Business as Usual
Authors: Degabriele Maria 
Published: October 2020

As a specialist in culture and communication studies, teaching in a
school of business, I realised that the notion of interdisciplinarity is
usually explored in the comfort of one's own discipline. Meanwhile, the
practice of interdisciplinarity is something else. The very notion of
disciplinarity implies a regime of discursive practices, but in the zone
between disciplines, there is often no adequate language. This piece of
writing is a brief analysis of an example of the language of business
studies when business studies thinks about culture. It looks at how
business studies approaches cultural difference in context of
intercultural contact.

Geert Hofstede's Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991)

This article is a brief and very selective critique of Geert Hofstede's
notion of culture in Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind.
Hofstede has been publishing his work on cross-cultural management since
the 1960s. His work is routinely used in reference to
cross/multi/intercultural issues in business studies (a term I use to
include commerce, finance, management, and marketing). Before I begin, I
must insist that Hofstede's Cultures and Organizations: Software of the
Mind is a very useful text for business studies students, as it introduces
them to useful concepts in relation to culture, like culture shock,
acculturation (not enculturation -- I suppose managers are repatriated
before that happens), and training for successful cross-cultural
communication.

It is worth including here a brief note on the subtitle of Cultures and
Organizations: Software of the Mind. This "software of the mind" is
clearly analogous to computer programming. However, Hofstede disavows the
analogy, which is central to his thesis, saying that people are not
programmed the way computers are. So they are, but not really.

Hofstede claims that in order to learn something different, one "must
unlearn ... (the) ... patterns of thinking, feeling, and potential acting
which were learned throughout (one's) lifetime". And it is this
thinking/feeling/acting function he calls the "software of the mind" (4).
So, is the body the hardware? Thinking and feeling are abstract and
could, with a flight of fancy, be seen as "software". However, acting is
visible, tangible, and often visceral. I am suggesting that "acting"
either represents or is just about all we have as culture. Acting (in the
fullest sense, including speech, gesture, manners, textual production,
etc.) is not evidence of culture, it is culture. Also, computer
technology, like every other technology, is part of culture, as evident in
this journal.

Culture

I share Clifford Geertz's concept of culture as a semiotic one, where
interpretation is a search for meaning, and where meaning lies in social
relations. Geertz writes that to claim that culture consists in brute
patterns of behaviour in some identifiable community is to reduce it (the
community and the notion of culture). Human behaviour is symbolic action.
Culture is not just patterned conduct, a frame of mind which points to
some sort of ontological status. Culture is public, social, relational,
and contextual. To quote Geertz: "culture is not a power, something to
which social events, behaviours, institutions, or processes can be
causally attributed; it is a context" (14). Culture is not an ontological
essence or set of behaviours. Culture is made up of webs of
relationships. That Hofstede locates culture in the mind is probably the
most problematic aspect of his writing.

Culture is difficult for any discipline to describe because different
disciplines have their own view of social reality. They operate in their
own paradigms. Hofstede uses a behaviourist psychological approach to
culture, which looks at what he calls national character and typical
behaviours. Even though Hofstede is aware of being, as an observer of
human behaviour, an integral part of his object of analysis (other
cultures), he nevertheless continuously equates the observed behaviour to
particular kinds of national thinking and feeling where national is often
collapsed into cultural. Hofstede uses an empirical behaviourist paradigm
which measures certain behaviours, as if the observer is outside the
cultural significance attributed to behaviours, and attributes them to
culture.

Hofstede's Notion of Culture

Hofstede's work is based on quantitative data gathered from
questionnaires administered to IBM corporation employees in various
countries. He looked at 72 national subsidiaries, 38 occupations, 20
languages, and at two points in time (1968 and 1972), and continued his
commentary on that data into the 1990s. He claims that because the entire
sample has a common corporate culture, the only thing that can account for
systematic and consistent differences between national groups within a
homogeneous multinational organisation is nationality itself. It is as if
corporate culture is outside, has nothing to do with, national culture
(itself a complex and dynamic concept). Hofstede's work does not account
for the fact that IBM is an American multinational corporation and, as
such, whatever attributes are used to measure cultural difference, those
found in American corporate culture will set the benchmark for whatever
other cultures are measured. This view is supported in business studies in
general where American management practices are seen as universal and
normal, even when they are described as 'Western'.

The areas Hofstede's IBM survey looked at are:

1. Social inequality, including the relationship with authority (also
described as power distance);
2. The relationship between the individual and the group (also
described as
individualism versus collectivism);
3. Concepts of masculinity and femininity: the social implications of
having been born as a boy or a girl (also described as masculinity versus
femininity);
4. Ways of dealing with uncertainty, relating to the control of
aggression
and the expression of emotions (also described as uncertainty avoidance).

These concepts are in themselves culturally specific and have become
structurally embedded in organisational theory. Hofstede writes that
these four dimensions of culture are aspects of culture that can be
measured relative to other cultures. What these four dimensions actually
do is not to combine to give us a four-dimensional (complex?) appreciation
of culture. Rather, they map onto each other and reinforce a politically
conservative, Eurocentric view of culture. Hofstede does admit to having
had "a 'Western' way of thinking", but he inevitably goes back to "the
mind" as a place or goal. He refers to a questionnaire composted by
"Eastern', in this case Chinese minds ... [which] ... are programmed
according to their own particular cultural framework" (171). So there is
this constant reference to culturally programmed minds that determine
certain behaviours.

In his justification of using typologies to categorise people and their
behaviour (minds?) Hofstede also admits that most people / cultures are
hybrids. And he admits that rules are made arbitrarily in order to
classify people / cultures (minds?). However, he insists that the
statistical clusters he ends up with are an empirical typology.

Such a reduction of "culture" to this kind of radical realism is
absolutely anatomical and enumerative. And, the more Hofstede is quoted
as an authority on doing business across cultures, the more truth value
his work accrues. The sort of language Hofstede uses to describe culture
attributes intrinsic meanings and, as a result, points to difference
rather than diversity. Languages of difference are based on binaristic
notions of masculine/feminine, East/West, active/passive,
collective/individual, and so on. In this opposition of activity and
passivity, the East (feminine, collectivist) is the weaker partner of the
West (masculine, individualist). There is a nexus of knowledge and power
that constructs cultural difference along such binaristic lines. While a
language of diversity take multiplicity as a starting point, or the norm,
Hofstede's hegemonic and instrumentalist language of difference sees
multiplicity as problematic. This problem is flagged at the very start of
Cultures and Organizations.

12 Angry Men: Hofstede Interprets Culture and Ignores Gender

In the opening page of Cultures and Organizations there is a brief
passage from Reginald Rose's play 12 Angry Men (1955). (For a good
review of the film see http://www.film.u-
net.com/Movies/Reviews/Twelve_Angry.html. The film was recently remade.)
Hofstede uses it as an example of how twelve different people with
different cultural backgrounds "think, feel and act differently". The
passage describes a confrontation between what Hofstede refers as "a
garage owner" and "a European-born, probably Austrian, watchmaker". Such
a comparison flags, right from the start, a particular way of categorising
and distinguishing between two people, in terms of visible and audible
signs and symbols. Both parties are described in terms of their
occupation. But then the added qualification of one of the parties as
being "European-born, probably Austrian" clearly indicates that the
unqualified party places him in the broad category "American". In other
words, the garage owner's apparently neutral ethnicity implies a normative
"American", against which all markers of cultural difference are measured.

Hofstede is aware of this problem. He writes that "cultural relativism
does not imply normlessness for oneself, nor for one's society" (7).
However, he still uses the syntax of binaristic classification which
repeats and perpetuates the very problems he is apparently addressing.
One of the main factors that makes 12 Angry Men such a powerful drama is
that each man carries / inscribes different aspects of American culture.
And American culture is idealised in the justice system, where rationality
and consensus overcomes prejudice and social pressure. Each man has a
unique make-up, which includes class, occupation, ethnicity, personality,
intelligence, style and experience. But 12 Angry Men is also an
interesting exploration of masculinity. Because Hofstede has included a
category of "masculine/feminine" in his study of national culture, it is
an interesting oversight that he does not comment on this powerful element
of the drama.

People identify along various lines, in terms of ethnicities, languages,
histories, sexuality, politics and nationalism. Most people do have
multiple and varied aspects to their identity. However, Hofstede sees
multiple lines of identification as causing "conflicting mental programs".
Hofstede claims that identification on the gender level of his hierarchy
is determined "according to whether a person was born as a girl or as a
boy" (10). Hofstede misses the crucial point that whilst whether one is
born female or male determines one's sex, whether one is enculturated as
and identifies as feminine or masculine indicates one's gender. Sex and
gender are not the same thing. Sex is biological (natural) and gender is
ideological (socially constructed and naturalised). This sort of blindness
to the ideological component of identity is a fundamental flaw in
Hofstede's thesis. Hofstede takes ideological constructions as given, as
natural. For example, in endnote 1 of Chapter 4, "He, she, and (s)he", he
writes "My choice of the terms (soft feminine and hard masculine) is based
on what is in virtually all societies, not on what anybody thinks should
be (107, his italics). He reinforces the notion of gendered essences, or
essences which constitute national identity.

Indeed, the world is not made up of entities or essences that are
masculine or feminine, Western or Eastern, active or passive. And the
question is not so much about empirical accuracy along such lines, but
rather what are the effects of always reinscribing cultures as Western or
Eastern, masculine or feminine, collectivist or individualist. In an era
of globalism and mass, interconnected communication, identities are
multiple, and terms like East and West, masculine and feminine, active and
passive, should be used as undecidable codes that, at the most, flag
fragments of histories and ideologies.

Identity

East and West are concepts that did not come out of a political or
cultural vacuum. They are categories, or concepts, that originated and
flourished with European expansionism from the 17th century. They
underwrote imperialism and colonisation. They are not inert labels that
merely point to something "out there". East and West, like masculine and
feminine or any other binary pair, indicate an imaginary relationship that
prioritises one of the pair over the other. People and cultures cannot be
separated into static Western and Eastern essences. Culture itself is
always diverse and dynamic. It is marked by migration, diaspora, and
exile, not to mention historical change. There are no "original" cultures.
The sort of discourse Hofstede uses to describe cultures is based on an
ontological and epistemological distinction made between East and West.

Culture is not something invisible or intangible. Culture is not
something obscure that is in the mind (whatever or wherever that is) which
manifests itself in peculiar behaviours. Culture is what and how we
communicate, whether that takes the form of speech, gestures, novels,
plays, architecture, style, or art. And, as such, communication includes
the objects we produce and exchange and the symbols to which we give
meaning. So, when Hofstede writes that the Austrian watchmaker acts the
way he does because he

cannot behave otherwise. After many years in his new home country, he
still behaves the way he was raised. He carries within himself an
indelible pattern of behaviour

he is attributing a whole range of qualities which are frequently given
by dominant cultures to their cultural "others" (1). Hofstede attributes
politeness, tradition, and, above all, stasis, to the European-Austrian
watchmaker. The phrase "after many years in his new home country" is
contradictory. If so many years have passed, why is "home" still "new"?
And, indeed, the watchmaker might still behave the way he was raised, but
it would be safe to assume that the garage owner also behaves the way he
was raised. One of the main points made in 12 Angry Men is that twelve
American men are all very different to each other in terms of values and
behaviour. All this is represented in the dialogue and behaviour of
twelve men in a closed room.

If we are concerned with different kinds of social behaviour, and we are
not concerned with pathological behaviour, then how can we know what
anyone carries within themselves? Why do we want to know what anyone
carries within themselves? From a cultural studies perspective, the last
question is political. However, from a business studies perspective, that
question is naïve. The radical economic rationalist would want to know as
much as possible about cultural differences so that we can better target
consumer groups and be more successful in cross-cultural negotiations.

In colonial days, foreigners often wielded absolute power in other
societies and they could impose their rules on it [sic]. In these
postcolonial days, foreigners who want to change something in another
society will have to negotiate their interventions. (7)

Those who wielded absolute power in the colonies were the non-indigenous
colonisers. It was precisely the self-legitimating step of making a place
a colony that ensured an ongoing presence of the colonising power. The
impetus behind learning about the Other in the colonial times was a
combination of spiritual salvation (as in the "mission civilisatrice") and
economic exploitation (colonies were seen as resources for the benefit of
the European and later American centres). And now, the impetus behind
learning about cultural difference is that "negotiation is more likely to
succeed when the parties concerned understand the reasons for the
differences in viewpoints" (7).

Culture as Commerce
What, in fact, happens, is that business studies simultaneously wants to
"do" components of cross-cultural studies, as it is clearly profitable,
while shunning the theoretical discipline of cultural studies. A
fundamental flaw in a business studies perspective, which is based on
Hofstede's work, is a blindness to the ideological and historical
component of identity.

Business studies has picked up just enough orientalism, feminism,
marxism, deconstruction and postcolonialism to thinly disavow any
complicity with dominant (and dominating) discourses, while getting on
with business-as-usual. Multiculturalism and gender are seen as modern
categories to which one must pay lip service, only to be able to get on
with business-as-usual. Negotiation, compromise and consensus are desired
not for the sake of success in civil processes, but for the material value
of global market presence, acceptance and share.

However, civil process and commercial interests are not easily separable.
To refer to a cultural economy is not just to use a metaphor. The
materiality of business, in the various forms of commercial transactions,
is itself part of one's culture. That is, culture is the production,
consumption and circulation of objects (including less easily definable
objects, like performance, language, style and manners). Also, culture is
produced and consumed socially (in the realm of the civil) and circulates
through official and unofficial social and commercial mechanisms. Culture
is a material and social phenomenon. It's not something hidden from view
that only reveals itself in behaviours.

Hofstede rightly asserts that culture is learned and not inherited.
Human nature is inherited. However, it is very difficult to determine
exactly what human nature is. Most of what we consider to be human nature
turns out to be, upon close inspection, ideological, naturalised.
Hofstede writes that what one does with one's human nature is "modified by
culture" (5). I would argue that whatever one does is cultural. And this
includes taking part in commercial transactions. Even though commercial
transactions (including the buying and selling of services) are material,
they are also highly ritualistic and highly symbolic, involving complex
forms of communication (verbal and nonverbal language).

Culture as Mental Programming

Hofstede's insistent ontological reference to 'the sources of one's
mental programs' is problematic for many reasons. There is the constant
ontological as well as epistemological distinction being made between
cultures, as if there is a static core to each culture and that we can
identify it, know what it is, and deal with it. It is as if culture itself
is a knowable essence. Even though Hofstede pays lip service to culture
as a social phenomenon, saying that "the sources of one's mental programs
lie within the social environments in which one grew up and collected
one's life experiences" (4), and that past theories of race have been
largely responsible for massive genocides, he nevertheless implies a kind
of biologism simply by turning the mind (a radical abstraction) into
something as crude as computer software, where data can be stored, erased
or reconfigured.

In explaining how culture is socially constructed and not biologically
determined, Hofstede says that one's mental programming starts with the
family and goes on through the neighbourhood, school, social groups, the
work place, and the community. He says that "mental programs vary as much
as the social environments in which they were acquired", which is nothing
whatsoever like computer software (4-5). But he carries on to claim that
"a customary term for such mental software is culture" (4, my italics).

Before the large-scale changes which took place in the second half of the
twentieth century in disciplines like anthropology, history, linguistics,

and psychology, culture was seen to be a recognisable, determined,
contained, consistent way of living which had deep psychic roots. Today,
any link between mental processes and culture (formerly referred to as
"race") cannot be sustained. We must be cautious against presuming to
understand the relationship between mental process and social life and
also against concluding that the content of the mind in each racial (or,
if you like, ethnic or cultural) group is of a peculiar kind, because it
is this kind of reductionism that feeds stereotypes. And it is the
accumulation of knowledge about cultural types that implies power over the
very types that are thus created.

Conclusion

A genuinely interdisciplinary approach to communication, commerce and
culture would make business studies more theoretical and more challenging.
And it would make cultural studies take commerce more seriously, beyond a
mere celebration of shopping. This article has attempted to reveal some
of the cracks in how business studies accounts for cultural diversity in
an age of global commercial ambitions. It has also looked at how
Hofstede's writings, as exemplary of the business studies perspective,
papers over those cracks with a very thin layer of pluralist cultural
relativism. This article is an invitation to open up a critical dialogue
which dares to go beyond disciplinary traditionalisms in order to examine
how meaning, communication, culture, language and commerce are embedded in
each other.

References

Carothers, J.C. Mind of Man in Africa. London: Tom Stacey, 1972.
Degabriele, Maria. Postorientalism: Orientalism since "Orientalism".
Ph.D. Thesis. Perth: Murdoch University, 1997.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New
York: Basic Books, 1973.
Hofstede, Geert. Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind.
Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1991.
Moore, Charles A., ed. The Japanese Mind: Essentials of Japanese
Philosophy and Culture. Honolulu: East-West Centre, U of Hawaii, 1967.
Patai, Raphael. The Arab Mind. New York: Scribner, 1983.
Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock: A Study of Mass Bewildernment in the Face
of Accelerating Change. Sydney: Bodley Head, 1970.
12 Angry Men. Dir. Sidney Lumet. Orion-Nova, USA. 1957.

Citation reference for this article

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