Cultural Brief of Taiwan

INTRODUCTION POLITICAL, LEGAL, AND TECHNOLOGICAL ENVIROMENT HOFSTEDE’S DIMENSIONS Geert Hofstede is a Dutch researcher who identified five dimensions of culture to help understand how and why people from various cultures behave the way they do. The five Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity vs. femininity, and time orientation. Taiwan has a high power distance meaning that people blindly obey the orders of their superiors, and strict obedience is found. Taiwan ranked high in uncertainty avoidance meaning that the people do not like uncertainty and tend to have a high need for security and a strong belief in experts. In individualism Taiwan ranked as a low individualistic country meaning that people look after themselves and their immediate family members. In regards to masculinity Taiwan ranked as a high masculinity country meaning that they place great importance on earnings, recognition, advancement, and challenge. In this type of culture people are encourage to be decision makers, and have high performance levels. On the last dimension Taiwan ranked high in long term orientation meaning that they focus more on long range goals. TROMPENAAR’S DIMENSIONS Although Hofstede’s dimensions are the most recognize cultural dimension a more recent research is gaining attention. This research was made over a period on ten years by another Dutch researcher Fons Trompenaar. Trompenaar’s dimensions are Universalism vs. Particularism, Individualism vs. Communitarianism, Neutral vs. Emotional, Specific vs. Diffuse, Achievement vs. Ascription, Sequential vs. Synchronous, and Internal vs. External. GLOBE DIMENSIONS The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) research project is another study to measure cultural difference. This research is an extensive analysis that integrates previous analysis. Countries were selected very carefully so that every major geographic in the world