Can You Trust Hofstede's 6-D Model?
- Insights from Cross-Cultural Management

If you have found your way to this page, you may already be familiar with Geert Hofstede's 6-D Model.

Published in the 1970s by the Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede, this model scores the cultural tendencies of countries and regions along six dimensions.

• Power Distance
• Individualism vs. Collectivism (Individualism)
• Masculinity vs. Femininity
• Uncertainty Avoidance
• Long-Term vs. Short-Term Orientation (Long-Term Orientation)
• Indulgence vs. Restraint (Indulgence)

The original data comes from a survey IBM conducted among its employees in countries around the world from the late 1960s into the 1970s.

Incidentally, many people may be surprised that a national culture could have "masculinity" or "femininity." However, these dimension names are merely labels of convenience, and you can think of them as separate from biological male and female.

Being able to compare "differences between countries" in numbers is convenient, and the model is still sometimes used in the business world today.

Quantifying things makes them look concrete and easier to compare, and suddenly they become interesting. However, it is difficult to use this model as a basis for practical decisions.

Old and Skewed Source Data

The analysis was originally based on employee surveys at IBM's offices in various countries, reportedly using a questionnaire designed to measure employees' job satisfaction. In other words, it was just an internal document. On top of that, respondents were mainly in marketing and sales, so job types were skewed. Given the circumstances of the time, the gender ratio must also have been skewed.

Later, Hofstede's side published a questionnaire called the VSM (Values Survey Module), and researchers around the world have collected additional data in their own research projects. However, because the questionnaire itself is designed around "work" and "the workplace," respondents inevitably tend to be white-collar workers. Conducting fieldwork evenly across a population is practically impossible. As a measure of national character, it is quite skewed.

Answers Are Colored by the Organization's Atmosphere

This is a problem inherent in questionnaire surveys: respondents are influenced by the atmosphere of the organization they belong to. It is questionable whether data obtained within the specific corporate culture of IBM reflects the culture of an entire country. Hofstede himself stated in a 2011 paper that the dimensions of national culture are not suited to comparing organizations within the same country.

Varying Interpretations of the Questionnaire

The same question can be understood differently by different people. For example, this questionnaire includes a question like "In your experience, how frequently are subordinates afraid to contradict their boss?" Answers to this depend on the individual's personality, their mood at the time, and how they interpreted the question. Even before differences in language and culture, the questionnaire method itself has this kind of variability.

Can People Be Grouped by Country?

A major problem with this model is that it treats a single country as a single culture.

Then would grouping people by smaller units than countries - for example, ethnicity or religion - make it more accurate? The same problem applies. Values differ between generations even within the same ethnic group, and between individuals even within the same generation. However finely you subdivide, you ultimately arrive at "it depends on the person."

When I first started working in Vietnam, there was a period when every time I had questions about an employee's behavior, I struggled with whether it was "because they are Vietnamese, or because of this person's own personality." In the end, trying to explain it by national character gives you no answer.

Gaps Between Scores and Real Experience

Hofstede's scores rate Japan as moderate in individualism. But how does that match real experience? I feel that the vast majority of Japanese people find it hard to voice their opinions once they are in a group. That said, this too varies completely by generation, industry and company culture. It is not something a single score can describe.

The Many Sides of People

To begin with, can't these traits coexist? Does a highly individualistic person never go along with a group? In the Hofstede model, "masculinity" refers to things like competitiveness and the drive to achieve, but does someone who scores extremely high on it never seek harmony? Dividing people into two poles is unreasonable in itself. I believe human beings are inherently full of contradictions.

From the above, you may think I view the Hofstede model negatively. However, I am only saying that it should be kept as a reference. As a reference, this model has advantages.

The Assumption That Everyone Is the Same

Assuming that the other person is "not the same kind of human being" is a problem, but so is the opposite. The assumption that "people are all the same" can be seen as an unconscious "expectation" - or, to put it negatively, an "imposition." That is because "everyone is the same" is also an implicit expectation that "normally, people would do this." Precisely because you think they should be the same, when you encounter differences you may reject the other person or give up, deciding they are "someone I can't understand."

I don't think a country's tendencies can be understood uniformly, but I don't deny that certain tendencies exist. At the risk of being accused of prejudice, there are, for example, differences beyond individual variation between devout Muslims or Christians and typical Japanese people. However, these are not essential differences as human beings, but differences in context, such as the environment people grew up in and their faith.

Hofstede's scores provide an opportunity to become aware of these "differences."

A Tool for Organizing Your Thoughts and Explaining Them More Easily

When people face a situation they cannot understand, they sometimes dismiss it with reasons that are not really reasons, such as "something feels off," "because they're Japanese" or "because they're Vietnamese." If you rephrase it as "there is a difference in tendency along this dimension," it becomes easier to sort out your own reasoning and feelings. It also becomes easier to explain to others. When describing a situation to someone who knows nothing about Vietnam, frameworks like this are convenient.

A Prompt for Forming Your Own Opinion

Looking at a research firm's report or Hofstede's scores and doubting, "Is that really true?" - that is nothing less than a prompt for forming your own opinion. It turns "something you vaguely sensed" into something concrete. As a prompt for that, Hofstede's scores have value.

The value of the Hofstede model is, first, that by quantifying and comparing, it makes you "take an interest in the other person." It then becomes a "prompt" for thinking.

Since Hofstede, other frameworks have appeared, such as the GLOBE study (which expanded the dimensions to nine, surveying middle managers in 62 countries) and Erin Meyer's The Culture Map (which integrates existing research findings and practical experience and reorganizes them into eight scales). However, they share the same issues, such as samples skewed toward particular job types and the lack of their own large-scale validation data. Even when the framework changes, the premise that it is "a tool, not the right answer" stays the same.

What matters in practice is not so much a country's score as what kind of person the individual in front of you is, what kind of culture you want your organization to have, and what kind of relationship you have built with your employees.

After struggling with whether it was "because they are Vietnamese, or because of this person," what I eventually arrived at was the criterion "because this is our company's rule." Rather than trying to explain things by national character, making clear what the organization uses as its standard is easier for everyone to understand.

Hofstede's scores are useful at the stage of asking "why does this person think this way?" before reaching such a decision. They matter not as an answer, but as an entry point.