Cultural Profile

Cultural Profile Culture is said to be a universal of shared beliefs, values and norms that guide a particular group of people through everyday life. Culture does not only shape and mold a country on a national level but it also molds many businesses within that country as they build their own norms, beliefs and values as it pertains to different aspects of conducting their business in a culture. In order for a business to be successful one must first understand how national and business culture differ and how it relates to work goals and this is addressed by Hofstede’s model of national culture. Hofstede uses five dimensions of basic cultural values. The first one is power distance which refers to what people expect regarding equality among others. The second is uncertainty avoidance which a typical reaction to a certain situation that is seen as dangerous or different. The third dimension is individualism which refers to the relationship in society between an individual and a group. Masculinity, the fourth dimension is what is expected about gender roles and lastly is the long-term orientation which refers to the way people see and value time. I will be making references to the data from Jamaica which is similar to Belize in several ways given that Belize is not in the list of countries in the Hofstede Centre. From the graph, the score for power distance was 45 which means that the Jamaicans are independent and a hierarchy is only for convenience as power is decentralized and managers depend on team members experience and their participation is welcomed in the decision making process of the business. Compared to the United States who had an even lower score of 40 shows that they do not view inequality as something good and they do not support the authoritarian leadership style. For individualism, Jamaica is considered to be a collectivistic society with a score of 39. This means

that family, social class, organization and team takes priority over an