Study Skills for Higher Education

This article discusses the significance of Hofstede's cultural dimensions in international businesses. It highlights the four cultural dimensions and their impact on organizational cultures. It also suggests ways to incorporate cultural intelligence into business.

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Study Skills for Higher Education
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3/21/2019

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Contents
Study Skills for Higher Education.............................................................................................2
Task-1 (Journal Article Review)................................................................................................2
Solution 1...............................................................................................................................2
Solution 2...............................................................................................................................3
Solution 3...............................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................5

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Study Skills for Higher Education
Task-1 (Journal Article Review)
Solution 1
In this article author has briefly described the Hofstede’s model comprising 4 cultural
dimensions of international cultures (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). The four cultural
dimensions are Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity/Femininity and
Individualism/Collectivism. In this context, Hofstede has identified 4 main cultural
dimensions which can have a thoughtful influence over any business environment (Ferrell &
Fraedrich, 2015).
This article is clearly showing the research and conceptual efforts which preceded it and
directed up to it. The author of this article highlighted the significance of Hofstede’s cultural
dimensions through stressing on the extent of aggregation. Hence, article is describing the 4
entirely different cultural dimensions given by (Hofstede, 2011) research conducted over
organizational cultures. Article illustrated all four dimensions with the help of useful
examples like it raised a question about how would the collectivism versus individualism
index within Hofstede’s cultural model impact the buying of a smartphone, clothing or an
iPad within the different countries like United States, Japan and France. Article suggests that
as Hofstede described the important cultural values of humans within different countries,
hence organizational cultures are also different. Besides, the culture origins of employees
employed within global businesses might be different by their national culture of sole
country. The reason is that different businesses grow their own cultures as well as values in
different countries (French, 2015).
In this way, all suggestions made in this article are highlighting the major significance of
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions in detail. The cultural dimensions are together portraying a
major impact of the culture in-built within society over the core values of the people of that
society. These cultural dimensions are also describing the strong relationship amid these
values and behaviours, while utilising a structure-based upon factor analysis. Thus, this
article is concluding with offering a detailed understanding of the study of dimensions of
national cultures along with the position of countries (Gelfand et al., 2007).

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Solution 2
I agree with the fact that, those four cultural dimensions given by Hofstede are classifying
different cultures as conceptual dimensions effectively. In this way, article has also evaluated
the importance of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions in the context of international businesses.
In my opinion, the cultural dimensions are act as a generalized framework which motivates
the apparent as well as striking facts of different cultural relativity (French, 2015). Hofstede’s
cultural dimensions typically help to understand that all cultures found several distinct
answers in response to essentially the similar questions sat from human biology as well as
through the generalities of the human’s situation (French, 2015). While doing international
business, an organization generally needs to operate with diverse cultural peoples as their
employees hence Hofstede’s dimensions play an important role in that context also. My
views are based on my knowledge that each and every society's patterns for living life must
offer approved as well as sanctioned methods of dealing with different global circumstances
(Fast Comany, 2011).
Within an international business, these four dimensions are critically important because
diverse culture offers guidance as well as the directions about how different people think and
behave (Eisenberg et al., 2013). The article also focused on views of Cateora, which defines
the 5 important elements of any culture as rituals, beliefs, values, symbols, and thought
practises. Besides, my thinking is influenced from different cultural values which can easily
influence international business (Thomas et al., 2008). In addition, the work of Geert
Hofstede recognized cultural dimensions direct influencing international business
environment through individualism or collectivism theory, power distance theory, uncertainty
avoidance theory, and masculinity or femininity theory (Triandis, 2009). While evaluating the
importance of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions over global business, we all can see that
international firms like Subway, KFC and McDonald’s are successful in almost all countries
of the world, even after having significantly diverse cultures. As per my thinking, these
companies’ are highly successful because they have been successful in finding cultural
significances of their global employees (Zheng et al., 2010). In this way, according to me
culture of any country impacts the culture of an international business while taking care of
the different cultured employees, shareholders and stakeholders (Wisdom , 2018).

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Solution 3
There are some important suggestions, I would like to make in the context of cultural
dimensions in international business (Gelfand et al., 2007). Whenever a company or manager
needs to deal with employees or people belong to another culture, and then they should first
know about their communication, business practices and management styles. All above
factors are different but important while understanding the culture of the employees with
whom they are dealing (Thomas et al., 2008). In this way, knowing the cultural differences is
important for the successful business interactions. In addition, to accomplish international
business objectives in favour of any organization cultural intelligence is also important
(Gelfand et al., 2007). For an instance, one needs to understand the following aspects
whenever dealing with diverse cultured people within business operations:
 In what ways employees or people communicate in that particular culture;
 In what way, diverse culture influences the way people see time as well as deadlines;
 How diverse cultured people are likely to pose queries or highlight issues in business
(Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015);
 In what ways people observe physical as well as verbal communications;
 In what ways people react to management people and other authority; and
 How diverse cultured people take decisions (Cateora et al., 2011).
Apart from all four cultural dimensions which are described in this selected article, there are
two other important cultural dimensions of Hofstede’s framework include Long- Versus
Short-Term Orientation and Indulgence Versus Restraint (Thomas et al., 2008). Hence,
international business managers should also access and understand above two dimensions so
as to become successful while incorporating cultural intelligence into business.

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References
Cateora, P., Gilly, C. & Graham, J., 2011. International Marketing. New York: McGrawHill.
Eisenberg, J., Lee, H.J., Bruck, F. & Brenner, B., 2013. Effects of cross-cultural management
courses on cultural intelligence. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12(4),
pp.603-21.
Fast Comany, 2011. Steve Jobs, Apple, and the importance of company culture. [Online]
Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/1792485/steve-jobs-apple-and-importance-
company-culture.
Ferrell, O.C. & Fraedrich, J., 2015. Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. UK:
Nelson Education.
French, R., 2015. Cross-cultural management in work organisations. UK: Kogan Page
Publishers.
Gelfand, M.J., Erez, M. & Aycan, Z., 2007. Cross-cultural organizational behavior. Annu.
Rev. Psychol, 58, pp.479-514.
Hofstede, G., 2011. Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model. [Online] Available at:
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=orpc [Accessed 20
March 2019].
Thomas, D.C. et al., 2008. Cultural intelligence: Domain and assessment. International
Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 8(2), pp.123-43.
Triandis, H.C., 2009. Cultural intelligence in organizations. Group & Organization
Management, 31(1), pp.20-26.
Wisdom , 2018. HOW TO CHANGE AND STRENGTHEN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT. [Online] Available at: https://www.wisdomjobs.com/e-
university/principles-of-management-tutorial-293/how-to-change-and-strengthen-
organizational-culture-9409.html.
Zheng, W., Yang, B. & Mclean, G.N., 2010. Linking organizational culture, structure,
strategy, and organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of knowledge management.

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Journal of Business research, 63(7), pp.763-71.