And welcome to this lecture on Hofstede's cultural dimension. Now we're going to get a little bit theoretical here, but there's a purpose for this. The whole purpose of us introducing a little bit of theory is to help guide us to understand how we choose our language. Or use appropriate language when we're talking to other people within a cross cultural context. So by the end of this video, you should be able to understand what we call Hofstede's cultural frameworks or cultural dimensions. And understand how these definitions or this framework might be able to guide you in the language that you use. Now this is a framework called the Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions theory. It was introduced by Hofstede in his book, Culture's Consequences, and it has had an influential role in our understanding of cross cultural communications. In the 1970s, Hofstede analyzed a large survey database about values related to sediments of people in over 50 countries around the world who worked for the multinational corporation, IBM. And by analyzing the survey of these employees around the world, Hofstede was able to come up with an idea of how people perceive or interact or communicate within different situations within an intercultural situation. So, this data collected from the surveys allowed Hofstede to introduce what he calls the dimensions of national culture. According to him, a dimension is an aspect of a culture that can be measured relative to other cultures. And in his later research, Hofstede added two new dimensions. The current six dimensions are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, pragmatic versus normative, and indulgence versus restraint. Here they are. These are your six cultural dimensions. As I mentioned to you, these are the frameworks that Hall Hofstede has used to help understand cultural communication or cross cultural communication. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go through each one and briefly define what we mean. So let's first look at Hofstede's dimension, power distance. According to his theory, power distance is the characteristic of a culture that defines the extent to which the less powerful persons in a society accept inequality in power and consider it as normal. In other words, inequality exists within any culture but the degree of it that is tolerated varies between one culture and another. So this dimension expresses the degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept and expect the power to be distributed unequally. The fundamental issue here is how a society handles inequalities among people. Next, we'll take a look at a dimension called uncertainty avoidance. According to Hofstede, this describes the extent to which people within a culture are made nervous by situations which they perceived as unstructured, unclear, or unpredictable situations which they therefore try to avoid by maintaining strict codes of behavior and belief in absolute truths. According to Hofstede, uncertainty avoidance should not be considered as the same as risk avoidance. This dimension considers a society's tolerance for ambiguity. It provides a framework for understanding how people might feel uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Individualism versus collectivism looks at two elements. The first is called individualism. And this suggests individuals are expected to take care of only themselves and their immediate families. The second, collectivism suggests individuals can expect their relatives or members of a particular ingroup to look after them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. A society's position in this dimension is reflected in whether people's self image is defined in terms of I or we. According to Hofstede, individualistic cultures assume that any person looks primarily after his or her own interest and the interest of his or her immediate family, husband, wife, or children. Collectivist cultures assume that any person, through birth and possible later events belongs to one or more tight ingroup, from which she or he cannot detach themselves from. Masculinity versus femininity is related to the divisions of emotional roles between women and men. According to Hofstede, the masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. Society at the large is more competitive. Its opposite, femininity, stands for a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life. Society at large and is more consensus oriented. So the pragmatic versus normative dimension describes how people in the past, as well as today, relate to the fact that so much that happens around us cannot be explained. In societies with a normative orientation, most people have, sorry, in societies with a normative orientation, most people have a strong desire to explain as much as possible. People in such societies have a strong concern with establishing the absolute truth and a need for personal stability. They exhibit great respect for social conventions and traditions, and relatively small propensity to save for the future, and a focus on achieving quick results. In societies with a pragmatic orientation, most people don't have a need to explain everything. And as they believe that it is impossible to understand fully the complexity of life. Now, the challenge is not to know the truth, but to live in a virtuous life. In societies with a pragmatic orientation, people believe the truth depends very much on a situation and a context and time. They show an ability to accept contradictions, adapt according to the circumstances, and a strong propensity to save and invest in thriftiness and perseverance in achieving results. Indulgence versus restraint is related to the gratification versus control of basic human desires related to enjoying life. Indulgence stands for a society that allows relatively free gratification of basic and natural human drives related to enjoying life and having fun. Restraint stands for a society that suppresses gratification and needs and regulates it by means of strict social norms. So to sum up this section, Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions theory is a framework that is used to assist in distinguishing and comparing the values among different country cultures. This is a valuable framework for people like international business managers or others involved in the international business setting because it can insist in avoiding or resolving potential communication barriers or misunderstanding. It's not only useful for the business context, of course researchers, politicians and educators have been using this framework as a starting point to help them understand the differences among cultures. Thank you for watching.
