Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values

In his bestselling book Culture's Consequences, Geert Hofstede proposed four dimensions on which the differences among national cultures can be understood: Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity. This volume comprises the first in-depth discussion of the masculinity dimension and how it can help us to understand differences among cultures.

The book begins with a general explanation of the masculinity dimension, and discusses how it illuminates broad features of different cultures. The following parts apply the dimension more specifically to gender (and gender identity), sexuality (and sexual behaviour) and religion, probably the most influential variable of all. Hofstede closes the book

"This important book is based on a monumental study of the sales subsidiaries of a major multinational corporation which operates in 39 countries in the world. Since, in all countries, the respondents do the same work . . . and since the formal organization structure is the same everywhere, the important differences found in work attitudes and values can be ascribed to cultural differences among the countries. The author found four major dimensions for classifying cultures across the world: (i) power distance . . . (ii) uncertainty avoidance . . . (iii) individualism . . . (iv) masculinity. . . . The author also proposes some interesting theories to explain how cultures come to be as they are, which combine climate, economic development and historical process." --The Good Book Guide for Business "One of the most significant comparative organizational studies to date." --Industrial and Labor Relations Review "Important scientific books may be classified according to two types. . . . The second type includes those books which people like to have close at hand and consult for reference. There is little doubt that this book belongs to the second category." --Journal of Management Studies "What the author has done has been to analyze questionnaire results obtained in some 40 different countries, applied to employees of a large multinational American company, and to use the results for extracting dimensions along which to compare these different cultures, and then to evaluate and discuss the resulting groupings. . . . The book is full of interesting and important findings. . . . It should certainly be studied by anyone in the field." --New Society "Hofstede has produced aningenious, careful, and richly stimulating book that will certainly be useful to all those concerned with managing multinational and multicultural organizations. . . . The book offers educators a new conceptual framework and a bank of data that will be highly useful in teaching." --Academy of Management Review "An important, sophisticated and complex monograph. . . . Both the theoretical analysis and the empirical findings constitute major contributions to cross-cultural value analysis and the cross-cultural study of work motivations and organizational dynamics. This book is also a valuable resource for anyone interested in a historical or anthropological approach to cross-cultural comparisons." --Personnel Psychology "One cannot help admiring the effort that went into this book and ending up more knowledgeable and wiser for having read it." --Contemporary Sociology "Should be read by every manager about to embark on an international or intercultural work assignment. To benefit most from his ideas requires great concentration on the part of the reader, but it is worth the effort. The manager should be able to substantially improve his (most international managers are men) effectiveness by applying his understanding of the culturally based differences in values among the firm's employees. In a classroom situation, this book would be appropriate for graduate students." --Reviews in Anthropology

Geert Hofstede received a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University at Delft and a doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of Groningen, both in his native Netherlands. His professional career includes experience as a worker, foreman, plant manager, chief psychologist on the international staff of a multinational corporation, academic researcher, director of human resources of another multinational, and university professor. He has been affiliated with IMD (Lausanne, Switzerland), INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France), the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (Brussels, Belguim), IIASA (Laxenburg Castle, Austria), and the University of Hong Kong. He is Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management of Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He is currently a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation (of which he was a founder) and of the Center for Economic Research, both at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He has lectured at universities and consulted for institutions and companies around the world. Dr. Hofstede’s books have appeared in seventeen languages, and his articles have been published in social science journals around the world. He is among the top 100 most cited authors in the Social Science Citation Index.