ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of culture and its role in managing people across borders. The chapter also introduces two frequently cited cultural models and their managerial implications. Culture encompasses information and assumptions that allow us to interpret each other's statements, actions, and intentions. A society's culture is represented by its collective pattern of prevailing norms, beliefs, values, and basic assumptions that govern thought processes and subsequent behavior. In a high humane-oriented society people tend to show sympathy and support for the underprivileged, while in a low humane-oriented society people value self-enhancement and independence along with power and material success. Hofstede emphasized that this particular cultural dimension was missing in his original study and was relevant only to countries in East Asia. Confucian dynamism may reflect a society's search for virtue rather than truth, truth being driven by religious ethics in Western countries.
