ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the consequences of Hofstede’s seminal study of international evaluative cultural differences for management in Hong Kong. The differences in cultural characteristics and particularly in values, identified by Hofstede, suggest that different world views are likely to engender different approaches to work, organization and management. In accepting the influence of culture and adopting a position of cultural relativism, it can be argued that the influence of social values on development is a suitable foundation for the discourse on different forms of capitalist development. Hofstede’s work adds considerable weight to doubt on the universal validity of Western management theory, since management is very much an American concept, just as earlier the entire discipline of economics was very much an Anglo-Saxon discipline. Further research involving IBM subsidiaries in other Western and East Asian societies would be needed to more comprehensively validate Hofstede’s 1980 study.
