Page 47 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

cultural dimensions and matrices, and the third is that the position of the observer outside the culture can cause possible alternatives and/or multiple explanations of national differences in statistical systems. A cultural diffusion and the dynamism of both national and ethnic shifts may be problematic where identification and indexation of culture is concerned. As argued by Kahn (1989, p. 13) “culture is contested, temporal and emergent”. The prevailing view on culture is still a subject to interpretation and re- interpretation, and is developed and re-developed in social interventions. Relationships between NC values and work-related cultural values and attitudes, as found by a growing number of researchers, is not reviewed and explained well.
In contrast to Hofstede’s approach and opinion, recent history gives evidence to the conclusion that his concept of assuming a “unilateral” culture cannot be applied to each country or nation, without further consideration. For example, Hofstede considered former Yugoslavia as culturally homogeneous nation but in the 1990’s it disintegrated violently in separate states. Following Hofstede’s premise and claims, it could have been assumed that each of the separated states kept their NC’s similar to each other. However, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia (provinces of the former Republic of Yougoslavia) are divided along different lines, such as history (Habsburg, Ottoman, Greek, and Italian), Ethnicity (South-slaves, and to a much lesser extent Saxons, Greeks, Jews and Roma), Religion (Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, and Islam) and Language (Servo-Croatian, Slovene and Albanian).
In their review of studies, Yeh and Lawrence (1995) argued that for understanding the complex interrelationships between culture and economic development, the Hofstede model was not really helpful. In conclusion to Hofstede’s work, it can be argued that there is no “unbreakable” alignment between the nation-state and culture. Since many nation-states have no common base in race, culture and/or language, many of the research undertaken on NC, their approach and subsequently the outcome in many occasions are simplistic and ignorant towards a variety of other, important factors. The concept of NC is not meaningful, since nations are presented as single-entities, both from a political and a cultural point of view. It is an excepted and basic subject for cross-cultural research that in the majority of the research on nations, a variety of cultural indications have been identified.
In the underlying research the position is taken that the causal connection between the Nation State (nation) and a single culture is not testified and accepted. Consequently, in the underlying study it is accepted that groups of people, who have
45