Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

Dimension
High
Low
Time
polychronic
monochronic
Space
shared
private
Communication
indirect
direct
Rewards
group
individual
Emotions
openly expressed
concealed
Information
hidden networks
open systems
Regulation
rituals, rites
written codes
Conflict
avoid
confront
Status and power
position, authoritarian
qualification, democratic
Figure 2.3  High- context and low- context dimensions
Example
A British firm was negotiating with an Italian supplier to tender for a 
Swedish client. The monochronic British and Swedish companies com-
plained about late deliveries, laxity in responding to emails and written 
requests for information on the part of the Italians. The Italians com-
plained that their British and Swedish counterparts were distant and 
unfriendly and that their communications were lacking in respect and 
courtesy; moreover, they always delivered ‘in time’ if not always at the 
scheduled time agreed. The result was confusion on the Swedish side 
and frustration on the part of the British and the Italians, eventually 
leading to a breakdown in the agreement. The situation could have been 
resolved if the Italians had paid more attention to acknowledging emails, 
making sure the ‘paper trail’ of correspondence was maintained and 
advising of any slippage in delivery ahead of time. The British, on the 
other hand, needed to work harder at creating a personal relationship 
with their supplier, use the phone more and explain the problems with 
the Swedish client to obtain the loyalty of the supplier and the commit-
ment to timely delivery.

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30 Cross-Cultural Communication
further ten countries and three multi- country regions. He published his main 
findings in Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in
Work- Related 
Values (1980) and, with Gert Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov, Cultures and 
Organizations: Software of the Mind. Intercultural Cooperation and Importance for 
Survival (1991), the revised third edition of which was published in paperback 
format in 2010. The latter title updated in detail his former work, building 
on the initial IBM study and analysing the data from other cross- national 
cultural studies which helped confirm and expand the results. This later 
research extended the results to a wider number of countries. This chapter 
includes references to the tables and text of this updated research.
Hofstede describes culture as the ‘collective programming of the mind’. 
He maintains that the ‘software’ of the mind distinguishes the members of 
one group of people from another. It is built up by the family environment, 
schooling, the influence of the neighbourhood, the social environment of 
the local community and the workplace. All these influences add to one’s 
life experiences and become part of one’s cultural background.
Hofstede’s work has developed a model of cultural differences used to com-
pare the values of matched samples of the tasks of experienced workers and 
managers in a number of countries. Hofstede claims that the differences in 
values have important implications for managers and organizations which 
operate across national borders. He has put together a most comprehensive 
analysis of cultural differences between nationalities and has also asserted 
that one’s own national cultural characteristics tend to prevail over other cul-
tural characteristics acquired later, including those of a corporate culture.
Hofstede recognizes that there was previously no comparable scientific 
approach which could be used to provide cultural comparison, and his 
work aims to provide a systematic analysis and a common terminology 
to describe national cultures, rather than impressions and generalizations, 
which could lead to dangerous superficiality.
Hofstede emphasizes that describing a national culture does not mean 
that everyone in that culture will display the same cultural traits. In addi-
tion, his initial research does not allow for cultural differences between 
groups within a country, for example, regional differences, and differences 
in terms of social background, age, occupation or religion. His analysis uses 
national cultures to describe an average pattern of beliefs and values, but 
obviously individuals do not necessarily all conform to this average.
Through the analysis of the questionnaires he sent out, Hofstede identi-
fies four key variables that characterized national differences between IBM 
employees of different nationalities. He describes these as four ‘dimensions’ 
and he scores the countries he analyses out of 100 in each dimension 
(although in a few cases his ratings exceed 100). His analysis shows that 
differences among his selected countries can be measured by these four 
different criteria. He aims to show that these dimensions play a significant 
role in determining people’s behaviour, perceptions and values, as well as 

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Key Thinkers in Cross- Cultural Communication (1) 31
their subsequent impact on organizational life. He plots the position of the 
surveyed countries along the axes of these four dimensions of work- related 
value differences. These represent the relative, not absolute, positions of the 
countries and they concentrate only on measuring differences. His original 
first four dimensions are given in Figure 2.4 below.