Geert Hofstede's Five Cultural Continua

Geert Hofstede's theory of national culture is useful for making generalizations which can be helpful in the process of localization. The theory itself is explained, analyzed, and applied in this essay, with some input from other sources, such as Nancy Hoft.

Geert Hofstede posits that all national cultures can be placed on five continua, each measuring a different dimension or aspect of that culture. The five dimensions are identity, with individualism at one end of the continuum and collectivism at the other; hierarchy, measuring a culture's power distance, or "the degree of inequality between… people that is assumed to be a natural state of affairs" (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002); gender, with feminine and masculine as its extremes; truth, the degree of uncertainty avoidance exhibited by a culture; and virtue, measuring a culture's long- or short-term orientation. Of course, no culture exhibits the extremes of the various continua; they are simply a theoretical device for explaining and understanding differences among national cultures.

Before beginning to apply this theory, it is necessary and instructive to examine each of the different cultural dimensions in detail. The first, identity, is the measure of how members of a society view themselves, either by belonging to a group or groups, or by being individuals. In more collectivist cultures, "the groups to which one belongs determine who one is" (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002). In other words, a person's identity is derived from the company he or she keeps. Group affiliations, such as professional organizations, families, circles of friends, etc., are extremely important. It is necessary that one exhibit loyalty to the groups of which one is a member, because in times of need, these groups will help their members. As important as showing loyalty for the groups to which one belongs is maintaining group harmony; it is essential that the members of a group be polite and courteous to one another in an effort to maintain good relationships.

On the other side of this particular continuum lies individualism. In individualist cultures, a person is responsible for forging his or her own identity; it is not a product of group affiliation. People see themselves as having their own lives and being responsible for their own choices. Decisions are made for one's own reasons with one's own goals in mind, consideration for others being a secondary concern if it is important at all.

Divisions between individualist and collectivist societies are often based on degrees of affluence. In cultures where wealth and relative abundance is the norm, people tend to fall on the individualist side of the continuum, whereas in poorer countries, group identity holds more sway. Hofstede, explaining the problems that can occur in either type of society, remarks, "In collectivist societies, individuals may have to repress their individual identities…. In very individualist societies, people may feel lonely and isolated, develop antisocial behaviors, or cling to illusions of group cohesion" (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002, p.52). As with all of Hofstede's dimensions of culture, of course, the collectivist/individualist continuum is a measuring stick for use in understanding national cultures. No culture will be either completely individualist or completely collectivist; any real culture will exhibit varying degrees of both elements.

The next cultural dimension, hierarchy, measures a culture's acceptance of power distance. In high power distance cultures, individuals readily accept that some people are more powerful or important than others, and further, that this is the way things should be. Hofstede explains, "In a society of large power distance, nobody thinks that people are all equal (or even should be) or should have the same prerogatives. Parents are not children, leaders are not followers, and kings are not citizens" (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002). Great deference is shown to leaders, who have strong personalities and a lot of power. These leaders use their power autocratically and with minimal input from subordinates.

In contrast, people from cultures with a view of low power distance have opposing attitudes. In these societies, everyone is considered equal, and hierarchical structures are treated as circumstantial. Of course, this does not mean that there are not equally strong leaders in societies of low power distance, but these leaders do not flaunt their power. Rather, effective leaders will rely on consensus and will make a show of obtaining input from subordinates, and everyone handles power with at least the appearance of democracy.

Like identity, hierarchy can be related to a society's level of affluence, but the correlation is not as strong. "Large power distance," Hofstede says, "is easier to maintain in a situation of poverty and limited resources" (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002).

The third of Hofstede's cultural dimensions is gender. He posits the continuum of gender to be the measure of differences in social roles played by men and women. Societies with fewer behavioral proscriptions related to gender are said to be more feminine. Societies in which men and women have specific and separate gender roles are said to be more masculine. This invites a certain opportunity for confusion at the terminology. Hofstede's point is that the loosening of gender-defined social roles tends to make society more feminine:"If men and women are more equal, the result is more 'feminine' qualities within society as a whole" (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002). Here, "feminine" indicates qualities that are more nurturing and cooperative than competitive and aggressive.

In feminine societies, men and women will wear similar clothing, go to the same places, and share the same social and familial responsibilities. Girls and boys are educated the same way, and little real importance is given to someone's sex. Overall cultural goals are taking care of the weak and needy and being modest about one's achievements.

Opposed to feminine cultures are masculine ones. In masculine cultures, there exist predefined and rigid gender roles: men and women do not wear similar clothing, and they will most likely not frequent the same places. Men have more power, and they are expected to be competitive and aggressive. Women, on the other hand, do "women's work" and are less powerful. Boys and girls are educated differently and inculcated into their respective roles. "It has been found that in all countries in the world, an unequal role distribution between men and women coincides with a tougher society in which there is more emphasis on achievement and fighting than on caring and compromise" (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002, p. 150).

Hofstede's fourth dimension of culture is Truth, or uncertainty avoidance/tolerance. On one end of the gamut is a society which believes in Truth, a universal truth that must be observed and acknowledged. Rules of behavior are quite serious, as are the consequences for violating them. All of this stems from a basic societal tendency to fear the unknown. Strangers in this type of culture are not easily welcomed until they have internalized the cultural rules, and it can be difficult to immigrate into such a society.

Opposite uncertainty avoidance cultures are uncertainty acceptance cultures. In this type of society, that which is unknown is not conflated with that which must be feared. Visiting foreigners and immigrants are curiosities or opportunities to learn something new, and the culture is very welcoming to strangers. The United States, China and Denmark tend to be more uncertainty-accepting cultures.

Hofstede notes that uncertainty avoidance is not the same thing as risk avoidance, and that a sizeable risk, if disclosed and understood in a high uncertainty avoidance culture, can still be acceptable, and presumably the same holds true for a low uncertainty avoidance culture (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002).

The fifth and final cultural dimension that Hofstede presented is virtue, or long- or short-term orientation. This, with the truth dimension, is the measure of a given society's relationship with time. It measures a society's acceptance of risk.

In long-term oriented societies, tomorrow is treated as more important than today. One should work hard today and put off the pleasures of the present in exchange for having a more secure future, which always remains in the future. These types of cultures believe in the value of hard work, and gift-giving is not as prominent as in other cultures. To outsiders, long-term oriented cultures can seem miserly and excessively penny-pinching, but these outsiders tend to come from more short-term oriented cultures.

In cultures with a short-term orientation, there is an emphasis on the here-and-now, on saving face. Members of short-term oriented cultures value social standing and "keeping up with the Jonses" above planning and saving for the future. As such, social obligations must be met even if meeting them requires an individual to spend more money than he or she earns. In any endeavor, quick results are preferred and expected, and failure is assumed when anticipated results take a long time, making investments difficult.

Hofstede's five cultural continua have been criticized for being too general, as have been his ideas of what constitutes a national culture. Foremost among his detractors has been Brendan McSweeney, who in an article titled "Hofstede's model of national culture differences and their consequences: A triumph of faith—a failure of analysis" took exception both with Hofstede's methodology and with the conclusions he drew (McSweeney, 2002). McSweeney criticizes Hofstede's ideas of cultural averages in general and moves on to criticize the means by which he arrived at these conclusions: the survey system Hofstede designed and distributed throughout the IBM corporation had a Western bias, and disproportionate numbers of respondents in different countries make it difficult, if at all possible, to make generalizations regarding the national culture of a country where as few as 29 people were surveyed (McSweeney, 2002).

Nancy Hoft, in a chapter called "Developing a Cultural Model" presents several cultural metamodels and emphasizes the importance of choosing several and adapting them to specific efforts at international technical communication. One such model she presents was first proposed by Hofstede, and it takes the form of a pyramid: individual personalities are represented by the top of the pyramid, with human nature at the base; culture lies between the two, as it shares elements of both (Hoft, 1995). Other proposed models exhibit different pictures of culture. The iceberg model, for instance, is useful in illustrating the levels of consciousness regarding cultural rules: at the surface of the iceberg are the obvious cultural characteristics, such as formats for recording times and dates and currencies; as one descends deeper into the iceberg, one encounters unspoken rules, such as those governing social and business protocol; the third and deepest level of the iceberg is where one finds the unconscious rules of a society, such as interpretations of nonverbal communication, etc. (Hoft, 1995).

Hoft notes that no single cultural model will be comprehensive, as they each have different goals, and in order to achieve truly effective communication, the cultural models she proposes must be adapted for a target culture (Hoft, 1995).

For instance, if one were to apply Hofstede's cultural model—the five continua of identity, hierarchy, gender, truth and virtue—to the target culture of Japan, for example, the approach would begin with a primary analysis of what Hofstede's model tells us about Japanese culture. We will then apply this analysis to a specific information product that we want to adapt for a Japanese audience. For our purposes, we will choose the online version of Car and Driver magazine at www.caranddriver.com.

Let us begin by looking at where Japanese culture falls on Hofstede's five continua, beginning with identity. Knowing as we do about the relative affluence of the country of Japan—it is the "second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and the third-largest economy in the world after the US and China, measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis" (Central Intelligence Agency, 2007)—then we can conclude from Hofstede's explanation that gravitation toward individual vs. group identity is a reaction to the availability of resources that the Japanese have an individualist culture rather than a collectivist one. Or at least, we could if the above generalization were true in every case. Unfortunately, Japan is a very glaring exception. On a scale of 0-100, Japan scores about a 40 on the scale of individualism, compared to the United States' score of 91 (ITIM, 2007). This is an excellent example of how a useful generalization can be inappropriately and clumsily applied, as well as an underscoring of Nancy Hoft's argument in favor of adapting cultural models to specific target cultures (Hoft, 1995).

With regard to hierarchy, Japan and the United States are actually more closely related than in the identity dimension. Japan's score of 55 with regard to power distance acceptance is on par with the world average, and though higher than the United States' score of 40, it is not drastically different (ITIM, 2007). These differences, though small, are still significant, and care should be taken to acknowledge them in our adaptation of Car and Driver.

Gender is another interesting area in which the cultures of Japan and the United States vary drastically. Japan's placement on the gender continuum is 33 points higher than the United States' in favor of masculinity, indicating that Japan is a culture which gives value to gender differences (ITIM, 2007). Men and women are treated and educated differently, and power is typically concentrated in the hands of men (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002). This will be a very important area in which Car and Driver will have to be localized to better fit Japan's national culture.

The second most drastic difference between Japanese and American culture is the difference in uncertainty avoidance. Japan is very high on the uncertainty avoidance scale, with a score of 91 (ITIM, 2007), indicating that the Japanese have a cultural tendency to be very uncomfortable with unfamiliar ideas and influences (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002). The United States has a score of about 45 on this same scale, and this very pronounced difference between the two cultures is going to prove problematic in our adaptation. When we adapt Car and Driver for the Japanese, we will have to pay attention to issues such as the appearance of American hegemony, the focus on American cars, and other important issues that look to bear a "foreign" stamp. Also, we will have to observe cultural conventions and attitudes touching on marketing. In countries like Japan, side-by-side comparisons of products, or implying the superiority of one product over another, is considered at least rude, and at worst, taboo; where side-by-side comparisons would normally find a place in an American audience, they will need to be omitted for localization to a Japanese audience, or at least converted into a "soft-sell" approach. In catering to the very high level of Japanese uncertainty avoidance, we should adopt advertising conventions less foreign to Japanese culture.

The final dimension of Hofstede's cultural model is the one which is the most relevant to our localization of Car and Driver to Japan. The United States' lowest score is in long-term orientation , and it is the third-highest score in Japanese culture. As we have stated before, this indicates that the Japanese tend to value saving and working hard, "sacrifice[ing] the pleasures of today for the benefit of [the] future" (Hofstede, Pedersen, & Hofstede, 2002). The United States does not have this same cultural attitude. Indeed, with a score of only 25 in long-term orientation for the source culture (ITIM, 2007), one would not be amiss to wonder if the information product we are localizing will even be recognizable once it has been adapted to a Japanese audience.

Now that we have a basic understanding of our cultural model and have applied it to the national culture of Japan, we can move into specifics of what we will need to change from the existing Car and Driver website to make it more culturally sensitive to the preferences and assumptions of the Japanese. First, a quick survey of the imagery on the Car and Driver homepage is appropriate.

The home page is dominated by a dynamic picture of various sports cars toward the top of the screen. Among the cars depicted are the 2009 BMW 128i and 135i convertibles and the 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution GSR . In this same header are links to 1) a side-by-side comparison of the 2008 Viper SRT10 and the 2007 Corvette Z06, 2) test results of the aforementioned 2008 Mitsubishi and 3) "10 Hot Performance Debuts at Frankfurt" (Hachette Filipacchi Media, 2007).

There are obvious changes that need to be made within only this first header. First, the pictures within the header mostly depict American and German sports cars; in keeping with our observations regarding Japan's level of uncertainty avoidance, a greater effort should be made to include more familiar vehicle manufacturers, such as Toyota. The present inclusion of Mitisubishi Motors vehicles is acceptable and beneficial for our purposes of Japanese localization, and can remain unchanged, or perhaps intensified. However, the preeminence of German and American cars will need to be lessened to accommodate the Japanese level of uncertainty avoidance.

Still without moving our criticism from the Car and Driver header image, we can critique the obvious side-by-side comparison of different machines' performance. These "direct comparisons are not viewed favorably" (Singh & Pereira, 2005) in Japanese culture. Instead, separate articles and links should be devoted to affective descriptions and images of the different vehicles that avoid directly comparing them to one another or implying superiority of one vehicle over another (Singh & Pereira, 2005).

The present Car and Driver website does a respectable job of including Japanese vehicles on the rest of the home page, and in fact most of the vehicles mentioned on the home page are Toyotas, Nissans and other Japanese-made cars, which will do much to cater to the Japanese tendency of uncertainty avoidance.

Finally, and most importantly, attention must be paid to the long-term orientation of the Japanese culture, as we have noted previously. Car and Driver does present excellent tools for price comparison and other information that is useful for a consumer in making an informed and responsible decision on which vehicle to buy. However, as we have also noted, the current format of these tools needs to be extensively revised; perhaps a more acceptable format for price comparisons would be individual profiles on the vehicles included in what is now the direct comparisons section. This approach would still permit the reader to access the compiled information available to readers of Car and Driver, but it would present it in a much less culturally objectionable fashion.

An exhaustive compilation of all the changes necessary to localize the Car and Driver website would be, as the reader will see by inspecting the present website, impractical in the present forum. It is in fact entirely possible that an information product such as Car and Driver is not something which can be effectively localized for a Japanese audience, given the website's tendency to make direct comparisons among different vehicles on the basis of performance, price and safety testing. If these features were removed and spread out over various pages to avoid offending the audience by making direct product comparisons; if the prominence of American and German cars were lessened; and if the valuable "reviews and road tests" section were removed, it is likely that the localized product would have lost most of its value, or be so unrecognizable as to be cumbersome to its publisher. More feasibility research needs to be done before localization of this product is attempted, as localization is not an inexpensive venture (Butland, 2004).

References

Butland, P. (2004). Localization in a Time of Shrinking Budgets. Intercom , 16-18.

Central Intelligence Agency. (2007, September 20). Japan. Retrieved September 29, 2007, from The World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook

Hachette Filipacchi Media. (2007, October 1). Retrieved October 1, 2007, from Car and Driver: http://www.caranddriver.com

Hofstede, G. (2007, October 1). Retrieved October 1, 2007, from Geert Hofstede: http://www.geerthofstede.com

Hofstede, G. J., Pedersen, P. B., & Hofstede, G. (2002). Exploring Culture. Boston: Intercultural Press.

Hoft, N. L. (1995). Developing a Cultural Model. In E. M. del Galdo, & J. Nielsen, International User Interfaces (pp. 41-73). New York: Wiley Computer Publishing.

ITIM. (2007, October 1). Retrieved October 1, 2007, from Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions: www.geert-hofstede.com

McSweeney, B. (2002). Hofstede'smodel of national cultural differenes and their consequences: A triumph of faith--a failure of analysis. Human Relations , 89-117.

Singh, N., & Pereira, A. (2005). Cultural Customization: Hi-Low Context. In The Culturally Customized Web Site (pp. 139-150). Elsevier.