Managing Culture: Reflection on Hofstede's Model and Experiences

This assignment is a reflection on the concept of managing culture, particularly in an international context, based on the learning materials provided. The student explores Hofstede's model of cultural dimensions, including power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, long-term/short-term orientation, and indulgence-restraint, and how these dimensions influence cross-cultural interactions. The reflection includes a personal experience related to individualism-collectivism, highlighting how cultural understanding can influence perceptions and behaviors. The assignment emphasizes the relevance of cultural understanding in a work-related context, specifically in communicating and relating to people from different backgrounds across international markets, and how it will help in establishing a flexible work and social life balance. The student also references a relevant academic paper.

Managing in international context
NAME OF STUDENT:
NAME OF COLLEGE:
AUTHORS NOTE:
MANAGING CULTURE

MANAGING CULTURE
The topic of learning material is “Making sense of cultural differences” where Hofstede’s
model of cultural dimension has been discussed which particularly has significance in
understanding cross culture as these dimensions represents influence of culture that is
ingrained in community and values of people who live in community. As stated by Richter et
al. (2016) Six dimensions of Hofstede’s cultural model are:
Power distance: this dimension describes tolerance of people for inequality and power where
high power distance presents culture that admits inequality and power disparity and
demonstrates respect for authority while low power distance reflects culture that promotes
participation.
Uncertainty avoidance: this explains level to which people in a culture are not at comfort with
uncertainty.
Individualism-Collectivism: this describes choice of people for being alone to take care of
themselves or desiring to remain within close network.
Masculinity-Femininity: masculinity describes inclination of society for assertiveness,
achievement or reward to achieve success in contrast to femininity which represents
cooperation, care, quality of life.
Long term-Short term orientation: long term represents preference of culture towards virtue
and short term represents inclination of society’s people for establishment of absolute truth.
Indulgence-Restraint: this represents level to which society can administer control over their
desires.
The content of this learning material is relevant to me as it helps me to understand the manner
people from distinct cultural background behaves or can potentially behave in work related
context. Hence in context to my work it has deep relevance as understanding of distinct
cultures will help me to identify distinct features of business and in future will help me to
successfully communicate and relate to people from different background across international
markets. Particularly, the individualism-collectivism content is relevant to me as it helps me
interpret nature of people belonging to different cultures and nations. I would like to share a
recent experience to explain this when I came to meet one of my friends who lives in US and
is a clinical practitioner. During our interactions he shared his experience about perceptions
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MANAGING CULTURE
of US people towards disability. In American society when an individual suffers with
disability then eventually that individual begins to focus on self-sufficiency and
independence and even caregivers see their role to encourage these individuals to return to
self-care. This incidence made me relate to cultural dimension model where I was able to
identify that as US has highly individualistic index so people from their culture search for
self-care and independence in contrast to other cultural background which can be collectivist
where people normally tend to look for ongoing support for disabled individuals. Moreover
Individualism-Collectivism (IDV) content is relevant to my life as it will help me identify
attributes of people where those who belong to high index culture place high importance to
need for privacy and freedom in contrast to low index culture. So this understanding of
people’s preference in different culture background will help me establish a flexible work and
social life balance as adjusted to characteristics of different people, so that I don’t tend to mix
both too much for people of different background and tend to respect their choice.
Reference
Richter, N. F., Hauff, S., Schlaegel, C., Gudergan, S., Ringle, C. M., & Gunkel, M. 2016,
‘Using cultural archetypes in cross-cultural management studies’, Journal of International
Management, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 63-83.
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