Hofstede Index

[greg]

Just a cool little find that people may be interested in.

Geert Hofstede, assisted by others, came up with six basic issues that society needs to come to term with in order to organize itself. These are called dimensions of culture. Each of them has been expressed on a scale that runs roughly from 0 to 100.

Individual
Power Distance
Masculinity
Uncertainty Avoidance
Long-term Orientation
Indulgence


https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/
https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-model-of-national-culture/









A few things I'm totally agreeing with, a couple other things I'd question strongly, to say the least... apparently under this scale Japan is like the most, or in the top 3, most masculine countries in the world, and that just gets a laugh from me.... but they also rated Sweden/Norway as the most feminine, which seems correct.

Interesting that it put Japan in about midrange in collectivism/individualism (46/100)... weirdly enough, i'd say that's probably close to accurate because somehow it's extremely collective and extremely individualistic at the same time (it's reputation would have people saying it's like 5/100). And my case for it having individualistic qualities is a few reasons, but the biggest one being that the level of creativity is just not possible for any country that is super collectivist, since creativity and individualism are so highly linked that they are nearly inseparable.

For long-term orientation, it seems to overlap a lot with expected lifespan, predictably China and Japan are the kings of both. But Russia? Really? Wtf, is that even accurate? I really wouldn't expect Russians to be long-term oriented, but who knows, I'm not super familiar with their culture so maybe what I had suspected is dead wrong.