Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Third Edition: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival (BUSINESS SKILLS AND DEVELOPMENT)

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And personality refers to those personal sets of mental programs that are partially acquired and partially learned. Expect long stretches of this, with lots of jargon, and a maddening tendency of theirs to expect readers to memorize the acronyms they use for various cultural indicators. Those dimensions are Power Distance (the psychological distance we feel to superiors - government, boss, teacher, parents), Uncertainty Avoidance (or how much a culture dislikes change and prefers more rules), Masculinity vs Femininity (no misogynism here, this value reflects competitiveness, among others), Individualism (how much we think of ourselves as a person, rather than part of a group - family, work, social network) and Long-Term Relationships (how much we think of the future, how much importance we put in building a social network based on trust and strong, personal ties).

It is very interesting and proposes many views on cultural norms, which somehow feel intuitively correct. This specialization has created a scattered landscape of disciplines that misunderstand or neglect one another and that have limited predictive value in real social life.

The book gives you an insight of the cultural differences of nations and explains why behaviors/values/heroes/symbols have a certain meaning and how they start to evolve from inside the family. INDIVIDUALISM/COLLECTIVISM: Individualism describes societies where the ties between individuals are loose; everyone is expected to look after himself and his immediate family. The fifth dimension which was later added based on results from the Far East and Asia - Long- versus Short-Term Orientation - is not discussed in this book. It’s written in a simple language and broken down into very understandable bits so even someone without much previous knowledge (like me) can have a pleasant read.

There a myriad of cultures in the world and the higher is their cultural asymmetry, made up of common features, the best they bond accordingly. We're first told that "masculine" refers to cultures with traditionally defined and separated gender roles, whereas in "feminine" cultures, men and women undertake similar roles. This is followed by the statement ''looking back to half a century of development assistance, most observers agree [who?Hofstede's Culture and Organizations is a classic in cultural literature and is definitively worth reading.

Having flown 1900+ hours in a NATO staffed flying unit, I found the insights in this book invaluable for understanding the various effects of culture on cockpit etiquette and flight safety.The book then proceeds to present the four dimensions of culture that he identified as a result of a massive survey he conducted on IBM employees in 72 countries in 1968 and again in 1972. There's a lot of detail and statistical analysis of all of this survey data to explain the differences. To understand what it means to be human I think it is good to look at how our cultures provide for our basic needs, and how varied these cultures are. 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).