During the conversation with John, he told me about the cultural differences between French and Danish societies. Some concepts like “power distance” that he used reminded me of the Intercultural Cooperation class. In addition, John insisted me to do research on someone names ‘Hofstede’.

I came home and looked in the Internet. Indeed, I didn’t know that all the concepts that I had learned about cultural characteristics were from this famous Dutch researcher who is also the pioneer of cross-culture research. Furthermore, I found his website, with his research works and cultural dimensions notations for about 70 countries over the world. To be precise, for Hofstede, a culture can be defined, distinguished according to the 4 following dimensions:

• Power Distance (PDI; High power distance versus Low power distance): A culture with a higher power distance means it is more hierarchical. For instance, between the elder and the younger, the boss and the employee, etc, the distance is more important, the communication is more formal.
• Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV): A individualistic society accords more importance to the choice of each individual than a collectivist society. In a collectivist society, the choice of the group or of the community is more important than the personal choice of each member. However, ‘being individualistic’ has nothing to do with ‘being selfish’: you have a larger personal choice, then you also have a bigger responsibility toward yourself; in addition, it doesn’t mean that you can disrespect the others or the common good. In the same way, ‘being collectivistic’ doesn’t mean ‘you are better, you think more about the others, etc’.
• Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS): Masculinity means the fact of according more importance to social status; and Femininity means more importance to the caring between members. Like for dimensions like the IDV, a culture can in the same time masculine and feminine in difference areas.
• Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI; High uncertainty avoidance versus Low uncertainty avoidance): As the name might indicate, the uncertainty avoidance is the tendency to avoid something uncertain, unknown or different. A culture or even a person can have a high or low uncertainty avoidance index.

Based on the Hofstede theory, later, the fifth dimension was added in 1991, thanks to the research of Michael Bond. Then, the sixth dimension, thanks to Michael Minkov’s work. These two dimensions are:

• Long-term orientation (LTO) versus Short-term orientation:  you might not need an explanation, as the names indicate already the concepts. 
  
• Indulgence versus Restraint (IVR): Indulgence stands for a society that is more tolerant toward basic and natural human drives related to enjoying life and having fun. Restraint stands for the opposite concept.

Apart from these concepts, in the International Cooperation class, we also talked about the  High context communication versus Low-context communication. To be simple, ‘low-context communicating’ means communicating in the direct way and straight to the point; while ‘high-context communicating’ means communicating with more context and emotion description.