Cultural environment in East Europe countries – Bulgaria

Cultural environment in East Europe countries – Bulgaria

Eastern Europe is a region that encompasses many different cultures, ethnicities, languages, and histories. Accorfing to Geert Hofsede the culturale is a conflict source and that the cultural differences are a disaster most of the times. Hofstede has created a cultural dimensions theory which represents a framework for cross-cultural communication. According to Hofstede, these framework describes the effects of a society's culture on the values of its members, and how these values relate to behavior, using a structure derived from factor analysis. The theory has been widely used in several fields as a paradigm for research, particularly in cross-cultural psychology, international management, and cross-cultural communication. If we explore the Romanian culture through the Hofstede’ş framework, we can get a good overview of the deep drivers of the Romanian culture relative to other world cultures.

Starting with the POWER DISTANCE which is defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally, we could say that Bulgaria scores high on this dimension (score of 70) which means that people accept a hierarchical order in which everybody has a place and which needs no further justification. Hierarchy in an organization is seen as reflecting inherent inequalities, centralization is popular, subordinates expect to be told what to do and the ideal boss is a benevolent autocrat

According to Hofstede’s framework, when speaking about Individualism, Bulgaria has a score of 30 which means that the country is considered a collectivistic society. This is manifest in a close long-term commitment to the member 'group', be that a family, extended family, or extended relationships. Loyalty in a collectivist culture is paramount, and over-rides most other societal rules and regulations. The society fosters strong relationships where everyone takes responsibility for fellow members of their group. In collectivist societies offence leads to shame and loss of face, employer/employee relationships are perceived in moral terms (like a family link), hiring and promotion decisions take account of the employee’s in-group, management is the management of groups

Masculinity / Femininity. A high score (masculine) on this dimension indicates the fact that the society will be driven by competition, achievement and success, with success being defined by the winner / best in field – a value system that starts in school and continues throughout organizational behavior.
A low score (feminine) on the dimension will indicate the fact that the dominant values in society are caring for others and quality of life. A feminine society is one where quality of life is the sign of success and standing out from the crowd is not admirable. If we refer to Bulgaria, according to the framework, they have a score of 40 which means that we can speak about a feminine society focused on people value equality, solidarity and quality in their working lives. Conflicts are resolved by compromise and negotiation. Incentives such as free time and flexibility are favored.

Another dimension is focused on the Uncertainty avoidance which resumes to the beliefs and institutions created by the members of a culture that feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations. In the case of Bulgaria, the country has a score of 85 which means a high preference to avoid uncertainty. They are maintaining a strict code of belief and behavior and they are intolerant to unorthodox behavior and ideas. In these kind of cultures, people have an inner urge to be busy and work hard. They place a high value on precision and punctuality and security, which is an important element in individual motivation.

Long term orientation is related to the future oriented perspective of the society, whether is a pragmatic future-oriented perspective or a conventional historical short-term point of view. Here Bulgaria has a 0 score. In countries with a high score for these dimension we will see that they put a high value on traditions, unlike the countries with low score in which the changes are fast accepted without putting to much value on traditions.

Geert Hofstede’s framework is applied for a long time in the business environment in order to make the environment more efficient, eliminating cultural mistakes.

Prihor Adina Oana