The Essentials of Scholarship: A Reply to Geert Hofstede

Abstract

I shall attempt to engage with Geert Hofstede's reply to my January 2002 article -a reply which is unfortunately characterized by evasion. Evasion 1: I've answered elsewhereHofstede states that the new edition of Culture's consequences (2001a) (hereafter the second edition) makes 'many [of my] comments obsolete'. If Hofstede really meant 'obsolete' then he would be acknowledging that my criticisms had been valid prior to the remedial work on his research for the second edition. However, I presume that instead he is claiming that he answered criticism of my type in the new edition. If my criticisms are answered in the second edition, then Hofstede could readily have engaged with them and rebutted them. But he does not. Instead, he reproduces a lengthy extract from the second edition and fails to respond to the multiple issues I raised. The fact is that the same profound methodological flaws that characterize his original analysis of the IBM data remain in the second edition, and my criticisms of them remain unanswered. Evasion 2: Other people laud my workHofstede -relying on a misunderstanding of the magnitude of Kuhn's concept of a paradigm shift which encompasses, for example, the change in physics from Newton to Einstein -boasts that he achieved such a shift. He also claims to have 'introduced' the 'four or five dimensions' into the cultural literature. No mention of the pioneering work of others; or of the existence of earlier literature on the dimensions he claims to have discovered; or of the 1 3 6 3

Which “culture”? A critical analysis of intercultural communication in engineering education

“…Yet, this “differentialist” view of communication has been criticized for epistemological and ontological reasons (Pieterse, ). In addition to methodological critiques on how the posited dimensions of culture have been identified in Hofstede's work (McSweeney, ), there has been wide criticism of the ontological assumptions of the culture‐as‐given approach, including the representation of culture as a real entity with characteristics that are assumed to apply to all members of a particular group. Therefore, Holliday (, ) and others have referred to this approach as essentialist in nature.…”

Fashion founded on a flaw

“…Leung et al (2005, p. 368) observe that "research examining relationships between culture and individual outcomes has not captured enough variance to make specific recommendations that managers need with confidence" and Gefland et al (2007, p. 496) point out that "level of analysis confusion also continues to abound [y] research continues to blindly apply culture-level theory to the individual level and vice versa". There have also been some illustrations and discussions of Hofstede's inconsistent criticisms of the ecological fallacy: he strongly condemns the drawing of spurious cross-level inference and yet he 484 IMR 30,5 extensively ignores that warning (see McSweeney, 2002b, for example). Brewer and Vanaik (2012) have widened both types of analysis to also include the GLOBE research.…”

How relevant are Hofstede's dimensions for inter-cultural studies? A replication of Hofstede's research among current international business students

“…Furthermore, the IBM data would now be outdated. In reaction to McSweeney´s (2002) criticism, Hofstede (2002) argued that his survey measured the differences between nations, no absolute numbers and agrees with McSweeney (2002) that nations are not the most suitable way for measuring cultural aspects but often the only available for conducting this kind of research. Hofstede (2002) is also of the same opinion that surveys should not be the only research instrument and he welcomes every researcher to come up with proposals to define further dimensions.…”

“…Despite the broad acceptance of Hofstede's framework, many other researchers have raised critical challenges and Hofstede has even met with fierce opposition. Especially McSweeney (2002) criticised Hofstede's approach in several respects: his main reproaches are that surveys are not the most suitable way and nations not the best units to examine cultural differences. Also it would be methodically questionable to assign the results of single employees from one company to their entire nation's scores and that five dimensions are not enough to sufficiently determine cultural aspects.…”