Culture diversity and International Business Management

Geert Hofstede gathered data from 53 different national cultures. The study revealed that the 53 countries differed along four cultural dimensions; power distance, Individualism - collectivism, masculinity - femininity, and uncertainty avoidance. (R. N. Sanyal, 2001) Power Distance reflects the degree to which a culture believes how institutional and organizational power should be distributed and how the decisions of the power holders should be viewed In other words, people in high power distance cultures are much more comfortable …

…and the US are very similar in Hofstede's model. The biggest difference between the two that could affect an American Manager is Individualism. In Germany this is very low, so managing would be more effective on a group scale rather than an individual scale. For instance instead of individual evaluations one might use team evaluations, since teams are probably the system of choice. Sources Cited Rajib N. Sanyal. International Management. Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001