Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Third Edition: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival (BUSINESS SKILLS AND DEVELOPMENT)

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Similarly, Singapore scored lowest on uncertainty avoidance, which according to his explanation, shouldn't be as Singapore is the country with perhaps the most strict laws of all countries. Also notably it argues for observing different moralities arising from different cultural experiences, yet also contains arguments in favor of the authors' moral particularities. What is it that continues to drive people apart when cooperation is so clearly in everyone's interest? And it also has interesting notes on how some of these Organizational culture dimensions corelate with national culture dimensions.

The discussion is highly informative and touches on Mintzberg's theories as well typical models of organization in different cultures. I picked it up from the university’s library as I needed to refer to the original source for my dissertation and by the time I got to that specific part I needed, I decided I might as well finish it.The evolutionary perspective is the apex with which we should view all life-related phenomena, at least if we don’t want to end up with the ivory archipelago, a situation where each separate subject proposes theories and analyses data that have no coherent, overarching implications for other subjects at all, meaning that they could be uttering the most complete nonsense without being corrected by other views. There is much we can learn from each other, but practices work better if we modify them to match our cultural values better, and this book can be a starting point on the journey of discovering our shared core values. But culture shock - whether the shocking contact is between an individual and a new country, between organizations, between the sexes, or between opposing diplomats - can be turned to our advantage, Hofstede says - if we understand it. If you have an interest in international business or politics, you really should take advantage of this field of study. A crucial takeaway is also that we should be wary of blindly importing management, educational and other practices from different cultural contexts.

He especially seems to enjoy criticizing American management theories :) The second chapter in this part talks about organizational cultures. I suggest to google some critical assessments of Hofstede so you rank this book where it really belongs. Hofstede is of opinion that culture does *not* change or that it takes a very very long time before it changes (relative to each other). Geert Hofstede, PhD, is professor emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. But they seem incapable of concluding that good intentions (and even money) is not the most effective way to solve these problems.And personality refers to those personal sets of mental programs that are partially acquired and partially learned. In small-power-distance countries there is a preference for consultation between bosses and subordinates and the emotional distance is small, so the latter can easily contradict the former.

My experience is that cultural values are changing, whereas Hofstede feels they are not (and they are perhaps even diverging more). Cultures and Organizations is a very insightful work on cultural differences, yet I also found it limiting? But , albeit being a great socio-litterary, it is quite long to discuss on visible cultural differences. A discussion of what to expect from the relative strength of each dimension is presented; in other words, the factors are, to some extent, predictors of the dominant values and behaviors, both individual and institutional, of a society.The economic success of certain countries of East Asia owes much to the fact that centuries-old institutional frameworks existed that were adapted to modern times''(417). However the most important stuff to take from the book is the fact that even Western countries differ a lot. What Hofstedes actually did, they quantified value systems, gave them names, dimensions and showed how values for different cultures differ ( or cultures for different cultures differ, which way you like :)).