Cultural Dimention
Cultural Dimensions In Management And Planning
Geert Hofstede*
ABSTRACT The nature of management skills is such that they are culturally specific: a management technique or philosophy that is appropriate in one national culture is not necessarily appropriate in another. The paper describes the scope of (workrelated) cultural differences as they were revealed by research in more than 50 countries around the world and discusses how these differences affect the validity of management techniques and philosophies in various countries within the functioning and meaning of planning.
Management deals with a reality that is man-made. People build organizations according to their values, and societies are composed of institutions and organizations that reflect the dominant values within their culture. Organization theorists are slowly realising that their theories are much tess universal than they once assumed: theories also reflect the culture of the society in which they were developed. In this respect, the notion of a "Western" culture which justified universal "Western" modern management methods is also crumbling, tt has become more and mo~re clear that managing in different Western countries like Germany, France, Sweden or U.K. is not the same activity and that many usual generalizations are, in fact, not justified. By the same token, speaking of an "Asian" or "Middle-Eastern" type of management is not justified. There is a need among international managers and management theorists for a much deeper understanding of the range of culture-determined value systems that, in fact, exists among countries, and should be taken into account when transferring management ideas from one country to another. Managernent in its broadest sense consists in the co-ordination of the efforts of people and of the use of economical and technical resources in order to obtain desired ends. Management is a socio-technical activity in the sense that it implies dealing 'with people (the
Geert Hofstede*
ABSTRACT The nature of management skills is such that they are culturally specific: a management technique or philosophy that is appropriate in one national culture is not necessarily appropriate in another. The paper describes the scope of (workrelated) cultural differences as they were revealed by research in more than 50 countries around the world and discusses how these differences affect the validity of management techniques and philosophies in various countries within the functioning and meaning of planning.
Management deals with a reality that is man-made. People build organizations according to their values, and societies are composed of institutions and organizations that reflect the dominant values within their culture. Organization theorists are slowly realising that their theories are much tess universal than they once assumed: theories also reflect the culture of the society in which they were developed. In this respect, the notion of a "Western" culture which justified universal "Western" modern management methods is also crumbling, tt has become more and mo~re clear that managing in different Western countries like Germany, France, Sweden or U.K. is not the same activity and that many usual generalizations are, in fact, not justified. By the same token, speaking of an "Asian" or "Middle-Eastern" type of management is not justified. There is a need among international managers and management theorists for a much deeper understanding of the range of culture-determined value systems that, in fact, exists among countries, and should be taken into account when transferring management ideas from one country to another. Managernent in its broadest sense consists in the co-ordination of the efforts of people and of the use of economical and technical resources in order to obtain desired ends. Management is a socio-technical activity in the sense that it implies dealing 'with people (the