User:Mei Tsurumaru/Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory

Individual level: cultural dimensions versus individual personalities[edit]

Hofstede acknowledges that the cultural dimensions he identified, as culture and values, are social constructions, which are the ideas in the world developed by people, and can differ between the different groups and change as time goes by (Burr & Dick, 2017). They are tools meant to be used in practical applications. Generalizations about one country’s culture are helpful, but they have to be regarded just as guidelines, and they do not necessarily apply to everyone. They are group-level dimensions which describe national averages which apply to the population in its entirety. For example, a Japanese person can be very comfortable in changing situations whereas on average, Japanese people have high uncertainty avoidance. There are still exceptions to the rule. Hofstede's theory can be contrasted with its equivalence at individual level: the trait theory about human personality.

Variations on the typologies of collectivism and individualism have been proposed (Triandis, 1995; Gouveia and Ros, 2000). Self-expression and individualism usually increase with economic growth (Inglehart, 1997) independent of any culture, and can help small populations faced with outside competition for resources. (Some examples do exist of collectivist cultures that experienced rapid economic growth yet held on to their collectivist culture, such as the citizens of United Arab Emirates "United Arab Emirates Hofstede Insights". Retrieved 8 June 2020. and other GCC nations). Entitled individuals in positions of power embrace autonomy even if they live in a "collective" culture. Therefore, they might not really inform us at all about any particular organizational dynamic, nor do they inform about the organizational and individual variations within similar socio-economic circumstances. Individual aggregate needs careful separation from nation aggregate (Smith et al., 2008). Whereas individuals are the basic subject of psychological analysis (Smith, 2004), the socialization of individuals and their interaction with society is a matter to be studied at the level of families, peers, neighborhoods, schools, cities, and nations each with its own statistical imprint of culture (Smith, 2004). S. Schwartz controlled his theory “Schwartz theory of basic values,” which indicates that ten personal values are influenced by individuals' inner motivation (Schwartz, 2022), with GNP and a social index, leading to his proposal of differentiated individual and nation indices of itemized values (Schwartz, 1992; 1994) for cross-cultural comparison. The assumed "isomorphism of constructs" has been central to deciding how to use and understand culture in the managerial sciences (Van de Vijver et al. 2008; Fischer, 2009). As no individual can create his/her discourse and sense-making process in isolation to the rest of society, individuals are poor candidates for cultural sense-making. Postmodern criticism rejects the possibility of any self-determining individual because the unitary, personal self is an illusion of contemporary society evidenced by the necessary reproductions and simulations in language and behavior that individuals engage in to sustain membership in any society (Baudrillard, 1983; Alvesson & Deetz, 2006).