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Gert Jan Hofstede: The cultural biology of organization

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Social mammals

We humans are social mammals. Very intensely social, in fact. That shows in the uses to which we put new technologies: communicate, organize, trade. It shows in everything we do. Even the most autocratic boss is a group animal. Social drives for dominance and being related are essential for us.

The unwritten rules of our social groups are what I call culture. Culture is biological. It has co-evolved with human nature and with human psychology for over a million years. Competition between groups has honed our collaborative capacity. Culture transmits itself through the generations despite huge societal changes. The formal rules of our institutions cannot work as intended without relations. And relations follow the unwritten rules of culture.

  Cultures And Organizations: Software For The Mind, Third Edition, Hofstede Geert, Jan Hofstede Gert, Minkov Michael, 0071664181

N.B. To appear June 2010: Cultures and Organizations 3rd ed, with among others a new dimension indulgence-restraint by Misho Minkov and a chapter on evolution of cultures by me. The pic you see here is a cover proposal by the US publisher. Geert had the PhD titles removed and his name printed in the same case as Misho's and mine. Why? Well, read the book...

Hidden rules

The tricky thing about culture is that it is never conspicuous. You don't see it, it is not written down, you are never explicitly taught it. But it is there! And we are all very good at it. It helps us know how to greet, eat, negotiate and do all the other social things we do, without having to reinvent the wheel all the time. Culture is social glue that makes us behave in the way we do automatically, without thinking.

Culture (along with a host of other things) also co-determines much of what happens in our lives and our jobs, and that is what I can tell you about. Leadership, trust, transparency, management, humour, rights, religion, you name it; culture plays a big role.

So cross-cultural misunderstandings are just as invisible to most of us as culture itself. And then it is easy to conclude that 'they' are stupid or immoral, instead of just acting properly but according to different unwritten rules.

 

This 8-minute movie animation 'Father and Daughter' by Michael Dudok de Wit gives a sad and beautiful glimpse of last-century Dutch life (If you do not get to the film, search for 'father and daughter', or look on YouTube). Can you think of unwritten rules about showing emotions, and how big one's ego should be, that are apparent in this film?


And history has not ended. Cultural evolution is happening all around us every day. It is much faster than genetic evolution - which is also still happening.
   

This site

This site is my chatty counterpart to  www.geerthofstede.com, the serious site on culture maintained by Geert and me. For general background on culture, go there.

Or go to my site at Wageningen University to see what I do with my professional friends.

 

...What is she offering? We are very intensely social...but not always trustworthy... 

updated 06-02-2010 by Gert Jan Hofstede