Gerard Hendrik (Geert) Hofstede (2 October 1928 – 12 February 2020) was a Dutch
social psychologist,
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
employee, and Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at
Maastricht University
Maastricht University (abbreviated as UM; ) is a public university, public research university in Maastricht, Netherlands. Founded in 1976, it is the second youngest of the thirteen List of universities in the Netherlands, Dutch universities.
In ...
in the Netherlands, well known for his pioneering research on
cross-cultural
Cross-cultural may refer to:
*cross-cultural studies, a comparative tendency in various fields of cultural analysis
*cross-cultural communication, a field of study that looks at how people from differing culture, cultural backgrounds communicate
* ...
groups and organizations.
He is best known for developing one of the earliest and most popular
frameworks for measuring cultural dimensions in a global perspective. Here he described
national cultures along six dimensions:
power distance,
individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and a ...
,
uncertainty avoidance
In cross-cultural psychology, uncertainty avoidance is how cultures differ on the amount of tolerance they have of unpredictability. Uncertainty avoidance is one of five key qualities or ''dimensions'' measured by the researchers who developed the ...
,
masculinity
Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as Social construction of gender, socially constructed, and there i ...
, long term orientation, and indulgence vs. restraint. He was known for his books ''Culture's Consequences'' and ''Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind'', co-authored with his son Gert Jan Hofstede. The latter book deals with organizational culture, which is a different structure from national culture, but also has measurable dimensions, and the same research methodology is used for both.
Biography
Born to Gerrit and Evertine Geessine (Veenhoven) Hofstede, Geert Hofstede attended schools in
The Hague
The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
and
Apeldoorn
Apeldoorn (; Dutch Low Saxon: ) is a municipality and city in the province of Gelderland in the centre of the Netherlands. The municipality of Apeldoorn, including the villages of Beekbergen, Loenen (Apeldoorn), Loenen, Ugchelen and Hoenderloo ...
, and received his high school diploma (Gymnasium Beta) in 1945.
[ In 1953, Hofstede graduated from Delft Technical University with an MSc in Mechanical Engineering. After working in the industry for ten years, Hofstede entered part-time doctoral study at Groningen University in The Netherlands, and received his PhD in social psychology '']cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...
'' in 1967.[ His thesis was titled "The Game of Budget Control".
Upon his graduation from Delft in 1953, Hofstede joined the Dutch military, working as a technical officer in the Dutch army for two years. After leaving the military he worked in industry from 1955 to 1965, starting as a factory hand in Amsterdam.][ In 1965 he started his graduate study in Groningen and joined IBM International, working as a management trainer and manager of personnel research. He founded and managed the Personnel Research Department. During a two-year sabbatical from IBM from 1971 to 1973 he was a visiting lecturer at IMEDE (now the International Institute for Management Development). In 1980, Hofstede co-founded and became the first Director for the IRIC, the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation, located at Tilburg University since 1998.
After his retirement in 1993, Hofstede visited numerous universities worldwide to educate students on his theoretical approaches and to continue his research in this field. He was Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at ]Maastricht University
Maastricht University (abbreviated as UM; ) is a public university, public research university in Maastricht, Netherlands. Founded in 1976, it is the second youngest of the thirteen List of universities in the Netherlands, Dutch universities.
In ...
in the Netherlands, and served as an extramural fellow of the Center of Economic Research at Tilburg University in Tilburg, Netherlands.
Hofstede received many honorary awards, and in 2011 was made a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion
The Order of the Netherlands Lion, also known as the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands (, ) is a Dutch honours system, Dutch order of chivalry founded by William I of the Netherlands on 29 September 1815.
The Order of the Netherlands Lion wa ...
(Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw). He held honorary doctorates from seven universities in Europe,[ Nyenrode Business University, New Bulgarian University, Athens University of Economics and Business, ]University of Gothenburg
The University of Gothenburg () is a List of universities in Sweden, university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current List of universities in Sweden#Public universities, S ...
, University of Liège
The University of Liège (), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium founded in 1817 and based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French (language), French.
History
The university was foun ...
, ISM University of Management and Economics, University of Pécs
The University of Pécs ( , PTE; ) is one of the largest higher education institutions in Hungary. The history of the university began in the Middle Ages, when in 1367, at the request of Louis I of Hungary, King Louis I the Great, Pope Urban V gr ...
in 2009, and University of Tartu
The University of Tartu (UT; ; ) is a public research university located in the city of Tartu, Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is also the largest and oldest university in the country. in 2012. He also received honorary professorships at The University of Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is a public university, public research university in Pokfulam, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the London Missionary Society and formally established as t ...
1992–2000; the Beijing University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing, China
Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
; and the Renmin University of China
The Renmin University of China (RUC) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. The university is affiliated with the Ministry of Education, and co-funded by the Ministry of Education and the Beijing Municipal People's Government. The ...
, Beijing, China
Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
.
In 1955, Hofstede married Maaike A. van den Hoek. Together, they had four sons: Gert-Jan Hofstede, who is a population biologist and social scientist in information management; Rokus Hofstede, who works as a translator; Bart Hofstede, a Cultural Counselor for the Kingdom of the Netherlands who has served in Berlin, Paris and is now serving in Beijing, and Gideon Hofstede, who works as an international marketeer. He also had ten grandchildren. Gert-Jan has worked extensively with his father and co-authored several works in the realm of culture study.[
In 2014, a movie was released about Hofstede's life and work, ''An Engineer's Odyssey''.
In 2016, he received his 9th honorary doctorate in Prague, at the age of 88. He died on February 12, 2020.
]
Work
Hofstede was a researcher in the fields of organizational studies and more concretely organizational culture
Organizational culture encompasses the shared norms, values, corporate language and behaviors - observed in schools, universities, not-for-profit groups, government agencies, and businesses - reflecting their core values and strategic direction. ...
, also cultural economics
Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes. Here, 'culture' is defined by shared beliefs and preferences of respective groups. Programmatic issues include whether and how much culture m ...
and management
Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...
. He was a well-known pioneer in his research of cross-cultural
Cross-cultural may refer to:
*cross-cultural studies, a comparative tendency in various fields of cultural analysis
*cross-cultural communication, a field of study that looks at how people from differing culture, cultural backgrounds communicate
* ...
groups and organizations and played a major role in developing a systematic framework for assessing and differentiating national cultures and organizational culture
Organizational culture encompasses the shared norms, values, corporate language and behaviors - observed in schools, universities, not-for-profit groups, government agencies, and businesses - reflecting their core values and strategic direction. ...
s. His studies demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groups that influence the behavior of societies and organizations.
Early inspiration
When World War II ended, Geert Hofstede was seventeen and had always lived in the Netherlands under rather difficult circumstances, so he decided that it was time for him to explore the world. He entered technical college in 1945, and had one year of internships, including a voyage to Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
in 1947 as an assistant ship's engineer with abbott Olivier Perbet. It was his first time out of his country and being immersed in a foreign culture, and it was an early influence in his career to study cross-cultures. He was also influenced by a trip he made to England after meeting an English girl introduced to him by a friend of his family Alain Meiar, where he experienced culture shock. He was struck by the cultural differences that he noticed between England and the Netherlands, two very close European countries. These early experiences helped translate into a lifelong career in cross-cultural research.
A second important period in his life was working in industry between 1955 and 1965, when he held professional and managerial jobs in three different Dutch industrial companies. By experiencing management, he had a chance to see the organization from the bottom up working as a mechanic. This training and background as an engineer shaped his research and his approach to social situations. He claims that his description of social situations appeals to a number of people: "I still have the mind of an engineer to the extent that I try to be specific...and be clear about what I am saying". That was important in his development of quantifying cultures on different dimensions.[
]
IBM research
At IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
International, Hofstede started working as a management trainer and manager of personnel research, and founded and managed the Personnel Research Department. This was his transition from the field of engineering and into psychology. In this role, he played an active role in the introduction and application of employee opinion surveys in over 70 national subsidiaries of IBM around the world. He traveled across Europe and the Middle East to interview people and conduct surveys regarding people's behavior in large organizations and how they collaborated. He collected large amounts of data, but the pressures of his daily job made him unable to conduct a significant amount of research. When he took a two-year sabbatical from IBM in 1971, he delved deeper into the data he had collected from his job and discovered that there were significant differences between cultures in other organizations but got the same ranking of answers by country.[ At the time, the results of the IBM's surveys, with over 100,000 questionnaires, were one of the largest cross-national databases in existence.
He became a visiting lecturer at IMEDE (now the International Institute for Management Development) in Lausanne, Switzerland.][ At IMEDE, he administered a selection of IBM questionnaire items to his course participants, who were international managers from over 30 countries and from a variety of different private and public organizations unrelated to IBM. Hofstede found that the same results that he discovered in the IBM surveys had reproduced themselves significantly in the sample of his students. This was the first hard piece of evidence that the differences among countries was not specific to IBM, but, instead, were due to a generalized set of shared socialization skills that were specific to people having grown up in the same country, and not necessarily the same organization.
Hofstede rejoined IBM and informed it of the enormous database that IBM had at its disposal and wanted to create a research project to continue this new way of examining the data. After a lack of opportunity to conduct his research at IBM, he found two part-time jobs, including one at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Brussels as a Professor of Management, while simultaneously teaching part-time at ]INSEAD
INSEAD ( ; French: ''Institut européen d'administration des affaires'') is a non-profit business school with locations in Europe (Fontainebleau, France), Asia (Singapore), the Middle East (Abu Dhabi, UAE) and North America (San Francisco, USA ...
business school in Fontainebleau, France. Between 1973 and 1979, he worked on the data, and analyzed it in a variety of ways. He used existing literature in psychology, sociology, political science, and anthropology to relate his findings in a larger scope of study. In 1980, he published his book ''Culture's Consequences'', where the results of his analysis were presented.
Research on national cultures and critiques
Research on national cultures
Hofstede's analysis defined four initial dimensions of national culture that were positioned against analysis of 40 initial countries. As a trained psychologist, he began his analysis of the survey data he had collected at IBM at the individual respondent level. At the end of two years, he realized he needed an "ecological" analysis, in which respondents were contextualized by their countries. By aggregating individuals as societal units, he could examine national cultures rather than individual personalities.
Hofstede's model explaining national cultural differences and their consequences, when introduced in 1980, came at a time when cultural differences between societies had become increasingly relevant for both economic and political reasons. The analysis of his survey data and his claims led many management practitioners to embrace the model, especially after the publication of his 1991 book, ''Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind''.
In 1980, Hofstede co-founded and became the first Director for the IRIC, the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation, located at Tilburg University since 1998. Much of Hofstede's research on the basic dimensions of nations came through the IRIC. In 2001, Hofstede published an entirely re-written second edition of ''Culture's Consequences''. In 2010, a third edition of ''Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind'' was published with Gert Jan Hofstede, Michael H. Bond and as co-authors. In this book, there were two new dimensions that were added, and the number of countries covered was between 76 and 93. This book also introduced the topic of organizational cultures as a separate and different phenomenon.
Critiques
Despite the popularity of Hofstede's model, some critics have argued that his conceptualization of culture and its impact on people's behavior might be incorrect. The most cited criticism of his work is by Professor Brendan McSweeney (Royal Holloway, University of London and Stockholm University), who argues that Hofstede's claims about the role of national culture indicates too much determinism that might be linked to fundamental flaws in his methodology. Hofstede replied to this critique,[Hofstede, G. (2002) Dimensions Do Not Exist: A Reply to Brendan McSweeney, Human Relations, 55, November, pp. 1355–1361] arguing that the second edition of his book had responded to many of McSweeney's concerns and that he viewed the resistance to his ideas as a sign that he was shifting the prevalent paradigm in cross-cultural studies. McSweeney has rejected Hofstede's reply, arguing that the same profound methodological flaws that characterize the original analysis of the IBM data remain in the second edition.
Another key critique, which largely focuses on level of analysis, is by Professor Barry Gerhart (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Professor Meiyu Fang (National Central University, Taiwan), who point out that among other problems with Hofstede's research (and the way it is widely interpreted) is that his results actually only show that around 2 to 4 percent of variance in individual values is explained by national differences – in other words 96 percent, and perhaps more, is not explained. And that there is nothing in Hofstede's work that pertains to individual-level behaviours or actions.
In a 2008 article in the Academy of Management
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the g ...
's journal, The Academy of Management Review, Galit Ailon deconstructs ''Culture's Consequences'' by mirroring it against its own assumptions and logic. Ailon finds several inconsistencies at the level of both theory and methodology, and cautions against an uncritical reading of Hofstede's cultural dimensions.
Philippe d'Iribarne, director of research at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) in Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
expressed concern that "a theory of culture that considers culture to be 'shared meaning' does not allow for representation of the forms of unity and continuity". Part of d'Iribarne's objections have been with the weaknesses of Hofstede's terminology in general and category names specifically (e.g., power distance as a culture as whole versus a culture's acceptance of hierarchy only within organizational settings). More pointedly, d'Iribarne questions the generalized conclusions that Hofstede draws from the data, imposing Hofstede's own value system on what the data show. For instance, d'Iribarne questioned Hofstede's conclusions from the uncertainty avoidance statistics, arguing that Hofstede superimposes his own view that data. For d'Iribarne, Hostede simply presumes that showing high stress at work correlates with weak uncertainty avoidance, while d'Iribarne asserts that the presence of high stress could just as readily indicate high stress results from high uncertainty avoidance, since no external control exists in low uncertainty avoidance cultures. Finally, d'Iribarne questions Hofstede's implicit assumption of uniformity in complex organizations, let alone entire national cultures. Such assumptions of uniformity are useful, d'Iribarne writes only "if one thinks of a culture specific to a close-knit community."[d'Iribarne (2009), p. 310] Instead, though, d'Iribarne notes that in most situations, "society is split into more or less antagonistic groups" and in any case, "meaning is not only received but produced"; in short, Hofstede does not allow for the fact that people do not remain static in how they interact with one another. Philippe d'Iribarne fills out the bare bones of Hofstede's simplified structure, a point with which Hofstede himself acknowledged when he wrote that, "The two approaches are complementary -- mine is more quantitative, d'Iribarne's more qualitative. I provided a skeleton for the countries he studied, and he provided the flesh. The skeleton I proposed is a worldwide structure in cultural differences among cultures."
Other academics also point to a fundamental flaw in the common application of Hofstede's culture dimensions. Hofstede's culture dimensions and scores are national or "ecological" in nature and do not apply to ''individual'' people living in the sampled countries: In Hofstede's analysis, the correlations of his culture variables are significant when aggregated to the national level but not significant at the individual level. This means that no cultural implications can be drawn about individual people living in a certain country; to do so is to commit an “ecological fallacy
An ecological fallacy (also ecological ''inference'' fallacy or population fallacy) is a formal fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data that occurs when inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inferences about the gro ...
”. To avoid this fallacy and resulting confusion Brewer and Venaik recommend avoiding the use of the Hofstede dimension scores in management research and training. The same authors compare the Hofstede culture dimension scores with equivalent dimension scores from the GLOBE culture model and show severe problems in face, discriminant and convergent validity across the two models.
In a re-analysis of the cross-national value data, based on Hofstede, Shalom Schwartz and Ronald Inglehart
Ronald F. Inglehart (September 5, 1934 – May 8, 2021) was an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He was director of the World Values Survey, a global network of social scientists who have carried out representat ...
and his own factor analysis
Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors. For example, it is possible that variations in six observe ...
of recent World Values Survey data, (Corvinus University of Budapest
Corvinus University of Budapest () is a private university, private research university in Budapest, Hungary. The university currently has an enrolment of approximately 9,600 students, with a primary focus on business administration, economics, ...
) found however a large-scale confirmation of Hofstede's value scales with other value survey research results. Especially the dimensions of power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, long-term orientation and indulgence versus restraint are closely correlated with value dimensions reported by Inglehart, Schwartz and the current data from the World Values Survey.
Reception of his work
Hofstede's books have appeared in 23 languages. His publications have been cited several ten thousand times, which makes him one of the currently most cited European social scientist.
He received much recognition for his work in cross-cultural analysis. In 2004, the Hanze University Groningen, the Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
established the Geert Hofstede Lecture, a bi-annual conference in the area of intercultural communication. In 2006, Maastricht University
Maastricht University (abbreviated as UM; ) is a public university, public research university in Maastricht, Netherlands. Founded in 1976, it is the second youngest of the thirteen List of universities in the Netherlands, Dutch universities.
In ...
, the Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
inaugurated a Geert Hofstede Chair in cultural diversity.
In 2008, six European universities united to create the Master in International Communication (MIC), and named themselves the Geert Hofstede Consortium.
In 2009, Reputation Institute, which "recognizes individuals who have greatly contributed to the field of reputation through both scholarship and practice", nominated Hofstede as the Best Scholar of the year.
In October 2010, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics launched the Geert Hofstede Fund, aiming at encouraging activities around multicultural interactions and research about the impact of cultural differences.
Archives
The Archives of Geert Hofstede at the Library of the University of Groningen
The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; , abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen, Netherlands. Founded in 1614, th ...
are open to the public as of February 2020.
Publications
Hofstede authored and co-authored numerous publications in the field of social psychology and sociocultural anthropology.Geert Hofstede
Google Scholar Profile.
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References
External links
Geert Hofstede's academic website
* Geert Hofstede Friends (group of International professionals continuing Geert's work (led by Prof. Gert Jan Hofsted
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hofstede, Geert
1928 births
2020 deaths
Dutch social psychologists
Cultural psychologists
Researchers in organizational studies
Delft University of Technology alumni
IBM employees
Academic staff of Tilburg University
Academic staff of Maastricht University
People from Haarlem