My Take on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions as applied to Japan & New Zealand -- Ayano Yoshiike

 

I think viewing the countries through the lens of the cultural dimensions model greatly helps us understand the two cultures and their differences. I understand it’s difficult to measure cultural differences with few things, but these dimensions clearly tell us them. The findings mostly aligned with my observations. On the other hand, I thought masculinity in New Zealand was quite low, but the result was higher than I imaged. I estimated that Japan was low in individualism, but it was not low. These results surprised me significantly . I think we can know other people’ culture before we meet new people from all over the world with Hofstede’s dimensions. That’s really helpful to everyone such as businessman. However, we should still be aware that the indicators represent the culture of a country, not personal characters of the people of the country when we attempt to establish personal relations and communicate successfully.

Comments

  1. Mashiro YamashitaJuly 27, 2022 at 4:08 PM

    Japan is higher individualism than I thought, too. I agree that the survey is helpful to businessman. It it good idea!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mayuko NakamuraJuly 27, 2022 at 4:10 PM

    I strongly agree that we have to think about personal characters not only stereotype of countries.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TAMONJuly 27, 2022 at 4:20 PM

    I thought it’s difficult to measure cultural differences with few things too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yugo KonnoJuly 27, 2022 at 4:20 PM

    As you said, to know culture as possible as we could before we meet foreign people is important.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Usa YamagamiJuly 27, 2022 at 5:05 PM

    Hi, Ayano. I too thought Japanese individualism is low, but it was not correct. I think it is different between the Japanese image that the Japanese have and the other country's people.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Shiho MatsuuraJuly 27, 2022 at 8:37 PM

    Hi, Ayano. I think it is nice idea that we need to be careful about personal characters and stereotypes.

    ReplyDelete
  7. David WoodfieldAugust 9, 2022 at 9:45 PM

    Hi Ayano, interesting comments. It is interesting that New Zealand and Japan are more similar than different in some respects. For instance, New Zealand (79) is closer to Japan (46) in the individualism vs. collectivism index than say the US (91) is. This suggests that individualism is less esteemed in New Zealand than in the United States and as far as this aspect is concerned there is less of a bridge to cross between New Zealand and Japan.
    David :-)

    ReplyDelete

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