Criticisms And Limitations Of Hofstede's Model Of Cultural Dimensions

Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions has been criticized by some linguists to its Western bias. Provide a discussion of one of the dimensions of Hofstede’s model and its application. Identify and discuss criticisms of the model by focusing on this dimension. Do you agree with this criticism? With this in mind, how does Hofstede’s model enhance or limit our understanding of cultural value systems and cultural groupings in the world?

Masculinity and Femininity

Hofstede’s cultural dimension is a theory of cross-cultural communication which is introduced by Geert Hofstede. Hofstede model was introduced by the personal research department of IBM Europe in 1965 (Bakir, Blodgett, Vitell, and Rose, 2015). This is the first theory which is used to explain the differences between the cultures. This model describes the effects of culture on the value of its members. Hofstede model is developed to analyze the values of employees in the world by IBM between 1967 and 1973 (Bakir, Blodgett, Vitell, and Rose, 2015). Earlier the original theory has four dimensions along to understand the cultural values such as individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity-femininity and power distance. The other research of Hofstede introduced the fifth dimension which is long-term orientation. And in 2010, the sixth dimension is again introduced which is indulgence versus self-restraint. In the present days, the Hofstede model has six dimensions to analyze the culture value of the different country. This model is used in various areas to research especially for cross-cultural psychology, cross-cultural communication, and international management. This model is also encouraged to research on the other aspects of culture such as a social belief (Saleem, and Larimo, 2017). In this report, critical analysis has been done on the “Masculinity and Femininity dimension of Hofstede model” by western bias.

Masculinity and femininity have a different meaning in which the first meaning is in the context of biological that refers the sexual characteristics. The second meaning is in the terms of a sociological which refers to the real and symbolic roles that society attributes to men and women (Darroch, 2014).

Masculinity defines the preferences of a society for achievement, heroism, material rewards for success. In this society, Women perform their values by performing household activity. Feminine society shares a modest and caring view equally with the men. There is no difference between the men and women in this society.

This dimension helps to analyse the nature of the society either it modest and care society or strong society which main aim is to achieve and won the rewards.  If the society is masculinity then it means the society has a strong power to win the rewards. If the society is femininity then the society is caring nature which takes care of the feelings of people. Hofstede model analyses the culture of a country which states the nature of a society that is why masculinity and femininity include in the five dimensions of the model. It also helps to analyse the development of the country by analysing the human mentality (Rodriguez Mosquera, 2016).

Masculinity and femininity dimension analyse the mentality of a human being by analysing the behaviour of people towards the role of male and female. Masculinity society believes that the males have the responsibility to earn money and the women have the responsibility to take care of people. It helps to analyse the organisation in expanding the business at the international level. This dimension analyses the organisational culture to the national culture which helps all level of the multinational company. It analyses the mentality of employees which directly affect the output of the organisation. Before entering the country, it is necessary for the organisation to analyse the behaviour of the people and understand the culture of the country. Most of the manufacturing companies use this dimension just because to analyse the behaviour of labour towards the work and their mentality towards gender inequality (Oakley, 2016). To extend the business the organisation analyse the culture of the country and the behaviour of employees.

Behavior of Dimension

If the culture of the country is feminist then it does not show that they will adopt some other culture; this dimension just tells about the present cultural scenario and specifically does not show the way in which it is flexible. It has been seen that the dimension of Hofstede model analyses the cultural changes of the environment. But it did not analyse the reasons or causes of changes because it analyses the present scenario. It is not flexible to analyse the more information at a higher level. It is beneficial to analyse the situation but it is necessary to analyse the causes behind the situation. It has been seen that it is stable for a certain point which states that this dimension is not dynamic in nature which helps to analyse the situation in the market. To enter the market, it necessary for the company to analyse the changes in culture but it is necessary for the exciting company to analyse the causes of changes in culture to reduce their issues which is raises due to changes in culture (Rodriguez, and Boyer, 2018). This dimension is not useful at a certain point in time. This dimension also does not elaborate about the factors that are making changes in the culture which is very crucial to understand for a company when it is expanding in a country. It has been seen that this dimension does not about the factors which affect the culture and that is very important to understand the culture of the country. Factors which affect or reasons behind the changes affect the society.

This dimension also does not provide a clear idea about the future of the culture that is present in a country. It has been seen that this dimension analyse the changes in the culture of the country but it is difficult to predict the future scenario due to changes in culture. Masculinity and Femininity dimension of Hofstede model does not elaborate the future factor which can affect the culture of the country. It is necessary for the company to analyse the future factor which affects the culture of the country because these affects the culture of society. The culture of the country is developed by the people of the country and their mentality for a particular thing. Changing the behaviour of people is a factor of changing the culture of the country but it is difficult to predict that this factor affects the society at what point in time (Whalen, 2016).

Masculinity versus Femininity also refers to the distribution of values between the genders and that is another issue for a society to find a range of solution. In Masculinity, it defines the women values are different from the men’s value. In Masculinity countries, men value means more competitive, achieving rewards and others but women values are modest and caring. It states that this dimension develops the differentiation in society between men and women values. Feminine countries have same values of men and women which reduce the gap between the men’s values and women’s values (Donnelly, and Twenge, 2017). This dimension is directly affecting the economic growth of the country. The difference between males and female is a major issue which affects the lives of people and it is a major factor of change in culture. This dimension analyses the differences between the values of men and women and the beliefs of people. It is necessary for the company to analyse the culture of the country and believes of people towards the values of men and women because it directly affects the output of the company. At the time of hiring the people of expanding country, it is essential to analyse theirs believes if the country is a masculinity country then the country has fewer women labour as compared to men. There are many companies in which the women labour is required to perform the work and services then the company faces the loss in the situation of masculinity country (Drydakis, Sidiropoulou, Bozani, Selmanovic, and Patnaik, 2018). But this dimension analyses the culture at a high level it is not analysing the culture at a small level which is a major issue.

Criticism

It has been seen that this dimension develops the confusion by the labelling of the heading. It gives the label masculine and feminist which defines the role of male and female but it also has another meaning that is not defined by the label. Masculinity behaviour is achieving rewards, and strong competition but Femininity behaviours are modest and caring for the people. Thus, it can be said that this dimension indicates the success or quality of life of people. This dimension affects the success and life of people; it is agreeable that this dimension is an indicator of success and quality of life rather than the sexist indicator which helps to analyse the values of men and women (Engle, and Nash, 2015).

It is agreed that Hofstede dimension has limited scope to analyse the cultural changes and it contains the limited information related to the cultural changes. Hofstede dimension does not elaborate the factor due to which the changes are incurred in the country. It also does not tell the factor which affects the society and changes the culture of the country. The analysis cannot be able to predict future changes and the factors are also not analysed by society. Hofstede model develops confusion in understanding the cultural value system and cultural grouping (Suriadi, Ouyang, Aalst, and Hofstede, 2015).

Cultural grouping defines the cultural norms which can be spread by the cultural group who participated in the events. Cultural group selection exists in the two different groups who have the different culture. Participated people have to understand the culture of different countries for the selection process of the cultural group. Hofstede model helps to understand the culture but at the certain limit which is not enough for participation in the cultural group. Cultural group selection provides a compelling explanation for how large-scale complex societies have formed. Hofstede model analyses the culture of the country but it fails to elaborate on the factors of forming large-scale societies. It has been seen that this model has limited scope to understand the cultural scope. Although, people can easily understand the culture and cultural changes of the country the reasons and explanations are required in a cultural grouping cannot be easily understandable (Schieb-Bienfait, Saives, Charles-Pauvers, Emin, and Morteau, 2018).

Cultural value focuses on values which the members can broadly share with each other. Values of society define the respect of people for each other. The cultural value system is a set of consistent values which is used for the purpose of ethical or ideological integrity. Hofstede model does not elaborate on the ethical and unethical factor; it analyses the behaviour of a country which is not enough to understand the cultural value system. One of the dimensions of Hofstede model is masculine and feminine explains the values of men and women in a country. But it does not analyse the factor due to which the change incurred in culture. But it fails to analyse the ethical and unethical factor of the country. Thus, it can be said that the Hofstede model is limited to understand the cultural value system.

Conclusion

From the above analysis, it has been concluded that the Hofstede model analyse the culture of the country. There are six dimensions which help to analyse the culture so that an organisation can expand their business at the international level. Masculine and feminine dimension is one of the dimensions of Hofstede model which helps to analyse the culture and behaviour of the society. But it contains the limited information which is not enough to understand the cultural value system and cultural grouping. Although, Hofstede model is beneficial to enhance the understanding of culture it contains the limited information as per the requirement of the cultural group and cultural value system.

References

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Darroch, J., 2014. Masculine and feminine. In Why marketing to women doesn’t work (pp. 188-196). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Donnelly, K. and Twenge, J.M., 2017. Masculine and feminine traits on the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, 1993–2012: a cross-temporal meta-analysis. Sex Roles, 76(9-10), pp.556-565.

Drydakis, N., Sidiropoulou, K., Bozani, V., Selmanovic, S. and Patnaik, S., 2018. Masculine vs feminine personality traits and women’s employment outcomes in Britain: A field experiment. International Journal of Manpower, 39(4), pp.621-630.

Engle, R.L. and Nash, B., 2015. Does it matter if researchers use individual dimension constructs or only aggregated constructs of cultural distance and cultural intelligence?. Journal of International Business Research, 14(2), p.47.

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Saleem, S. and Larimo, J., 2017. Hofstede cultural framework and advertising research: An assessment of the literature. In Advances in Advertising Research (Vol. VII) (pp. 247-263). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.

Schieb-Bienfait, N., Saives, A.L., Charles-Pauvers, B., Emin, S. and Morteau, H., 2018. Grouping or Grounding? Cultural District and Creative Cluster Management in Nantes, France. International Journal of Arts Management, 20(2).

Suriadi, S., Ouyang, C., van der Aalst, W.M. and ter Hofstede, A.H., 2015. Event interval analysis: Why do processes take time?. Decision Support Systems, 79, pp.77-98.

Whalen, J.M., 2016. The Hofstede model and national cultures of learning: a comparison of undergraduate survey data (Doctoral dissertation, Colorado State University. Libraries).