Week 4 Activity 1: Research Activity

Week 4 Activity 1: Research Activity: Hofstede’s Dimensions

The cultural distance of countries in which your firm operates is one of the many explanations of significant differences that your U.S.-based employees face when travelling to different affiliates worldwide. Typically, an index of cultural distance can be determined by summing the squared differences of country-level scores such as those introduced by Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and then taking the square root of the summation (this is called the Euclidean distance). At the present time, your firm has operations in Turkey, Poland, Costa Rica, South Africa, and Indonesia. Using the Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Resource Center based on studies involving cultural dimensions to assess all five countries, determine which affiliates are located in a culture that is least and most similar to the U.S. As there are four main components of each overall cultural distance score, which component(s) can be considered most influential for each country? Your report should be a maximum of 1 page, double-spaced, Word or PDF document. However, you can have unlimited number of exhibits that should be put in an Appendix in the same file. You have the option to substitute the company and countries featured as examples in this research activity with the company and country you selected in your group project (completely optional).

Hint:

Option 1

• Go to the Global Edge website
• Search Phrase: “Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Resource Center”
• Resource Name: Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Resource Center
• globalEDGE™ Category: “Reference: Culture”

Option 2

• Geert Hofstede website
• Once on the website, select the corresponding countries

Option 3

• Use this Excel file with rankings for all countries