Content.

1. Introduction3 2. Chapter one. The Notion of culture.4 3. Cultural models.7 4. Chapter two. Hofstedes cultural model...................................12 5. Criticism of Hofstedes model based on the example of Germany and Japan..15 6. Conclusion...24 7. References...25

Introduction.

This article analyses the importance of the concept of culture. This concept has long history. Culture is very difficult concept to identify, that is why there is a great amount of different definitions of it. The first definition of culture per se appeared in the 19th century and was introduced by Edward B. Tylor, who made this concept the central one in anthropology. Since that scientists all over the world started to study this phenomenon. In spite of the fact that there are a lot of definitions of this concept, they have a lot in common. Most of them prove the fact that culture is very fragile phenomenon, which changes a lot either because of time or due to the necessity of nation. Also the importance of culture is pointed out: without culture there is no society. Culture is something that unites us, that gives us firm orientation in this world: it opposes us to them, with the help of it we realise who belong to our in-group and who belong to out-group. It helps us to identify the world and people around us. Every culture has a set of unique features, which every person who belongs to it possesses. These unique features make us different from the others. These features are also called values. People pass these cultural values from one generation to another and to some extent they show us how to live: give us the view of how family, work, friendship etc. must look like. Culture has nothing to do with biology, it is mental program, which we acquire as soon as we are born. Due to the fact that culture has nothing to do with biology, a person can be born in one culture but brought up in the other, so s/he will acquire the culture of the society where s/he is growing. Also a person can learn another culture if it doesnt satisfy him/her, but it is very time-consuming and difficult process. Culture produces different kind of cultural models. Cultural models are different views and perceptions of the world, which are taken for 2

granted. Depending on the model, it can give different kind of characteristics of culture. In this essay three of them will be discussed, the one, which are mostly quoted in cultural science literature: Halls, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turners and Hofstedes models. All of them are considered to be very important. Due to the fact that they analyse a culture according to totally different parameters, they can give different and unique information about it. The detailed information about each of them is introduced in this essay. Special attention will be paid to the Hofstedes cultural model, which was introduced in the 80th. This model was the first one that divided cultures into different dimensions. Every dimension was analysed with the help of the surveys, the results of which Hofstede collected during twenty years. The aim of the model was to help IBM specialists who are working on the international market to understand their foreign colleagues better in order to make business more successful. Some years later the model started to be used in cultural science to analyse cultures regardless to their managerial practices. Since that a lot of criticism of this model appeared. Different critics criticised not only an effort to divide cultures into dimensions, but also the general idea to analyse a culture according to the parameters, which were made especially for management. Some criticism of the model is discussed in this essay, as well my own effort to show that model is no longer current on the example on Germany and Japan.

Chapter 1. The Notion of Culture. The discussions about culture have long history and this

phenomenon has always played a very important role in the worlds history. The meaning of the concept culture is quite disputable and varies from one author to another. What is actually a culture? The first anthropologist who started to talk about culture per se was 3

English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book called Primitive Culture (1871). He claimed that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." With the help of his contribution the concept of culture has gained the central focus in anthropology. Speaking about other definitions of culture the most frequently used in modern cultural science are the ones introduced by Hall, Hofstede and Parsons. "Culture is the collective programming of the mind which

distinguishes the members of one category of people from another." (Hofstede, G. (1984). "Culture...consists in those patterns relative to behaviour and the products of human action which may be inherited, that is, passed on from generation to generation independently of the biological genes" (Parson, T. (1949). Hall interprets culture as a set of learned and shared behaviours. Culture shows that people are related to each other, the way they communicate and how they manage to understand to each other. Culture somehow dictates a person how to understand and categorize the world around him/her, it gives a person certain view and perception of society, people around, work, family etc. According to Hall, culture is a form of link that unites people, but it is so deep that we sometimes are not aware of it. Also Hall described culture as a kind of iceberg because some aspects of it are visible and locate above the water, but there is a larger part of it, which is hidden under the surface. The external part of culture, which is conscious one, is what we can perceive, feel and understand. It includes behaviours and some beliefs. The internal, or subconscious one, includes the values and thought patterns that underlie behaviour (Hall, 1989). From these three definitions we can make a conclusion that culture is something, which is totally unique, that is why together with its unique features it makes one nation different from another. It is 4

something that we get from our ancestors and that helps us to identify the world and people around us; it affects our perceptions of the world and influences our everyday life. Psychologists have found that culture influences memory, judgments, perceptions and decision making (Middleton, 2002; Oishi, Diener, Lucas & Eunkook, 1999; Mann, Radford & Kanagawa, 1985; Nisbette, 2003). It gives us a kind of set of rules and behaviours how to live. Culture has nothing to do with biology, it is rather a mental program that is why even if a person is born in one society but brought up in another s/he will gain the culture of society where s/he is growing up. Culture is an essential part of every society, because every society requires it to live. While binding people together, it constitutes a society. Culture belongs to a group of people; it is a kind of process to live in a group. Every society has norms to follow in order to make a society strong and complete. One of the most important features of culture, that it is learned and transmitted from one generation to the other. It exists due to the human capacity to think symbolically. It means that we keep all information in our mind in a form of symbols, which can be interpreted correctly only by the members of our own culture. That is why we can pass it to the next generation and it will be understood correctly. Culture is adaptive. All modes of behaviour, habits, rules, view, beliefs, customs, which we have in our culture adapt to the needs of a society. For example, if group of people is living in a cold geographic zone, it will learn how to build warm houses, how to dress properly, what kind of activities is possible to make when it is cold outside etc. Culture is also integrated. Each aspect of it is consonant with every other. Culture is logical in its sense, it may be not clear for other cultures, but to those to whom it belongs it is understandable. There is an answer to every question, which can occur while a person is learning this culture. That is why there must be a kind of harmony 5

between cultural aspects or there can occur cultural dissonance, which is very dangerous for the survival of a culture. Culture is a necessary tool for human survival, without culture there is no society. But it must be mentioned that it is very fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing according to the need of people and it can be easily lost because it is a mental program, which was mentioned above and it exists only in human minds.

1.2 Cultural models. As well as there are many definitions of culture, there are many types of cultural models. According to Roy D'Andrade, cultural models exist in a form of mental symbols that are necessary to solve different kind of problems. They are learned and non-declarative knowledge. Quinn argued that, Cultural models are presupposed, taken-for-granted models of the world that are widely shared (although not necessarily to the exclusion of other alternative models) by the members of a society and that play an enormous role in their understanding of that world and their behaviour in it (Quinn, 1987). I would like to describe three of them, the one made by Hall, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner and Hofstede. Halls model of culture was partially described above. He was also trying to explore the elemental units of culture. The reason for doing this was the necessity for scientists to have an ability to compare their results and to exchange them outside their field of studies. He developed so called Primary Message Systems. These systems constitute human activity. According to Hall they are non-linguistic and are biologically based. In order to understand a certain culture one must understand how this culture relates to these systems. There are 10 Primary Message Systems, each of them refers to a different type of human activity (Hall, 1990): -Interaction every person is involved in the process of enculturation, s/he interacts with every single aspect of culture while 6

acquiring it. -Territoriality territory where a group of people live influences greatly its perception of the world. Territoriality deals with how we use the territory we occupy. -Bisexuality deals with concepts masculinity and femininity. It dictates the culture its gender roles. -Association shows us how a society is organized. -Subsistence describes how much work and economy are important in society, values referring to work. -Temporality deals with the cultural perception of time. -Learning proves the importance of learning, we learn while living but we all do it differently. Learning is also culturally specific. -Defence deals with all possible tools of defence (like politics or religion). -Play tells us about cultural humour and jokes. -Exploitation shows how a society uses the environment in order to fulfil its needs. This model is quite interesting because it can give us unique information about culture and its features. It gives us not only general information about how culture is organised but also it describes the core values of culture, which we may not understand without analysis because all of them are culturally specific. No other model can give such a detailed characteristics of a culture. It helps to understand culture better and also to show us how it functions. If we try to analyse culture according to this type of model we can get lots of information about it but, from my point of view, this model isnt very practical because in order to analyse such aspects as cultural jokes or learning, for example, scientists will require a great amount of data, which isnt easy to gather. The typical method of collecting data 7

within cultural models questionnaire - wont be really much helpful here, because some of the information is just impossible to get while asking questions. To analyse a culture by given parameters one must analyse literature, culturally specific view of the world, laws, type of education typical for culture, political system etc. That is a great and long-lasting job to do. Hall gave this theory but didnt give an example of analysis, so probable he didnt even try to analyse any culture according to this model, so it is not clear if at all it is possible to do it. Another type of cultural model is the one created by Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner. In 1997 they published the book called Riding the Waves of Culture where they described Seven Dimensions of Culture, which explained national cultural differences in organisations. The authors pointed out that it is impossible to understand other culture completely, the main goal of their model is to understand our own culture in order to make organisations work as successful as possible. The research and results, which they gathered, is also based on the management market, formed mostly of participants of their management workshops. According to them culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas and it has three levels: -Explicit one, which we can see, like literature, clothes, cuisine etc. -Norms, values and beliefs, which constitute implicit culture. -Beliefs about state of living that are biologically based and help to organise life in order to solve the problems of survival. Returning to the cultural dimensions, Trompenaars and HampdenTurner defined seven of them. Their theory was mostly based on Parsons theory, but they applied it to the other target audience (mostly for managers) The first five dimensions identify how people relate to others, the sixth dimension shows the relationship to time and the seventh one describes the attitude to the environment: Individualism communitarianism: Do we function as a group or 8

as individuals? What is important here is which kind of goals people are trying to achieve their individual ones, or they see the problems of a group as main ones. Universalism particularism: deals with categorization of objects and people, either we categorize them in general terms, or in specific terms. Also this dimension shows if society supposes that there is one best way to do things, which can be applied in any situation or it tries to seek for different ways to solve problems. Neutral emotional: deals with the fact how people make their decisions based on emotions or rather they rely on logic. Also it shows if people are immediately expecting satisfaction from actions or they postpone it to the future. Achievement ascription: this dimension divides societies into two types: the one where people are judged according to the qualities which are ascribed to them (like age, gender, race, caste etc.) and the one where qualities are achieved, people are judged according to the education they get, to the job they do, to some professional qualities they posses etc. Specific diffuse: specifically functioning organisations are defined and limited by contracts, which cause strict business relationships. The diffuse relationships are defined by personal contacts and personal involvement into the process of business making. Sequential time synchronic time: cultures can be past, present or future oriented. For past oriented cultures traditions and history play the most important role; for present oriented past is perceived as unimportant and future is vague; and for future oriented future is seen as something positive, change is crucial for them. Inner directed- outer directed: Do we control our environment or it controls us? There are three types of relations between humans and nature: mastery over nature, harmony with nature, and subjugation to nature. Mastery over nature can be observed in most modern societies, good examples of it are damming rivers, moving 9

mountains, controlling illness through medicine, space exploration, etc. Harmony with nature is often met in Asian cultures and manifests itself in such cultural phenomena as Buddhism, Confucian theory, Taoism, tea ceremony, flower arrangement, stone gardens, bonsai dwarf trees etc. As for subjugation to nature, there are very few societies, which have such kind of culture. They believe that if nature threatens people there is nothing that can be done to control it. This cultural model is quite popular in the cultural science but there comes a question if other target audience than managers can use it? Of course this model helps greatly to solve intercultural problems and avoid conflicts while doing business and also it helps managers understand how consumers in different countries behave differently towards the same product. But whether it can be used in general cultural analysis is a good question. If we try to analyse culture according to this model regardless its managerial orientation we get very general information about it. We get data about periphery values of culture, which are changeable and often coincide with other cultures, rather than information about core values, which actually make a culture unique and are of most importance for cultural analysis. This model has a lot in common with the other more famous one, which was created by another Dutch scientist Geert Hofstede. It will be discussed in the next chapter. According to the all mentioned above we can make a conclusion that culture is a necessary part of every society, without it there is no society. Every culture is unique and it makes people unique, it differentiates us from them. With the help of our culture we acquire values that show us how to identify the world and people around us. Due to the fact that every culture has different values it can be analysed in various ways according to different parameters. Some of the parameters were introduced in two cultural models mentioned above. One of them analyses core and most important values of culture but it is very difficult job to analyse a culture according to this 10

model. And another one can be brought about much quicker with the help of various surveys but it gives rather general information about culture and shows its periphery values, which is not enough for complete cultural analysis.

Chapter 2. Hofstedes cultural model.

Hofstedes cultural model was first introduced in 1980 and it gained great importance in cultural science. In his book Cultures consequences he defines culture as collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another. Patterns of thought, emotions and activities - all constitute this programming. Culture belongs to a collective, consisting of unwritten rules of social behaviour and interaction. Culture is necessary part of every society, it is shared by everyone regardless of their ethnic or national origin and individual personality. Culture is learned throughout life. At first our parents teach us and our family is that what gives us the first idea of values; then teachers and friends add something new to what we already learnt. The process of learning culture continues the whole life. Culture can be subdivided into layers core and periphery. Values at the core of culture are the most important ones and they consist of rituals, heroes and symbols. The layers of ritual, heroes and symbols are expressed through daily practices. Periphery values are changeable ones and they may coincide with other cultures. Hofstede pointed out the importance of values because they constitute the deepest layer of culture, they are very difficult to change and therefore most persistent. Values are the stable 11

elements of culture. Hofstede argued that cultures change and that our modern societies because of the globalization are no longer isolated as it was before and have a lot in common. Hofstedes cultural dimensions are based on the example of employees from the big, multinational IBM, whom he studied from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. These dimensions are: Collectivism vs. Individualism, Power-distance, Femininity vs. Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long vs. Short-term Time Orientation. The fifth dimension Long-term vs. Short-term time orientation he added much later after he studied Asian cultures and came to conclusion that for them time plays crucial role, so that it makes sense to make separate dimension about it. This dimension was influenced by Confucian religion. Now I would like to describe each of them briefly. First dimension is power distance. This dimension is based on inequality, which can occur in many areas of a human life, for example in power, wealth, prestige (Hofstede, 1984). In every organization we can observe power inequality, which is a natural phenomenon that makes an organization function properly. This inequality is usually manifests itself in hierarchical boss-subordinate relations. The information about power distance was gathered with the help of survey, which had three questions that deal with: perceptions of the superiors style of decision-making and of colleagues fear to disagree with superiors, and with the type of decision-making which subordinates prefer in their boss (Hofstede, 1984). So power distance is a kind of degree of power between employee and superior and how this power is perceived by least powerful of them. Power distance can be high and low. The author mentions some reasons for low/high power distance. Some of them are: climate, historical events, the location of political power, the type of education etc. (Hofstede, 1984). Second dimension is uncertainty avoidance. Uncertainty is natural for every human being. We are worried about a lot of things, mostly 12

about out happiness, future or something new that is going to happen. People react differently towards all mentioned above, that is why in order to count Uncertainty Avoidance Index the author used tree indicators: rule orientation, employment stability and stress (Hofstede, 1984).Different factors help people to overcome uncertainty, for example well developed societal structure, advanced technology, political system (law), religion etc. According to the author ways to cope with avoidance are part of culture. Uncertainty avoidance also can be high or low. Third dimension is individualism vs. collectivism. The same dimension was introduced by Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner and discussed above. In every society there is different attitude towards individuals and group of people. It influences the structure of a society greatly, because such social phenomena are affected as family, business, relations with other people etc. The way in which society is organised, either individualistically or collectively, greatly influences the way people perceive the world. For example, the author mentions such consequences as: the change of conscious (I vs. we), the view of private life, friendship, value standards etc. (Hofstede, 1984). The fourth dimension is masculinity vs. femininity. The biological distinction between men and women is natural in every society. The point is if this difference should or shouldnt influence the societal structure. Gender roles will never coincide completely, but the question is when does the biological factor, which differentiates men from women stop and when does discrimination start? Every society views this differently, some of them are more feminine, some are more masculine. Either of these two influences the way people perceive the world, their family, business making, friendship or what kind of goal they are trying to achieve. Hofstede gives a range of sources of masculinity and femininity. Some of them are: climate, cultural wealth, type of family, tradition (mother/father role) etc. (Hofstede, 1984).

13

The last dimension is long vs. short-term time orientation. As was mentioned above this dimension was added much later due to influence of the Chinese culture and Confucianism. Every culture perceives time differently and according to this perception people behave totally different. The Trompenaars and Hampden-Turners past/present/future oriented types of culture have a lot in common with this dimension, idea is the same. Hofstede gives same typical features of people belonging to this or that culture. For example, long-term orientation: persistence, hard work, thrift, acceptance of slow results etc. Short-term orientation: overspending, quick results, personal stability etc. (Hofstede, 1984). This model was the first cultural model introduced in 20th century. Hofstede was the first scientist who managed to analyse such a great amount of data, which he collected during 20 years. It was the first attempt to analyse so many cultures according to the same parameters. Of course this model caused a lot of criticism because no one else before was trying to make something like that. Criticism was of different types, either the main idea of dividing cultures into dimensions was criticised or the way he made his calculations or the way how he analysed cultures or the fact that it is at all possible to compare totally different cultures. About criticism I would like to talk in the next paragraph.

2.1 Criticism of Hofstedes model based on the example of Germany and Japan.

As was mentioned above Hofstedes cultural model had a lot of criticism. In order to understand the sense of criticism I read all possible critical literature about this model, which is only possible to find. Some of the fact I found absurd that is why makes no sense to mention them. But some of the facts were quite reasonable, I would like to discuss them in this chapter and add my own criticism based 14

on the example of Germany and Japan. While reading critical literature I found that many authors (McSweeney, Holden, Myers and Tan) criticise the fact that Hofstede made all cultures similar because he analysed them according to similar parameters. He didnt take into account the fact that he was comparing cultures, which have (very often) nothing in common. To some of them it is possible apply this or that dimension, to some not. He was trying to look for some common features among these cultures but the question is it possible to find common features between eastern and western cultures? He a kind of artificially made them similar to some extent in order the analyses to work out. I have been studying this model for about three years and what surprised me is the fact why he chose only these five dimensions? Why these five and not others? Why he came to conclusion that the fundamental differentiation between cultures lies in, for instance, uncertainty avoidance? Hofstede never explained why he chose exactly these parameters to analyse culture and I cant say it is clear from first sight. From my point of view the main problem of these dimensions are that they were mostly created to analyse cultures only inside managerial practices, so they were created in order to make international business work more efficient. The theory was supposed to help intercultural managers analyse cultural differences between the countries while doing business with them. That is why these dimensions give us political and national classifications rather than ethnical, which actually cross-cultural analysis is supposed to do. I guess this theory cant be used to analyse culture regardless to its managerial practices, because while being designed for other purposes this model doesnt give detailed cultural information. That also can be added here is the fact that Hofstede in his surveys used only people who worked in IBM. Is it really possible to make a conclusion about culture based only on the answers of these people? The workers of IBM, no matter in which country they happen to work, have of course a lot in common because all of them get more or less the same education, they acquire the same values during the 15

process of education, they gain the same attitudes. Of course people who study IBM, no matter if it is a man or a woman, are getting more masculine, choosing success as the main goal of life and tend to see the future as something positive, but do other people belonging to the same nation have the same values? Another important point is that mostly men took part in Hofstedes surveys, which also influences the choice of answers and make the survey not completely correct. And also most of the people whom they used to ask were of the same age (middle thirties according to the book Cultures Consequences, 1984). And what about old people and young generation? Arent they an important part of the culture? Taking into consideration all that it seems not really correct to use this model in order to analyse culture in the cross-cultural context. Hofstede created perfect theory for the IBM managerial studies, which can make life of intercultural managers much easier, but this theory, as was mentioned above, doesnt give us ethnical cross-cultural information about culture. There have been a lot of critics referring these parameters. Hofstede gave an explanation to some of the issues but it wasnt convincing enough for critics to stop writing about it. Another critical point is that information is about 40 years old and tells us about cultures, which dont exist anymore because culture is fluid and changeable how was mentioned in the first chapter. The answers, which were given many years ago, are not up-to-date nowadays. Because of the globalization world changed greatly and I guess if the same questions would be asked now, scientist would get totally different answers. I will try to prove the fact that theory isnt current anymore on the example of Germany and Japan. Lets see how the author characterises these two totally different countries according to his cultural model. Germany is considered to be masculine (66%), individualistic (67%), culture with relative high uncertainty avoidance (65%), low power distance (35%) and short 16

term oriented. Japan is collectivistic (46%), masculine (95%), culture with very high uncertainty avoidance (92%), relatively high power distance (54%) and long-term oriented. I would like to begin with masculinity dimension. Germany and Japan are both masculine according to Hofstedes analysis, but is it really so nowadays? According to Hofstede masculine society has such features as: men should behave assertively and women should care, sex roles in society should be clearly differentiated, men should dominate in all settings, machismo ideal etc. (Hall, 1984). For Japan this dimension is relevant because Japanese society was historically organised as rather masculine than feminine. But it should be pointed out that in spite of the fact a lot of women in Japan are staying at home while bringing up their children and giving them their first education, they get a lot of respect, because the work they do at home is very hard. I am not sure it is possible to say that men dominate in everything, they are just supposed to earn money and work and women are supposed to take care of household, where they actually dominate as well because husband has no idea what is going on at home and without his wife he is helpless. So there arises a question is Japanese society is purely masculine type. So as was mentioned, we can apply this dimension to Japan more or less, but it doesnt suit for Germany anymore. Germany has the largest feminists organization in the EU with feminist ideology started in the 70th (Ferree, Dahlerup, Butler, Allen, Berkovich). The feminist movement was so strong and active that government made a great effort to give the same rights to men and women. Now both sexes get the same salary in the work market, are able to get the same job, even if a woman wants to go to army, she has such right, because now it is allowed for women to do it. And even if in some countries women in army are mostly nurses, in Germany they do the same things as men do: daily trainings, lessons how to use weapons etc. (Eifler, Christine). Women are treated the same as men, in the sense that they are not perceived as weak creatures who require help, support and care, who are supposed to give birth for children and it is 17

the only what they actually can do well nothing of those can be seen in Germany. Even if we look at the language, recently because of the feminist movement every noun (mostly referring to work area) got feminine equivalent (Arzt rztin). It is also difficult to speak about clear gender roles in the society because in many German families women work more that their husbands and often get more money for there job, so that fathers often seat with children, you can see a lot of German men walking with their kids all around Germany. From my point of view all that proved that not only men are dominating in Germany, but women also gained the importance in German society. Due to the democratic rights society has become equal for both sexes. All that proves that this dimension is no longer relevant for Germany and I am sure that for some other countries as well. Now I would like to discuss uncertainty avoidance dimension. Both countries are considered to have high uncertainty avoidance. Hofstede gives some cultural consequences of cultures with high uncertainty avoidance. Some of them are: greater aggressiveness versus other nations, less tolerance for citizen protests, civil servants dislike politics, ideological thinking popular, more ritual behaviour, less ambitious employees etc. (Hall, 1984). Lets analyse some these parameters. I think that greater aggressiveness versus other nations doesnt really suit to any of these two cultures. The point is that survey was first started short time after Second World War and maybe people were still rather nationalistic, especially Germans (for obvious reasons) and Japanese (who were always closed to the rest of the world) but nowadays none of the nations are known to be aggressive towards the others. Germans are very well engaged into international business having their offices all over the world. Their universities have great amount of international programs giving a chance for thousand of foreigners to get education in this country. And if we again look at the language, there is so called Denglisch, which is a mixture of English and German. German language has a great 18

amount of English words, which are used by Germans every day in every possible situation with actually no clear reason, because they have their own equivalents for nearly every English word. The reason for that is probably the sympathy to powerful England (Deutsche Welle). As for Japan, they have become more international as well. There are a lot of foreign specialists working in Japan. Japanese have become more engaged into the international business and technology, alone in Dsseldorf there more than 520 firms and around 7000 Japanese citizens living here (German-Japanese Society of the Lower Rhine). They travel a lot, nowadays it is possible to meet Japanese tourists nearly all over the world. They like to borrow things and ideas from the west, while making them with there own native concepts. Such Japanese phenomena as manga or anime are known and loved all over the world. So it doesnt seem that any of these two are very nationalistic countries. Speaking about less tolerance for citizen protests, civil servants dislike politics, ideological thinking popular, they are also common for nationalistic societies rather than democratic. All that was common in the war time in both countries and probably some traces of it remained when survey was made. But do we meet any of those in democratic Germany? The country where people are not afraid to speak up their mind in all possible ways: either written or spoken form. Different kind of demonstrations are taken place nearly every day in most of German cities; there is a great amount of all possible magazines, books, newspapers where people speak freely about what they find important; there are a lot of radio stations, films, songs where Germans talk about what they dont like in government or in the country etc. As for ideology, is there any ideology in Germany nowadays? I was reading through many books about modern German society and according to all of them the last ideology that the country had was Nazi ideology, which of course still have some 19

traces in the society but they are considered to be as something very negative (Pulzer, Breuilly, Leeder, Van Der Will). As for Japan I also couldnt find any information about modern ideology in this country. Most of the authors talk about Meiji ideology, which had of course a great impact on the country but in its pure sense no longer exists in Japan (Goodman, Gluck). Public demonstrations are also quite common in modern and they mostly concern work problems. If to speak about protests in written form, Asahi simbun (Japanese national newspaper) very often publishes articles about problems which government and society face and with which people do not agree (Tipton). Such parameter as less ambitious employees doesnt also seem to suit both cultures. Germans are known to be very ambitious people who are very engaged in work they do. They are known to be a kind of perfectionist people; that is why they try to do their work as good as possible and achieve as much as possible. Also high social security and environmental, health, and safety consciousness of the Germans has greatly contributed to improving general working conditions (Smyser). Speaking about Japan it is also not possible to say that they are not ambitious. Maybe in comparison with west their working culture is different and success is not the main value they have but Japanese culture is capable of making huge breaks in their tradition and trying completely new ideas because they perceive work as one of the most important values in life. Japan went from being the first place for testing a nuclear bomb to being the second largest economy in the world in a matter of decade. All of this is because the culture was willing to break with the past and do whatever was needed to succeed (McCargo). The examples mentioned above prove that some parameters of uncertainty avoidance dont suit to neither of these two countries, which shows that cultures and people have changed and different values started to be important. So if the same survey would take 20

place, the answers could be totally different.

The last dimension that I would like to discuss is individualism vs. collectivism. According to Hofstede Germany is individualistic (67%) and Japan collectivistic (46%). What really strikes in this statistics, is that there is very small percentage gap between Germany and Japan and we know that the societal structure of these countries is totally different. Why then Germany is considered to be completely individualistic while Japan completely collectivistic when the difference between them is only 21%. But of course it should be pointed out that it is hard to argue that German society is individualistic, but for Japan it is no longer completely true that Japanese society is completely collectivistic because there are some tendencies towards individualism. One of such tendencies is that Japanese families are becoming nuclear, so that children when getting married no longer live with their parents but move out. Before that it was quite normal to live not only with parents but also with grand and even grand-grandparents together (The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Japan, Caudill, 1973). The families are becoming more western-like. Another proof of the existence of individualistic values in Japanese society is give by Schooler in his article History, Social Structure and Individualism: A cross-cultural perspective on Japan. He argues that individualistic values have always been in Japanese society but this culture is structured in the way that collectivism was dominating and individualism was pretty slow in its development so that it has often remained unnoticeable, but it existed in Japan. According to him the Japanese renaissance is known to have high level of individualism. The author claims that this period was marked by an openness to social mobility, a relative disregard of ascribed hierarchical distinctions and in places, even emphasis on equality. The 16th century Japan managed to become such a great industrially developed empire as it has never been before, it was able not only to produce the European technology but 21

even to go further and make something that Europeans didnt even know before. He quotes in his article Goldstone who suggests, Individualism leads to technical and economic development. All that proves that individualism isnt unknown to Japan, it is just not that well-spread as in the west. Schooler gives one very interesting idea in this article. He argues that psychological level changes much quicker than social-structural or cultural levels. The examples of individualism were found only in some epochs and among individual Japanese but it doesnt mean this value wont spread further.

All this criticism isnt new and was discussed by many authors. I guess the questions discussed above are just the first ones, which arise when one starts to analyse the model. Hofstede made a great job in order to make this model, it was the first attempt to find something in common between such different cultures. Of course, there were many parameters Hofstede didnt take into consideration but we shouldnt forget that when the model was created computer technology wasnt so well-developed as it is now and all information was gathered in a written form which made it much more complicated to count it and save it. Also so many years ago there was less information, resources and possibilities to make such kind of survey but still Hofstede managed to question people belonging to so many cultures that it is possible to call him great scientist and his contribution to the cultural science is huge. The only problem is that the model hasnt been updated for really long time, which made it less current in our 21 century.

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Conclusion.

The question what is a culture has been answered in this essay. Culture is something that every person possess, but at the same time it is something that makes a person totally unique due to the uniqueness of cultural values. Every culture has a set of values, which can be totally different from values of other cultures. That is why while analysing a culture it is necessary to take it all into consideration and provide various parameters of analysis. Such parameters are introduced in different types of cultural models that are discussed in this essay. One of them introduced by Hall is the most detailed one and it can give the most important information about core values of culture. But it is not clear how to analyse a culture with this model because the usual way survey doesnt suit it. Hall doesnt give us any information about the way of analysis, which can be used with this model. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner introduced another one. This model is well structure, it divides cultures into different dimensions, the information about which is possible to gather with the help of different surveys. The problem here is that the model gives only general information about culture, which is not enough for a complete analysis of culture and its values. The last model described in this essay is the one made by Hofstede. This model was the first attempt to divide culture into dimensions, as well as the first effort to find something in common among totally different cultures. Hofstede made a great job while collecting all data during 20 years and analysing it. Of course since it was the first cultural model used in cultural science, many different scholars wrote a lot of criticism about it. Criticism was of different type: either the division into dimensions was criticised, or the fact that cultures are analysed according to only these parameters and not some other, or an effort of making all cultures alike etc. One of the criticisms was about the fact that theory is no longer current because it is more than 30 years old. This idea was proven in 23

this essay on the example of Germany and Japan.

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