Cultures and Organizations: Software for the Mind, Third Edition

The international bestseller on managing cross-cultural workforces—expanded and updated!

Named one of the top 20 most influential business thinkers of 2008 by The Wall Street Journal, business anthropologist Geert Hofstede has fully updated his classic work on how the place where we grew up shapes the way we think, feel, and act.

Since its original publication in 1991, Cultures and Organizations has been helping business leaders understand how people think as members of a group—which dramatically increases managers’ effectiveness leading and developing cross-cultural workforces. This groundbreaking work reveals:

• The unexamined rules behind the thoughts and emotions of people of different cultures
• Ways in which cultures differ in the areas of collectivism/individualism, assertiveness/modesty, tolerance for ambiguity, and deferment of gratification
• How organizational cultures differ from national cultures, and how they can be managed

New material in this expanded third edition includes the latest data from the author’s ongoing field research and new insight into how cultural factors contributed to the current economic situation.

Cultures and Organizations offers managers practical solutions for solving conflict between different groups and turning cultural differences to their advantage.

Each of the cultural difference dimensions is based on real research -- not just a theoretical idea. Each of them is introduced with a telling anecdote, that is almost as powerful as the statistical study.

I found lots of new information here, lots of new understanding. Most amazing to me is the fact that relatively close cultures have profound differences -- such as France and Sweden. Also amazing is the fact that these differences are of extreme duration -- reaching back thousands of years.

The author recognizes the problems that these differences bring to business and politics in an international setting. There do not appear to be any easy answers.

I highly recommend this book!


Monumental Book Well Worth the Read   March 5, 2007
Edward J Vasicek (Kokomo, IN USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

The father and son team of Geert and Geert Jan Hofstede have done a remarkable job breaking down the (measurable) elements of the world's cultures, usingt the somewhat antiquated IBM studies combined with more recent (less comprehensive) studies. The end result is that nations can be evaulauted on the basis of criteria such as "uncertainty avoidance," "individualism" and "power distance from superiors."

The work is enlightening and helpful to anyone who works internationally. It is also useful to break down one's own nation (for example, some Americans lean toward the British way of thinking while others are more German-like). The same criteria that divide nations also divide families within a society.

Businessmen, missionaries, pastors, counselors, journalists, and social scientists should devour these materials!

This should be required reading for anyone planning to live overseas or anyone who deals with internationals. In short, this book is relevant to our modern "shrinking" world and quite well done.

Like most significant works, this volume has its weak points.

Although the authors claim to espouse a "values neutral" position (which I have always argued is an impossible and illogical position), their Dutch/Swedish preferences ring out loudly and clearly (humanistic, environmnetalist, etc.). Although the authors do make a serious attempt to look at things from other perspectives, they simply cannot divorce themselves from their own cultural preferances. This is not bad -- they simply need to be above board and stop pretending to take the role of the neutral outsider (at least to better influence those of us who are American conservatives; we are big into distinguishing between fact and evaluation of fact; these evaluations are always done through a person's own personal gridwork).

The authors also have occasional trouble connecting a few dots. For example, on the bottom of p. 355, the Hofstedes are tactfully scolding the U.S. for its lack of foreign aid (again, showing their own bias), but on the top of p. 356 they add, "Looking back to half a century of development assistance, most observers agree that the effectiveness of much of the spending has been dismal." They then say those countries which did improve did so because of their cultural values, not foreign aid. But they seem incapable of concluding that good intentions (and even money) is not the most effective way to solve these problems. They just don't get it.

The same is true with contributions through governments to Tsunami relief. It should be expected that individualistic countries would be more prone to give as individuals, not as collective societies. Rather than look at total giving (or perecentage) OF A SOCIETY, they authors confuse a society with its government. Lots of missed "dot connections" in this work.

Despite the books weakspots, it is overwhelming strong and rich with fascinating content. It is a "mind opening" work -- well worth the read. You simply must read this one!


develops individual skills for a multi-cultural environment   April 18, 2000
G. Bhardwaj (USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

An important book for developing the skills needed for an individual for working in a multi-cultural environment. Through the course of reading the book i realized a few things (in fact a lot of things) that will help me work better in a global organization. It is also useful as a tool if one plans to work with people from different cultures. In all, this book gives you revelent information in uderstanding this topic!