Essay on Cross-Culture: Attitudes, Theories, Research, and Limitations

This essay delves into the study of cross-cultural attitudes, examining how different cultures influence human behavior. It explores the importance of cross-cultural studies, analyzing prejudice, racism, and discrimination as significant social phenomena. The essay discusses the impact of globalization and the increasing need for intercultural understanding. It provides an overview of Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory, offering a critical analysis of its strengths and limitations, and suggesting avenues for future research, including the consideration of individual, organizational, and gender levels. The essay emphasizes the importance of learning languages, fostering fair decision-making, and respecting diverse cultures to combat prejudice and promote international cooperation. The essay also reviews the limitations in the literature and suggests different points to eliminate the limitations in the literature.

Running head: CROSS-CULTURE
Essay on Cross culture

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Abstract
The study of relating different cultures for understanding the difference in the behaviors of
human affected by culture is known as Cross culture studies. Cross cultural attitude is the
behavior of the individual towards different culture. In this essay we will discuss about the cross
culture and its attitude, importance of cross cultural studies, evaluation of past research on cross
cultural attitudes. Essay will also explain different theories for cross cultural attitudes and
limitations in the literature. Different points will be discussed to eliminate the limitations in the
literature.
Introduction
Contact between people from different cultures is increasing that is giving more importance to
cross cultural attitudes (Min & Kim, 2013)). People have different opinions about different
culture people. It can be negative or positive. People should respect the values of all the cultures
as values, beliefs are the major component of culture. Culture provide a perceptive for
understanding the world. People are contributing towards this by learning new languages to
understand other culture people and make them feel familiar. Many business are working on this
and helping their employees to learn languages so that they can communicate with different
culture people and can value other people culture.
Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination.
Prejudice is a wide social phenomenon. It is used to refer to unfavorable, judgments towards
person due to social class, disability, religion, language, gender, age, nationality, etc. Stereotypes
representation of a person, group or society is known as Prejudice (Diplomba. 2017). In this
people from one culture make opinions and judge other people from different culture. These
opinions and judgments are not based on any reason or experience. From psychological point of
view people start discriminating each other and it separates different nations. There are different
types of prejudice such as Groundless prejudice, nominal prejudice, Tokenism prejudice,
Familiar and unfamiliar prejudice, Individual prejudice, A long arm prejudice, Favors and
antipathies prejudice, Institutional prejudice (Lumen. 2017).
Racism means belief of people of each race own features, skills, or abilities specific to that race.
It separate people into hierarchies according to the race. Due to genetic differences it has been
said that unequal treatment among dissimilar culture is fair. Racism is faced by cultures that are

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different from other culture people according to their physical features and characteristics of
their culture. Racism started in the eighteenth century (Diplomba. 2017). It is the most talked
issue in today’s society.
Types of racism are scientific racism, new racism, historical racism, unaware/self-righteous
racism, aware/blatant racism, institutional racism, internalized racism, unaware/unintentional
racism and aware/covert racism.
Discrimination refers to the attitude of people from one culture denies to give equal treatment to
people because they are from different culture. Discrimination is built on the fantasies, feelings,
beliefs and motivation of prejudice (Communication. 2017). One of the discrimination is
institutional discrimination. It means denying to allow certain groups for providing resources,
privileges and opportunities.
Importance of Cross culture attitude
 Diversification is growing due to globalized markets, speedy communication and quick
transport, the world is getting affected by terrorism and the evil actions of all the world
powers. All these anger and negative powers are reason of failure on the global and
individual levels. If world want to live happily and in peace then it is important to
understand issues of inter-cultural and inter-racial relationships and its attitudes (Ingram,
2005).
 Learning language effect cross cultural attitudes positively as it helps in developing
knowledge of different culture.
 Cross culture attitude helps in changing the attitude of one culture people towards people
from other culture people.
 Cross culture attitude is important for increasing capability to make fair decisions and to
appreciate opinions of different culture people.
 Cross culture attitude is important for learning and understanding other cultures and their
people. It also increase the respect for other countries and their culture.
 Cross culture attitude encourages the essence of international cooperation (Ingram, 2005).

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Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory
Hofstede’s theory delivered a structure for cross cultural communication and Geert Hofstede
presented the theory. It explains the impacts of the values and cultures of the people belonging to
the society. With the help of factor analysis the relation between the values and behavior can be
identified. The theory provided four dimensions such as individualism-collectivism; uncertainty
avoidance; power distance (strength of social hierarchy) and masculinity-femininity (task
orientation versus person-orientation). As the research conducted in the Hong Kong it influenced
Hofstede to involve the fifth dimension in his theory i.e. long term orientations to cover those
points which were not discussed previously. Indulgence versus self-restraint was the sixth
dimension added by the Hofstede (Ideas. 2017). His theory was used widely in different fields
for research. This research helped and inspired other studies of cross culture.
Cultural dimensions model of Hofstede- Critical analysis
Competition is gaining attention internationally and markets are changing very quickly. It
influence the management of the company to analyze the culture of their own country as well as
the culture of host country (Grin. 2011). The concept management of cross culture is grasping
importance to understand the needs of cultural differences. Cultural dimensions model of
Hofstede has achieved proportional position and draws notice of the increasing importance of
understand the cross culture. Global operating organizations used Hofstede’s model widely for
its workshops and training. Cross cultural management model was affective and was creating
awareness about existence of differences in the culture that shows strategies of home country
might not be beneficial in the host country. (Ly, 2013). Besides this Hofstede’s cultural study
said to be important and was widely known. Many cultural studies were done but they were
supporting Hofstede’s study partially. All the models which were identified collected praises as
well as criticism including Hofstede’s model. Hofstede’s model was mainly criticized about its
validity and consistency. Another criticism received by his theory was about its survey findings
it was said that they are outdated. Considering the presented criticisms from the literature, to
evaluate the validity and consistency, imitation study was done in the 21st century in the
countries of Germany and the UK. Through this study dimension scores were developed for
Masculinity/ Feministy (MAS) and Uncertaininty Avoidance (UA) for Germany and UK and
results were analyzed with the findings of Hofstede’s model. It was discovered that the findings
of this study were different from the findings of Hofstede’s. As the finding of the study

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conducted in Germany and UK were not supporting Hofstede’s models findings so
recommendation was given for cultural research (Grin. 2011).
Idea’s for future research in Cross culture
Besides, five cultural dimensions of Hofstede’s theory, there are other factors also available
which can be considered for the study of study cross culture. Different levels were avoided to use
in the study as the structure of the levels was not supporting the subject of the model. These
levels are Individual level, Organizational level, Occupational level and Gender level.
Conclusion
In the conclusion it can be said that it is important to study cross cultural attitudes to understand
and respect all the cultures. It is important to learn languages as it will guide the person to
provide fair decisions. Cross culture atiitude is important for learning and increasing knowledge
about different cultures. People should not consider themselves to be superior and should not
discriminate other culture people. Racism and Prejudice should be avoided. In the essay
Prejudice, racism and discriminations is explained to aware people about it. Importance of cross
culture attitude is also discussed above to show the importance of this topic. Theory of
Hefstede’s cross cultural is used to explain different dimensions. Critical evaluation is provided
for this theory and future ideas are provided for cross culture research.

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References
Min, C & Kim, H. (2013). Relationship between cross-cultural attitudes and attitudes toward the
foreign language study of tourism majors. Journal of tourism and cultural change. 11(2). 109-
125.
Ingram, D. E. (2005). Language Learning and Cross-Cultural Attitudes. Retrieved from:
http://www.tesolchile.cl/documents/sept2005/DEIngram_fullpaper_Oct2004.htm
Diplomba. (2017). Racism and prejudice and their role in cross-cultural communication.
Retrieved from: http://diplomba.ru/work/77760
Communication. (2017). Culture, Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination. Retrieved from:
http://communication.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-
9780190228613-e-164
Grin. (2011). Critical analysis of Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions. Retrieved from:
http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/169716/critical-analysis-of-hofstede-s-model-of-cultural-
dimensions
Ideas. (2017). A Critical Approach to Hofstede’s Model on Cultural Dimensions. Retrieved
from: https://ideas.repec.org/a/ovi/oviste/vxiiy2012i12p644-649.html
Ly, A. (2013). A critical discussion of Hofstede’s concept of Power Distance. Retrieved from:
https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2393819/Ly_28.pdf?sequence=1
Lumen. (2017). Prejudice and Discrimination. Retrieved from:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wsu-sandbox/chapter/prejudice-and-discrimination/