Understanding Cultures: Hofstede's Framework

This article is mainly based on the research paper by Geert Hofstede "Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context" (2010).

A Perspective on Culture#

As scholar Geert Hofstede puts it, "*Culture is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others". *Differently from personality factors, culture is a collective concept. It stems from sociology, and is present in groups, which Hofstede delineates as Nations in his definition of dimensions which can help put a framework around the concept of culture. There is no culture without a group of people sharing common values, beliefs, customs, social context. At the same time, culture is a general concept, which is subject to individual variation based on personality factors of people. As Hofstede writes in the paper, "... culture and personality are linked but the link is statistical; there is a wide variety of individual personalities within each national culture, and national culture scores should not be used for stereotyping individuals."