goals, needs,
norms, traits, aversions, tastes, assumptions, attractions,
or whatever.
 Focus, parsimony, strategic reduction – abstracting away
enough of the world’s complexity to develop pointed
explanations - are often necessary, BUT
 ... given the totalizing claims made for subjective culture
and its alleged comprehensive “consequences”, a narrow
focus of research which claims to explain so much is, to
say the least, questionable.

23. “Software of the Mind”
(Hofstede, 1980, 2010., etc.)
 Aside from the unobserveability of ‘Values’,
they are not the equivalent of MS-DOS or
Mac OS X

24. Test 1 (Adequately Specified?)
Conclusion
 ‘Culture’ is an over-used and under-specified term.
 But in management it is often – unjustifiably -
defined narrowly as endogenous, highly influential
(even determinate) ‘values’.

25. Test 2
(Coherent or Incoherent?)
 Internal Uniformity: Is the culture a stable
uniformity (dammed up into a neat, separate,
‘pond’) or a dynamic cocktail (perhaps
containing some patterns, but overall a loose
assemblage)?
 Why does this matter? If the latter, uniform
outcomes are not possible.

26. Uniform culture – Uniform
action
 The assumption of cultural determinism alone does
not exclude the possibility of inconsistent, varying,
actions within, or outside of, organizations.
 What the culture as subjective values model also
supposes is that for each specific arena or category
of actors (civilization, country, ethnic group, or
whatever) culture is coherent, that is: uniform, non-
contradictory.

27. Coherent (unambiguous/non-
contradictory)
 The notion of cultural coherence probably has its roots in
romanticism “with all of the variations of the idea of the Geist
(spirit) of an age or a people” (Appadural, 1988: 41).
 Anthropologists, Pitrim Sorokin, the early Ruth Benedict, and
Gregory Bateson, all argued that each culture has a single
ethos.
 Hofstede describes each culture a “whole” (2001: 17).
 In sum, as Carl Ratner (2005: 61) states “individuals …
participate in a common, coherent culture that is structurally
integrated at the societal level.”

28. In contrast:
 Edward Burnet Tyler characterized culture as a thing of “shreds and
patches”.
 Bronislaw Malinowski states that “human cultural reality is not a consistent or
logical scheme, but rather a seething mixture of conflicting principles”.
 A. L. Kroeber, described the notion of “total [cultural] integration” as an “ideal
condition invented by a few anthropologists not well versed in history”.
 Richard Merelman describes culture in the US as a “loosely bounded fabric,
ill-organized, permeable, inconsistent”.
 Amitai Etzioni describes the myth of cultural coherence as: “One of the most
deep-seated fallacies in social science”.

29. • Endogenous change is inconceivable.
• As Margaret Archer states: “The net effect of this
insistence on cultural compactness [is to preclude] any
theory of cultural development springing from internal
dynamics ... internal dynamics are surrendered to external
ones” (1988: 6).
• Bizarrely, Hofstede claims that on the very few occasions
when there is an externally caused change in a national
culture, the change occurs not only across that country but
also within all countries throughout the world. National
cultures very rarely change, he states, but when they do,
“they change in formation” across the globe, that is to say
their “relative position or ranking” in his five national cultural
indices are unaffected (2001: 36).

30. Studies
1. Many studies have found incoherence (incompleteness,
illogicality, gaps, cracks, hybridity, remixing,
contradictions, ambiguity, slippages, conflicts, malleability)
within cultures. (This is now the standard view in anthropology)(Kuper, 2003).
3. Even if individual cultures are supposed to be coherent it
does not follow that there will be no contradiction, gaps,
frictions, ambiguities at cultural interfaces.
5. Cultural coherence allows no room for individuals to
exploit – it is a theory of cultural automatons. We are
social but not entirely socialized (Wrong, 1961).

31. Hindu civilization?
 In addition to multiple varieties of Hinduism – the notion that
it is a single religion is a colonial constructed myth.
 There are approximately 36,000 different Hindu gods and
goddesses.
 The extent and ways in which religion influences social
action varies enormously, and there are many other
influences.
 In India, as well as Hindus and Muslims, there are also
Sikhs, Buddhists, Anglo-Indians, Christians, Parsis, Jains,
Jews, Atheists, and Agnostics. And many ways of being
each of these.

32. Sinic/Confucian (Chinese)
Civilization
Confucianism - it is not a holistic framework or a
hegemonic influence. ‘Confucianism’ – a term
invented by Jesuit missionaries – consists of a large
body of work that is interpretable in multiple ways.
• Explaining the values of the 4 billion Asians on the
basis of one person’s writings is as absurd as
claiming to explain the behaviour of three quarters of
a billion Europeans from the bible.

33. We all live with, engage with,
paradoxes, contradictions
Look before you leap  He (or she) who
hesitates is lost
Too many cooks spoil the  Many hands make light
broth work

34. Test 2 (Internal Uniformity?)
Conclusion
 Each notion of culturally cohesive communities
greatly exaggerates the internal unity of cultures and
therefore, even if the causality of culture is
supposed, social uniformity and continuity cannot
also be logically supposed to be the outcome.
 As the former president of the US Society of
Psychological Anthropology, Philip K. Bock,
unhesitatingly states: “We must conclude that the
uniformity assumption is false” (1999).

35. Test 3:
Empirically Identified by Valid Methods or
Depicted Through Inappropriate Processes?
Assuming ‘it’ exits, is it identifiable and with
sufficient degrees of accuracy and/or by
justifiable means? Or, alternatively, are its
descriptions imprecise and/or the product of
unsound processes?

36. Identifiability/Measurability of
National Culture as Values
• Discussed at length in
McSweeney, B. Human
Relations, 55.1 (2002)
• See Hofstede’s reply
and my response (both
in 55.11).
• Many other critiques

37. “Hofstede’s” Dimensions
 My criticism is not of the use of the depictions
or “dimensions” – they can be usefully used.
 But with Hofstede’s claim to have used them
to measure what he depicts as an enduring
and causal (even deterministic) national
force.
 Incidentally, the “dimensions” are not original
to Hofstede and have long history in the
social sciences.

38. Data Source: 117,000
questionnaires
Not as many used as is implied
 Combined figure for two surveys
 66 countries, but only 40 ‘yielded’ scores
Unrepresentative
 In 15 countries - less than 200 respondents
 First survey in Pakistan 37 employees and second 70
 Only surveys in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore 88, 71, and
58 respectively
 All from one company: IBM.

39. IBM questionnaires
 Not designed to identify national culture.
 Not independently administered.
 Not confidential
 Respondents knew of possible
consequences for them of their answers.
 ‘Blue collar’ workers’ not surveyed –
marketing and sales staff only.
 Atypicality of IBM

40. Deriving Descriptions of ‘‘National Culture’
from Questionnaire Data: 5 Crucial
Assumptions (each necessary – each, it is
agued, is fatally flawed)
1) Every micro-location is typical of the national;
2) Every respondent had already been permanently
programmed with three non-interactive cultural
‘programs’;
3) National culture creates response differences;
4) National culture can be identified through the response
differences;
5) National culture is nationally uniform – it’s acontextual.

41. Assumption 2. Every respondent had already been
permanently programmed with three non-interactive cultures
 Only one and the same organizational culture in every IBM subsidiary
 So a cultural monopoly, no harmonious, dissenting, emergent, contradictory, organizational
cultures in IBM
 One global occupational culture for each occupation
 No interaction between the three cultures
 No other cultural (or other influences) on the responses)
(OrC + OcC + NC1) – (OrC + OcC + NC2) = NC1 - NC2

42. (OrC + OcC + NC1) – (OrC + OcC + NC2) = NC1 - NC2
Very convenient! But ridiculous.

43. Many other critiques of
Hofstede’s methodology
 There are many other critiques of Hofstede’s
measurements – see Gerhart & Fang, 2005,
for instance.

44. Test 3 (Identification)
Conclusion
“The methods Hofstede used violate every
premise of opinion analysis I learned at the
feet of Lazerfeld and Hyman”
Immanuel Wallerstein
(personal communication)

45. Test 4
One Level or All levels?
Assuming a description is accurate at one
societal level, is it also accurate/useful
enough at that level only or valid also at
other or all levels?
Hofstede captures the “values that shape the
cognitive maps of individuals as a well as
social systems and institutions”
(Greckhamer, 2011:87)

46. At what level(s) is culture
supposed to be causal?
 Civilizations?
 Multi-country regions?
 Nations (or rather countries)?
 Within country immigrant, indigenous, and
‘minority’ ‘cultural’ groups (plural mono-culturalism)
(ethnicity, gender, etc.)?
 Organizations?
 Individuals?
One, some, or all?

47.  If a causal theory is represented as applying
only to one high level only (civilization,
country, or whatever) there would – outside of
the research community – be little interest as it
as more micro-levels we act, negotiate, etc.
 If, for example, I meet a number of Japanese
managers, I’m not meeting Japan, but a few
people from Japan.
 Do Hofstede et al.’s descriptions apply to this
group and not just to an abstract average
(Japan)?

48. Ecological Fallacy
 Making direct translations of properties or relations at one
level to another is unwarranted even it we suppose that the
depiction of first level is accurate.
 Robinson (1950) originally described the attribution of views
about the characteristics of one level to other levels also as
the “ecological fallacy” (1950), Wagner (1964) called it the
“displacement of scope”, and Galtung “the fallacy of the
wrong level” (1967)(see also Hofstede, 2001: 16, 463).
 Drawing inferences about higher levels from individual level
data is sometimes called the ‘atomistic fallacy’ (Tsui et al.
2007: 466).

49.  The pattern of correlation found in national
averages is not (contra Greckhamer, 2011
and a multitude of others) replicated at the
individual level. Gerhart and Fang (2005:
977) estimate, based on Hofstede’s data, that
only “somewhere between 2 and 4 percent”
of the variance at the level of individuals
answers is explained by national differences
– a tiny portion.
 Hofstede’s own estimate of 4.2 per cent is
only marginally higher (2001: 50).

50.  Furthermore, two of the four (later five)
dimensions employed by Hofstede to depict
national cultures – “power distance” and
“individualism and collectivism” were statistically
identified by him only in nationally averaged data.
At the level of individuals they had near-zero
intercorrelations (Bond, 2002) for those
dimensions and thus no* explanatory power at
that level.
 * Oyserman et al.’s (2002) meta-analysis of 52
studies concludes that country explains 1.2% of
the variation in individualism-collectivism scores.

51.  Relationships identified at one level of
analysis may be stronger or weaker at a
different level of analysis, or may even
reverse direction (Klein and Kozlowski 2000;
Ostroff 1993).
 Disaggregation leads to misrepresentation
whenever populations are not wholly
homogeneous.

52.  But the ecological error may also occur when a
property at one level are attributed to a homogeneous
group at a lower level.
 Schwartz (1994), citing, Zito (1975), gives the
illustrative example of the discrepancy between a
hung jury at two levels. As a group, a hung jury is an
indecisive jury, unable to decide the guilt or
innocence of the accused. However, attributing that
characteristic to the individual members of the jury
would be incorrect as the jury is hung because its
individual members are very decisive – not indecisive.

53. Test 4 (Level?) Conclusion
 The ecological fallacy is rampant in the writings of causal
subjective culture devotees. Perhaps more so in users than
originators, but the error can readily be found in multiple
places in the originators’ writings, including Hofstede’s.
 Even if we suppose that the national or civilization
descriptions are accurate, it is at lower levels (individuals,
groups, etc.) that we, and business organizations, engage
with.

54. Test 5
Strong, Weak, or Nil Causality?
Does ‘it’ have an influence on action, and if so: (i) how
strong is that influence; and (ii) is that influence
distinguishable from other causes? Or is action
usually an outcome of multiple and complex
factors?
A Management Question: when considering current or
possible activities in a specific country, how much
attention should be given to cultural descriptions of
that country – a lot, a little?

55. Unjustified jump from
description to causality
• Attitude surveys (based on questionnaires,
interviews, or however) provide zero direct
evidence of an influence of culture on
behaviour.
• As existing theoretical traditions provide little
guidance for understanding how values shape
behaviour, little more intellectually humility and
less bombast from subjective cultural devotees
in management would be appropriate.

56. Attributing causality to just one culture neglects the
independent role of other cultural influences
 If cultures additional to, or other than, the singular
culture are acknowledged, then the treatment of that
culture as the independent variable is possible only by
illogically attributing causal power to one category
of culture but effectively denying it to others.
 Mere acknowledgement of other cultures without
incorporating them in a theory of action is an empty
gesture.

57. Excluding any independent
role of non-cultural influences
 Even if we suppose that within a defined area/group, is
an influential – even monopolistic culture - why suppose
that it alone – or culture in general – is the only cause of
actions there?
 Why should cultural causality be privileged over
administrative, coercive, institutional, or other means
of social integration/control?

58. Myths for inexperienced
teenagers
 Tsui et al.’s (2007:46) study of 93 papers in leading
journals on cross-cultural organizational behaviour
observes that “few studies considered non-cultural
variables, either theoretically as predictors or empirically
as controls” and “researchers have ignored the fact that
culture is not the only differentiator of nations.”
 I don’t belittle such narrowly focused studies –
development of technical skills etc. BUT the idea that
behaviour at multiple levels within a country can
exclusively be explained and predicted on the basis of
one narrow representation of culture is frankly ludicrous.

59. Working Days lost in industrial disputes per
1000 employees (annual averages)
1961-65 1966-70 1971-75
‘Masculine’ Ireland 337.5 625.6 292.7
‘Masculine’ GB 127.0 222.6 538.6
‘Feminine’ Spain 14.1 37.1 95.6
Data Source: ILO Labour Relations Yearbook

60. Working Days lost in industrial disputes per
1000 employees (annual averages)
1961-65 1966-70 1971-75
‘Masculine’ Ireland 337.5 625.6 292.7
‘Masculine’ GB 127.0 222.6 538.6
‘Feminine’ Spain 14.1 37.1 95.6
Data Source: ILO Labour Relations Yearbook
Considerable intra-country variation demonstrates that the cause of
action cannot be reduced to a single force.

61. Working Days lost in industrial disputes per
1000 employees (annual averages)
1961-65 1966-70 1971-75
Masculine Ireland 337.5 625.6 292.7
Masculine GB 127.0 222.6 538.6
Feminine Spain 14.1 37.1 95.6
1976-80 1981-85 1986-90
Masculine Ireland 716.1 360.6 183.7
Masculine GB 521.7 387.4 117.5
Feminine Spain 1,089.8 400.9 433.6
Source: ILO Labour Relations Yearbook

62. Spain’s Dictator: Franco died
in 1975

63.  Massive decrease in Church attendance in
Spain after Franco’s death.
 Large increase in Russia after the end of the
Soviet regime.

64. Soccer – separate teams

65. One team for entire island

66. Test 5: Degree of Causality?
Conclusion
 Even if cultural causality is supposed it is illogical to
deny the possibility of the influence of other cultures
and non-cultural forces.
 We need to (a) separate out the various processes
that are lumped together under the heading of culture;
(b) not suppose a priori the causal dominance of one
type of, or any type of, culture; (c) be open to
recognising the influence of non-cultural factors.

67. Test 6: Enduring or Changing?
The Claim:
“[N]ational values” are “given facts, as hard as country’s
geographic position or its weather” (Hofstede and
Hofstede, 2005: 13)
There is a “stability to its essential nature ... regardless of
place, time or regime” (de Vries, 2001: 597).
As Renato Rosalso ironically states: “If it’s moving, it isn’t
cultural” (1989: 208).

68. Persistent Heritage
The claim of unchanging culture:
 Relies of a priori belief – not empirical
evidence.
 Is inconsistent – once the partitioned
population was active in creating a unique
culture but somehow that creativity has
ceased.
 And supposes that each culture is coherent,
pure and impermeable.

69. National Cultural Purity
 But like an Apache rock and roll band, cultures
are fusions, remixes, recombinants. They are
made and remade through exchange,
imitation, intersection, incorporation,
reshuffling, through travel, trade,
subordination.
 Geographical borders are not cultural borders.

70. Examples of ‘impurity’
Winslow Homer’s Eight Bells an example Tempura, an example of unique
of distinctly American art? Japanese cuisine?

71. Examples of ‘impurity’
Winslow Homer’s majestic Eight Bells was Tempura, from the Latin tempora –
described by many contemporaries as practice copied from Portuguese
distinctly American, but cross-Atlantic missionaries in Japan – until
influences can readily be discerned. recently popular only in Southern
Japan

72. Test 6: (Enduring or Changing?)
Conclusion
 Acceptance of specific legacies (and their
contestable interpretations) does not require
acceptance the notion of stasis (or
uniqueness).
 The claim that the cultures of nations,
civilizations, or whatever do no change relies
on essentialist myths not empirical evidence
and requires implausible suppositions such
as the coherence, purity, and impermeability
of culture.

73. Test 7:
Cultural Uniformity or Diversity in a Domain
Is a culture uniform in content and
consequences across its claimed domain
(country, or whatever)? Or is there intra-
domain diversity?
A management question: Is it true that
wherever I locate the new factory in a
country, the culture will be the same?

74. Evidence
The existence of uniformities within a domain, for
example, a national requirement to drive on the
right-hand side of the road or to use snow-tyres in
the winter, is not evidence of domain uniformity.
 Confirmatory Bias: The evidence in support of
domain uniformity is anecdotal – it relies on invalid
step of generalizing from small numbers and the
essentialist presupposition of national uniformity.
 Falsified: It is contradicted by multiple studies.
 Confuses Domain: It conflates nation with state.

75.  Fons Trompeenars generalises from undisclosed
interviews with corporate executives
 Kets de Vries generalizes from just one character in
a novel!
 Margaret Mead argued that the testimony of any
Samoan adolescent was representative of all
Samoan adolescents.
 Hofstede from one company

76.  Considerable diversity (heterogeneity,
divergence, variety) has been observed, (e.g.
Burrin 2005; Camelo et al. 2004; Campbell,
et al., 1991; Crouch, 2005; Goold and
Cambell 1987; Kondo 1990; Law and Mol
2002; Lenartowicz et al. 2003; MacIntyre
1967; O’Sullivan, 2000; Streeck and Thelen
2005; Thompson and Phua 2005; Tsurumi
1988; Weiss and Delbecq 1987; Yanagisako
2002).

77. Even Values Studies have
Shown Differences
For example:
Schwartz (1994)
Lenartowicz, Johnson & White (2003)
Peterson, Fanimokun, Mogaji & Smith (2006)
Peterson & Fanimoken (2008)

78. National Culture
 The notion of uniform national culture crucially presupposes
nationalist myths of the primordiality of nations.
 Nations may comprise part of a state or extend beyond the
borders of a single state. There are very few single-nation states.
• Confuses notions of nation, state, and country
• As Walker Connor states: "The prime fact about the world is that
it is not largely composed of nation-states" (1978:39).
• He reports a 1971 survey of 132 entities generally considered to
be states which concluded that only 12 states (9.1%) could
justifiably be described as nation-states.

79. Countries/States
 The “geographic position[s]” of many countries are
not “hard”. They are not fixed and are of
comparatively recent origin.
 State boundaries may be unstable. Whole states or
parts of states may be annexed. New states may be
formed by seceding from other states. Some
multinational states are very stable, some are very
volatile. States may be formed by the voluntary or
involuntary combination of multiple states. States
may fragment into multiple states, violently or
peacefully.

80. Test 7 (intra-domain diversity)
Conclusion
 “The fallacious assumption of cultural
homogeneity within nations” (Tung, 2008:
42),

81. Test 8:
Strong or Weak Predictive Power?
Do the depictions provide good
predictions? Or are many false
predictions observed?

82.  Nothwithstanding, the issues of social levels, national
culturalist assert that their favoured representations of
national cultures (or national cultural differences) enable
effective predictions of social action at sub-national levels.
 Hofstede peppers his books and articles with descriptions
of events which he employs to “validate” his
measurements of ‘national cultures’ and to demonstrate
that they “affect human thinking, feeling, and acting, as
well as organizations and institutions, in predictable ways”
(2001: xix).

83. Example
“In the USA as well as in other masculine cultures like the UK
and the Republic of Ireland there is a feeling that conflicts
should be resolved by a good fight ... The industrial relations
scene in these countries is marked by such fights. If possible
management tries to avoid having to deal with labor unions at all,
the labor union behaviour justifies this aversion ... In feminine
cultures like the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark there is a
preference for resolving conflicts by compromise and
negotiations” (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005: 143)(Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov, 2010),
and elsewhere.
# Only one section (‘labor unions’) are said to influenced by that which is
supposed to be national.
# Management is treated as immune to national culture and therefore
(unlike workers) influenced by something non-cultural.

84. Can readily be seen to be
flawed
 In Hofstede's 1980, 2002 'masculinity' index,
Japan is the most masculine country and
Germany has the same score as Great
Britain, yet throughout the post-2nd World War
period their industrial relations has been the
exemplar of co-operation.

85. Tested at the most favourable level, the
national, both by:
(i) Non-ranked Dichotomy and (ii) a stronger
Comparative Ranking.
• First against Hofstede’s 6 (3:3) named
countries;
• Then against equivalent and larger groups
(8:8).

86. More recent data for the six named countries
– weakest test (dichotomy) - fails

87. Comparative ranking test - fails

88.  A necessary condition of valid comparison is
that the comparators are equivalents.
 But the comparison in Hofstede’s case study
is not equivalent: ‘feminine’ countries are not
compared with countries with equivalent
levels of ‘masculinity’.

89.  The named ‘feminine’ countries are at the extreme
feminine end of the MAS Index but the named masculine
countries are not equivalent.
 Sweden (most); Netherlands (3rd most); and Denmark
(4th most).
 Ireland (9th); Great Britain (joint 12th); USA (joint 19th)

90. Weakest test (dichotomy) -
fails

91. Comparative ranking test –
also fails

92. P-D Index instead of MAS
Index - fails

93. Homicide predictions based on Hofstede’s
P-D and MAS Indices - Fail

94. A post-Hofstedian notion of
culture would:
 Complexity and Richness: Be definitionally clear but without being over-reductive –
conflating ‘mind’ with just ‘values’ is anorexic.
 Incoherence: Recognise the incoherence/heterogeneity of cultures
 Causal Plurality: Abandon the imperious claim that a specific culture is the source
of just about everything and really acknowledge the causal roles of other cultures
and non-cultural factors.
 Level of Relevance: Be aware that what is accurate/useful at one level may not be
at other levels.
 Space: Cease being prisoner of the state or other defined space – and concede
the reality of intra-country diversity.
 Change: Acknowledge change – avoiding nationalistic myths of essentialism.
 Predictions: Admit that predicting is very difficult if its is really is about the future –
avoid the myth of culture as an answering machine.
 Identification: Concede that the complexity of culture makes identification
challenging and avoid depictions that presuppose what it claims to have found.
 Resonate: Be in line with current notions of culture in major disciplines.

95. In short ...
 “unless we separate out the various
processes that are lumped together under the
heading of culture, and then look beyond the
field of culture to other processes, we will not
get very far in understanding any of it”
(Kuper, 1999: 247).

96. Thank you

97. 1. National Identifiable
from the local

98. 1. National Identifiable in the local
 Version 1 (what is identified characterises every
individual) presupposes that every national individual carries the
same national culture - what is to be found is presupposed
(catastrophic circularity). Contradicted even by his own data.
 Version 2 (what is identified is the national average) In
principle there is always an average e.g. in the world, continent,
country, region, cycling club, brothel, or whatever but why assume that
the average tendency in one micro-location is the national average?
 Hofstede’s data specifically: Employees not randomly selected and
atypicality of IBM.

99. 3. National Culture Creates Questionnaire Response
Differences
 Immediate Circumstances: “We suggest that much of the observed
differences in values surveys scores are not in fact, cultural in nature,
but simply reflect differences in circumstances between groups of
people” (Maseland and van Hoorn, 2010).
 Classification: Nationally classified data is not evidence of
national causality. Almost every classification would produce
difference - but what is that status of such differences? Hair colour
culture?
 Strategists not Dopes: Individuals are assumed to be mere
relays of national culture:
As discussed earlier strategic answering would have occurred as the
questionnaire answers were not confidential.

100. 4. National Culture Can Be Identified By Response
Difference Analysis
 Assumption 3 is a necessary but not sufficient condition of 4
 The processes of producing national cultural depictions from the
question answers is often unclear and sometimes bizarre. Robinson
(1983) describes the dimensions as “hodgepodge” of items “few of which
relate to the intended construct” (See Dorfman & Howell, 1988; Bond, 2002,
also)
 Different questions have ‘revealed’ different dimensions e.g. Schwartz
‘identified’ seven dimensions “quite different than Hofstede’s” (1994).

101. 5. Situationally unspecific i.e. it’s the same
everywhere within a nation
Ë Claims to have identified national culture (or differences) that are
nationally pervasive “in the family, at school, … at work, in politics”
(1992).
Ë The IBM surveys (with all the other limitations described already) was
only of employees, indeed only some categories of employees;
undertaken within the workplace of a single company (of one industrial
type) which was in a specific location within each country; the question
were almost entirely work-related; they were administered within the
formal-workplace.
Ë No parallel or repeat surveys were undertaken in additional workplaces
or non-workplaces.

102. ‘Culture’?
 For a variety of complex reasons the idea of ‘culture’ as
a, or indeed the, key social driver has gained immense
popularity across a range of academic disciplines.
 The popularity of the notion of ‘culture’ as an explanation
and cure is not confined to the academy - many
international agencies, management consultants, and a
host of other groups and institutions have embraced it.