An Analysis of Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions
An Analysis of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Introduction Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions outline “six basic issues that society needs to come to terms with in order to organize itself” (Hofstede, n.d.). These include how societies deal with uncertainty, power dynamics, success, and more. Ideally, the goal of these dimensions is to map out and compare societies to better understand how they differ from one another and for what reasons. While Hofstede’s work has been criticized, it is highly influential in sociology and cultural studies. In what follows, I will examine two countries—Canada and Japan (see Figure 1)—and analyze whether each country’s score on the six dimensions makes sense (i.e., corresponds to my lived experience). Figure 1. Dimensional scores of Canada and Japan from The Culture Factor Power Distance Power Distance is defined as “the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations...