Hofstede’s Limitations

Improving Cultural Indices

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IMPROVING CULTURAL INDICES AND RANKINGS BASED ON A METAANALYSIS OF HOFSTEDE’S DIMENSIONS

VAS TARAS University of Calgary Haskayne School of Business SH441, Human Resources and Organizational Development 2500 University Drive NW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4 Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] e-mail:[e-mail] PIERS STEEL University of Calgary Haskayne School of Business Human Resources and Organizational Development SH444 - 2500 University Drive NW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4 Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] e-mail: [e-mail]

Key Words: Culture; Cross-Cultural Differences; Meta-Analysis.

Temple/AIB Best Paper Award - Nominee; AIB Track 7/ Managing People Across Border - Best Paper

Note. We would like to thank dozens of scholars who provided references to published and unpublished studies that were included in this meta-analysis and especially Dr. Geert Hofstede who has been keeping track of the studies that have utilized his Value Survey Module and graciously shared the list of relevant papers and dissertations from his personal library.

Improving Cultural Indices

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IMPROVING CULTURAL INDICES AND RANKINGS BASED ON A METAANALYSIS OF HOFSTEDE’S TAXONOMY

Abstract The meta-analysis offers a refined set of national cultural indices along the dimensions of Hofstede‟s model of culture. The improvements are made in two ways. First, the study is based on a larger and more representative sample than that used in Hofstede‟s or any other large-scale cross-cultural comparison study. The meta-analytic sample was gathered from 532 empirical papers and contains data on over 2,000 samples comprising almost half a million individuals from 48 countries and regions. Second, we take into account and address the changes in national cultures and their relative rankings by offering separate sets of country rankings and cultural indices for different decades. These indices are