Everyday life exists of meeting familiar and unfamiliar faces. Unfamiliar faces, habits, beliefs and cultures are what constitutes ‘The Other’. Travelling and working abroad makes us much more aware of ‘The Other’. In the ‘Understanding the Other’ series of blogposts you learn more about the deeper, underlying layers of other cultures. In the process you become more aware of your own culture and life choices, opening the door for personal development and improving your social interactions with other cultures and lifestyle, either at home or abroad. This is part 4: Cultural distance. Image by Wikipedia.
Cultural distance
Cultural distance refers to the extent to which two cultures differ. An insightful tool here can be found on the website Hofstede Insights where the differences along various cultural dimensions are visualized (see also the image accompanying this post).
Hofstede dimensions
One widely used index for measuring overall cultural distance was developed by Kogut and Singh (1988) who drew on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Hofstede used a factor analysis to classify data from a work value survey done by IBM among 40 countries between 1967 and 1973. This contained four dimensions: power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity. Masculinity was defined as “the extent to which the dominant values in society are ‘masculine’ – that is, assertiveness, the acquisition of money and things, and not caring for others, the quality of life, or people”.
Cultural distance is asymmetric
Recently, the Kogut and Singh formula has come in for some criticism. One of the criticisms is that the metaphor of distance creates an illusion of symmetry. For example, a study found that German expatriates adjusted better in the USA than American expatriates in Germany. International interns may well experience such asymmetry. For example, a Danish student doing an internship in Vietnam might experience more cultural distance than a Vietnamese counterpart doing an internship in Denmark, partly at least due to different power distances (higher in the first case and lower in the second)
Cultural distance differs within countries
Another weakness of the cultural distance concept is that it suggests that countries are culturally homogenous. This underestimates the potential differences between ethnic, regional or social groups within countries. Hofstede himself warned against applying country level cultural values to individuals. Despite this, many studies have used the dimensional model at the individual level, often producing contradictory results. This has led Kirkman, Lowe and Gibson (2006) to argue that researchers should use models that recognize the characteristics of specific populations in a country. It is more likely that differences between countries stem from individuals’ perceptions of a foreign country’s general values and attitudes, often referred to as psychic distance.
Go to part 5: World Values Survey
Related books (which include all references)
