Cultures and Organizations: Software for the Mind

The revolutionary study of how the place where we grew up constrains the way we think, feel, and act, updated for today's new realities. The world is a more dangerously divided place today than it was at the end of the Cold War. This despite the spread of free trade and the advent of digital technologies that afford a degree of global connectivity undreamed of by science fiction writers fifty years ago. What is it that continues to drive people apart when cooperation is so clearly in everyone's interest? Are we as a species doomed to perpetual misunderstanding and conflict? Find out in "Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind". A veritable atlas of cultural values, it is based on cross-cultural research conducted in seventy countries for more than thirty years. At the same time, it describes a revolutionary theory of cultural relativism and its applications in a range of professions.
Fully updated and rewritten for the twenty-first century, this edition: reveals the unexamined rules by which people in different cultures think, feel, and act in business, family, schools, and political organizations; explores how national cultures differ in the key areas of inequality, collectivism versus individualism, assertiveness versus modesty, tolerance for ambiguity, and deferment of gratification; explains how organizational cultures differ from national cultures, and how they can sometimes be managed; explains culture shock, ethnocentrism, stereotyping, differences in language and humor, and other aspects of intercultural dynamics; provides powerful insights for business people, civil servants, physicians, mental health professionals, law enforcement professionals, and others. Geert Hofstede, PhD, is professor emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Gert Jan Hofstede, PhD, is a professor of Information Systems at Wageningen University and the son of Geert Hofstede.