The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on "dialectical" reasoning, whereas Westerners are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior. The 2 types of cognitive processes are embedded in different naive metaphysical systems and tacit epistemologies. The authors speculate that the origin of these differences is traceable to markedly different social systems. The theory and the evidence presented call into question long-held assumptions about basic cognitive processes and even about the appropriateness of the process-content distinction.

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Culture and systems of thought: holistic versus analytic cognition.

Geert Hofstede’s legendary national culture research is critiqued. Crucial assumptions which underlie his claim to have uncovered the secrets of entire national cultures are described and challenged. The plausibility of systematically causal national cultures is questioned.

Hofstede’s Model of National Cultural Differences and their Consequences: A Triumph of Faith - a Failure of Analysis

This study seeks to determine a definition and appropriate assessment methods of inter-cultural competence as agreed on by a panel of internationally known intercultural scholars. This information ...

Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization

Since Geert Hofstede's Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values (Sage, 1980) was published, researchers have utilized Hofstede's cultural values framework in a wide variety of empirical studies. We review 180 studies published in 40 business and psychology journals and two international annual volumes between 1980 and June 2002 to consolidate what is empirically verifiable about Hofstede's cultural values framework. We discuss limitations in the Hofstede-inspired research and make recommendations for researchers who use Hofstede's framework in the future.

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A quarter century of Culture's Consequences: a review of empirical research incorporating Hofstede's cultural values framework

Recently, organizational culture researchers have applied quantitative survey methods and identified comparative “dimensions” of culture in a way that appears to contradict some of the original foundations of culture research within organizational studies. This new quantitative culture research also bears a strong resemblance to earlier research on organizational climate. This article examines the implications of this development by first considering the differences between the literatures on organizational culture and organizational climate and then examining the many similarities between these two literatures. The literatures are compared by focusing on their definition of the phenomena, their epistemology and methodology, and their theoretical foundations. The implications of the differing theoretical foundations and their underlying assumptions about the phenomenon are discussed at some length, as are some of the consequences of the continued separation of these two literatures. The final discussion f...

What is the Difference Between Organizational Culture and Organizational Climate? A Native's Point of View on a Decade of Paradigm Wars

First published nearly 20 years ago, RIDING THE WAVES OF CULTURE has now become the standard guide to leading effectively in an international business context. Now, the third edition takes you beyond cross-cultural awareness and 'issues' to help you take strategic advantage of cultural differences in the business environment. Leveraging their expansive cultural database as well as brand-new research findings, the authors explain how to build the skills, sensitivity and cultural awareness necessary for managing effectively across cultural borders - and seize all the opportunities diversity brings to an organisation.

Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business

Riding the waves of culture

International management guru, Fons Trompenaar's best-selling Riding the Waves of Culture has become an essential guide for managers and trainers in multinational organizations, as well as anyone who conducts business overseas. This thoroughly revised, second edition, updated to include new case histories and fresh research findings, uses country-by-country graphs, examples, and other comparisons to clearly illustrate how different cultures respond to different management approaches; provides case histories to show how managers have successfully anticipated and mediated difficult and potentially costly dilemmas; and shows how managers can prepare their organizations for the process of internationalization through specific points of intervention.

Riding the waves of culture : understanding cultural diversity in global business

Introduction. Universalism-Particularism: The Dilemma. Reconciling Universalism and Particularism: Stories and Cases. Individualism-Communitarianism: The Dilemma. Reconciling Individualism and Communitarianism: Stories and Cases. Specificity-Diffuseness: The Dilemma. Reconciling Specificity and Diffuseness: Stories and Cases. Achieved-Ascribed Status: The Dilemma. Reconciling Achieved with Ascribed Status: Stories and Cases. Inner Direction versus Outer Direction: The Dilemma. Reconciling Inner and Outer Direction: Stories and Cases. Sequential and Synchronous Time: The Dilemma. Reconciling Sequential and Synchronous Time: Stories and Cases. Appendix 1 - Dilemma Theory and Its Origins. Appendix 2 - Exercises in Reconciliation. Appendix 3 - Measuring Transcultural Competence: Old and New. Questionnaries. Appendix 4 - The Space Between Dimensions. Bibliography. Filmography. Index.

Building cross-cultural competence : how to create wealth from conflicting values

Many managers understand that cultural differences affect the process of doing business, but many underestimate by just how much. This book aims to dispel the idea that there is only one way to manager and encourages readers to get to know their own culture before doing business with others. The author explores the cultural extremes and the incomprehension that can arise when doing business across cultures - even when people are working for the same company. The book explains that there are five key factors or orientations that affect how people all deal with each other, do business and manage. The goal is the "transnational organization" - one in which the company can take from each country what is best, and for those who are sensitive to these differences, the opportunities are enormous. With many practical examples and case studies, this book brings new insights to the dilemma of reconciling corporate consistency with local conditions as business life rapidly internationalizes. In 1991 Fons Trompenaars was awarded the International Professional Pracice Area Research Award by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD).

Charles Hampden-Turner

Papers

Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business

Riding the waves of culture

Riding the waves of culture : understanding cultural diversity in global business

Building cross-cultural competence : how to create wealth from conflicting values

Riding the Waves of Culture. Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business (3rd ed)