Examining Culture #3 - How Trompenaars describes the dimensions

In this mini-series, we are looking at the challenges of managing across a diverse range of geographic and cultural boundaries.

 

We have already presented the findings of Hofstede and today we look at Fons Trompenaar & tomorrow we will review GLOBE, both very influential and insightful studies into Culture.

 

Fons Trompenaars, who over 15 years and with 50,000 managers across the world has developed a model to describe cultural differences.  Often authored with Hampden-Turner whom together wrote their seminal work ‘Riding the Waves of Culture; in 1997,  he built a model around three key principles illustrated in below:

 

 

 

From this they developed a series of scenario based questions to test out how individuals react in these three areas, which led to 7 pairs of dichotomies described as dimensions, outlined in Figure 5 below:

 

 

 

 

At first glance, Trompenaars can be seen to make the picture of culture even more complex, when added to the picture that already emerges from Hofstede.  However on closer inspection, what we see is a re-framing of many areas that Hofstede termed slight differently.  For example what Hofstede terms High and Low power distance can map on to the Achievement ‘v’ Ascription scale here.  Similarly the Individualism and Collectivism scale from Hofstede has similar themes with Trompenaars.  Where they differ, is perhaps more attention in Trompenaars model to time (sequential ‘v’ Synchronic) and environment (Inner directed ‘v’ outer-directed), although even this, one could argue has some synergies with the masculine /feminism scale from Hofstede. 

 

Trompenaars, like Hofstede has had his critics.  His research which looked more at behaviour responses to scenarios to test out his concepts.  Based on a US model of relationship or task-based management, it is exclusively testing out management behaviour.  Hofstede (1996)  questions the reliability of the data  “A serious shortcoming of Trompenaars’ data bank which no professional analysis can correct is its evident lack of content validity”(P.197).  Others question the cultural biases and base assumptions ( Minko (2011 p.48) & St Claire-Ostwald (2007)).

However, even with these shortcomings, Trompenaars research helps us to consider culture both in the context of the organisation and the individual and attempts to link it to management behaviour.  Even a rudimentary audit of a global company, using Trompenaars framework would be insightful in identifying the cause of some of the differences and conflicts that might be present.

Please share your thoughts or experiences on cross cultural management here, or email us if you would like to find out more about our work in this area at [email protected]

 

References

Hofstede G (1996) A serious shortcoming of Trompenaars’ data bank which no professional analysis can correct is its evident lack of content validity International Journal of  Intercultural Relations, 20.(2) 189-198.

Minko M, (2011) Cultural Differences in a Globalizing World , Bingley, Emerald Publishing

St Claire-Ostwald B (2007) Carrying Cultural Baggage: the contribution of socio-cultural anthropology to cross-cultural coaching, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring 5(2), 45-52

Trompenaars F and Hampden-Turner C (1997)Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business, NB Publishing

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