Hofstede’s Long-term vs Short-term Orientation

Long and Short-term Orientation

Overview

    The cultural dimension long-term orientation (LTO) "was first identified in a survey among students in 23 countries around the world, using a questionnaire designed by Chinese scholars" (Hofstede, 2011, p. 13). Originally, the dimension was labeled Confucian Work Dynamism, but because the label was foreign (no pun intended) to people outside of East Asia, Hofstede (2011) renamed it to LTO. The updated label is perhaps a misnomer; colloquial uses of long-term and short-term orientation (or focus) are quite different from Hofstede's more esoteric usage.      
    
    Common usages of "long-term" and "short-term orientation" often relate to a person or a group's ability to discount current pleasure to achieve some sort of future goal. It would not be abnormal, for example, to hear someone say, "Bob is long-term oriented; he takes very good care of his health. Did you see how he did not eat any cake at the party?" This comment is very straightforward: Bob focuses on the future rather than the now. Short-term orientation is commonly used to refer to the opposite; when a child puts no effort into school, we may describe them as "short-term oriented" as they are not thinking of the future.

    Hofstede's usage greatly deviates from the common usage. For instance, short-term oriented societies have the following characteristics: traditions are sacrosanct, students attribute success and failure to luck, people are supposed to be proud of their country, and so on. Long-term oriented societies, on the other hand, have the following characteristics: traditions are adaptable to changed circumstances, people try to learn from other countries, students attribute success to effort and failure to lack of effort, and so on. For Hofstede, the temporal aspect of "long-term" and "short-term orientation" is not the primary feature of LTO.

Japan, Canada, and the Survey

    According to Hofstede's website, Canada scores low on LTO and Japan scores very high (e.g., Japan is more long-term oriented). Now, does this make sense? I don't know; I'd need to read Hofstede's original studies. To me, such a scoring is actually counterintuitive given Hofstede's characterization of long and short-term oriented societies. What country seems to value traditions more? Japan. What country is nationalistic? Japan. What country considers service to others as an important goal (e.g., is collectivist)? Japan. This is weird; all of the listed characteristics are attributed to short-term oriented societies (Hofstede, 2011). This does not necessarily mean Japan must be a short-term oriented society, but it does raise confusion about what this dimension is measuring, however. I cannot comfortably assess the two countries on this dimension without more information.

    The survey exemplifies my concerns with this dimension. For example, the first question concerning good and evil more or less relates to folk metaethics, which is a very complex subject that laypeople do not have definitive positions on (Bush & Moss, 2020), and that is not typically understood as being something connected to LTO or STO. Furthermore, whether a person is more comfortable where children ask "why?" more than "what?" and "how?" also seems to poorly indicate a person's LTO or STO. My confusion regarding this dimension is likely because of it being relabeled when it perhaps did not make sense to do so.

References

Bush, L. S., & Moss, D. (2020). Misunderstanding metaethics: Difficulties measuring folk objectivism and relativism.

Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1014

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cultural “Self” Awareness Post

Work Culture in Japan Overview      Work culture in Japan is best characterized by three core aspects: hierarchy, tradition, and loyalty. Dynamics between superiors and subordinates in Japan, although described as "hierarchical",  manifest in subtle and nuanced ways. Hierarchy, rather than being strictly about power in Japan, is closely tied to the concept of deference. Dujarric describes deference as follows: Deference is the act of showing respect or yielding to the opinion, judgment, or wishes of another person … based on their authority, expertise, or seniority. It involves acknowledging their position or status and behaving in a manner that reflects that acknowledgment. (Dujarric, 2024, p. 2)     To demonstrate one's acknowledgement, one uses honourifics or refrains from making remarks that may demean superiors (Dujarric, 2024). Japanese work culture, being somewhat egalitarian, values collective decision-making, which is absent from domination-...
Read more

Game Review: Minecraft (2009)

Image
Game Review: Minecraft (2009) An Almost Perfect Sandbox Game Overview      Minecraft is, by orders of magnitude, the most popular video game of all time. It is the best selling video game , boasting roughly 350,000,000 copies sold, which dwarfs  Grand Theft Auto V  (the second best-selling video game), which has about 215,000,000 copies sold. Despite being officially released in 2011, it remains extremely prevalent online. A Minecraft Movie (2025)  is a perfect example of the game's continued success; the film was a global sensation, amassing nearly a billion dollars in box office revenue.     Minecraft is a " 3D Sandbox Game developed by Mojang Studios ." The first ever playable edition of Minecraft was released in 2009 , a version now known as Minecraft Classic . This version was very limited in creative scope, serving mainly as a proof of concept; it can be ...
Read more

Reflection about Hofstede’s Individualism vs Collectivism

Image
Individualism and Collectivism Overview     The dichotomy of individualism and collectivism in a society concerns the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its memb ers . Individualist societies are characterized by low interdependence, whereas collectivist societies are characterized by high interdependence. Geert Hofstede states that  those in individualist cultures identify with an "I" identity, and those in collectivist cultures identify with a "We" identity (10 minutes with, 2014). For example, Denmark is one of the most individualist societies with a score of 89, and Kenya is one of the most collectivist societies with a score of 4  (The Culture Factor Group, 2025). Similarities and Differences Between Japan and Canada (With a remark on the United States' surprisingly low score)      Hofstede's data suggest that Canada is a relatively individualistic country; it is described as a " loosely-knit society ." Despite Canada being ...
Read more