Clasf of Cultures: Through the ideas of Geert Hofstede

First of all, i would like to apologyze for being away this past two weeks and not posting in time. Three weeks ago, we attended a conference at the university related to culture and the concept of the five dimensions developed by Geert Hofstede. This is a topic i am also getting to know in my intercultural management class and i am very into it so i hope to explain it using simple examples which i will take from case studies, documents, and research from past and current courses.

One of Hofstede's dimensiones is power distance and is the one i found more interesting, and along with masculinity index are the two i found more relevant in the organizational context. Power distance refers the extent to which the less powerful members of the organizations accept the distribution of power, and it also applies to society at large.

The first example that pops in my head is the case of Walmart in the midst of its internationalization process in Germany and Japan. In the European country, the problems regarding power distance arose from the fact that costumers found strange being treated warmly by enployees in the stores, and the close interaction made them feel uncomfortable. This is a clear explanation of the differences in power distance within an american company when their environment changes to a country that is more keen on having higher power distance.

In the eastern country, although power distance was high its seemed as Japanese employees were fond of having the channels to comunicate directly to their superiors, so maybe the index of power distance ranked a little lower due to this. I remember this idea of the hierarchy in Japanese enterprises from by exposition on Personality and perception in this very same course earlier on the semester. Yet, Americans brought their internet communication system with them and so that impersonality connotation given to comunication within the enterprise was not "easy to digest" for Japanese employees at first.

In further thnking, the case of Colombia as a society is not that far from the previously mentioned examples. As explained in the conference, Colombia ranks at 57 in the PDI, almost at the middle of the extremes. From what i know, i think that is due to being open to high herarchies in organizations, but also by keeping a certain level of informality in some organizational interactions. If all of use dared and make a generalization around this index, what would be the result of a Colombian blue-collar worker working for a German boss? Would that situation create a conflict due to the extreme differences of approaching organizational relations?Would that be similar in the case of an Austrian multinational with operations in Malaysia, both of which are the countries with the highest and lowest PDI, respectively?