Overview
Main description
The landmark study of cultural differences across 70 nations,
Cultures and Organizations helps readers look at how they
think—and how they fail to think—as members of groups.
Based on decades of painstaking field research, this new edition
features the latest scientific results published in Geert Hofstede’s
scholarly work Culture’s Consequences, Second Edition. Original
in thought and profoundly important, Cultures and Organizations
offers vital knowledge and insight on issues that will
shape the future of cultures and nations in a globalized world.
Author comments
Geert Hofstede (Netherlands) is professor emeritus of organizational
anthropology and international management at the University
of Limburg, in Maastricht, where he is the founder and director of
the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation.
Gert-Jan Hofstede (Netherlands) is a Ph.D. and a professor at
Wageningen University.
Back cover copy
The revolutionary study of how the place where we grew up constrains the way we think, feel, and act, updated for today's new realities
The world is a more dangerously divided place today than it was at the end of the Cold War. This despite the spread of free trade and the advent of digital technologies that afford a degree of global connectivity undreamed of by science fiction writers fifty years ago. What is it that continues to drive people apart when cooperation is so clearly in everyone's interest? Are we as a species doomed to perpetual misunderstanding and conflict? Find out in Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind.
A veritable atlas of cultural values, it is based on cross-cultural research conducted in seventy countries for more than thirty years. At the same time, it describes a revolutionary theory of cultural relativism and its applications in a range of professions. Fully updated and rewritten for the twenty-first century, this edition:
- Reveals the unexamined rules by which people in different cultures think, feel, and act in business, family, schools, and political organizations
- Explores how national cultures differ in the key areas of inequality, collectivism versus individualism, assertiveness versus modesty, tolerance for ambiguity, and deferment of gratification
- Explains how organizational cultures differ from national cultures, and how they can--sometimes--be managed
- Explains culture shock, ethnocentrism, stereotyping, differences in language and humor, and other aspects of intercultural dynamics
- Provides powerful insights for businesspeople, civil servants, physicians, mental health professionals, law enforcement professionals, and others
Geert Hofstede, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Gert Jan Hofstede, Ph.D., is a professor of Information Systems at Wageningen University and the son of Geert Hofstede.
