I recommend this book to everyone, specially for those who deal often with people from other countries and cultures.

Those things have been found slow to change if at all and so far have proven to have a perplexing and strong impact on the simplest of cultural interactions as you can see in the case presented at the beginning of each chapter.This is especially important for citizens of developing world, where we all believe in one, monolithic culture of the whole western society. Then the ‘enlightened rule’ trope again: ''the development of poor countries is an uphill struggle because population growth often swallows any increase in resources'' that again is not strictly true when China/East Asia is a positive case nor does the author have the authority to impose population reductions in a colonial fashion.

This book also provides a lot of charts and lists with main points, so it is easy to find relevant information quickly. It is not an easy book, but the interested reader will be able to fully understand the ideas; reading an article about factor analysis in an encyclopedia may help to grasp how the data was interpreted. In any of the countries mentioned, how can Hofstede say that he can form a view of the whole cultural situation based on a handful of IBM middle managers? Even when local wars do not destroy the products of peaceful development, forces in society make development difficult to attain.The first chapter (chapter 7) argues that management theories are always limited to the culture of the creator. On the basis of such a revised declaration, victims of political and religious fundamentalisms can be protected; this protection should prevail over national sovereignty'', followed by the acknowledgement of historical record ''The nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century was the age of Europe; Europeans and their offspring overseas were the “lords of humankind,” who colonized most of the outside world while wealth owed from outside to inside'' but cannot seem to see the continuation of the practice so resort to vulgar opinion ''freedom from want became recognized as a fundamental human right, and around 1950 programs of development aid were gradually started, financed by the rich countries and with the poor ones as receivers.

A number of countries did cross the line from poor to rich, especially in East Asia, but this progress was due to their populations’ own values and efforts, not to the amount of aid money received'' ignores where the manufacturing capabilities are located, wealth influx also of China from the fact of their nationalized ‘state-private’ resources not immediately stolen by tax havens and the points already made. What Hofstedes actually did, they quantified value systems, gave them names, dimensions and showed how values for different cultures differ ( or cultures for different cultures differ, which way you like :)). They show how countries differ from each other in terms of these elements, which I thought was quite interesting, to think about how someone from Japan or China might have a different idea of how to approach a particular situation compared to my American ideas of culture.

This financed (still does) and maintains of the lifestyles of ‘home’ citizens and increases investitures of their pension funds.

They then say those countries which did improve did so because of their cultural values, not foreign aid. Also notably it argues for observing different moralities arising from different cultural experiences, yet also contains arguments in favor of the authors' moral particularities.

This should be required reading for anyone planning to live overseas or anyone who deals with internationals. If you have a group of multicultural friends and want some interesting discussion, then poor a few beers and make questions from the tables on uncertainty avoidance, or masculinity/femininity descriptors. The discussion is highly informative and touches on Mintzberg's theories as well typical models of organization in different cultures. I might have enjoyed the “culture” part of it more than the “organisational setting” one and I don’t think it’s something I’d recommend reading if you didn’t have a personal interest in it, but if you do - have a go.