Many of us have heard of Hofstede's cultural dimensions (e.g. the individualistic-collectivist (IC) dimension), but few have looked under the hood of how they were constructed. The data, it turns out, come from self-report surveys of IBM employees ca. 1968-72. Here's McSweeney describing the sample: - ThreadSky

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dorsaamir.bsky.social • 11 days ago

Many of us have heard of Hofstede's cultural dimensions (e.g. the individualistic-collectivist (IC) dimension), but few have looked under the hood of how they were constructed. The data, it turns out, come from self-report surveys of IBM employees ca. 1968-72. Here's McSweeney describing the sample:

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dorsaamir.bsky.social•11 days ago

So, a wildly unrepresentative sample (the gender discrepancy alone..), from nearly 60 years ago, on a specific type of worker at a single company, with data collected for an entirely different purpose. The ideas are interesting, but I think serious caution is warranted when using these constructs.

dorsaamir.bsky.social•11 days ago

We also very rarely talk about the bizarre "Masculinity/Femininity" dimension. The "feminine" pole is based on 2 questions: how important is it that you (1) work with people who cooperate well with one another & that (2) you have the security to work for your company as long as you want to.

dorsaamir.bsky.social•11 days ago

Hofstede then assigned a single, unchanging score for each dimension to each country, based on averages. No measure of variance or heterogeneity was reported in his results, which gives the false impression of cultural homogeneity.

dorsaamir.bsky.social•11 days ago

You could get away with a lot in the 1960s, eh?

judeharrison.bsky.social•10 days ago

Great insight Dorsa. What you could get away with in the 60s was quite something.

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