Questions:

1. How has your culture influenced the extent to which you avoid uncertainty? Has it changed over time?

2. How can we use our understanding of gender roles to better analyze international and inter-personal conflict?

3. How could the error in the IBM Aptitude test in Africa have been avoided? What specific pre-measures could have been taken to ensure African employees were issued the test correctly the first time and what specific factors would you consider if you were creating your own culture-specific survey? How would you gather the information to ensure you are putting out correct statistics.


4. According to your upbringing (childhood, education, country, etc.) and what you have learned in this presentation: How do you measure happiness? Have you ever experienced the correlation between an indulgent or restraint society? What was it like?

5. From a western civilization standpoint, can Culture be imported to the rest of the world?

Please keep to the word limit (500 words). Get straight to the point.

Required reading

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, J. G., and Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind – Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival. New York: McGraw Hill. Part II: Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8.

*A critique of Hofstede

Fougere, Martin. (2007). The Construction of the Modern West and the Backward Rest: Studying the Discourse of Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 2(1): 1-19.