Understanding Culture and its Influence– Hofstede’s Model

•    Understanding Culture and its Influence on Mobile Banking
Culture is a difficult and complex concept used in various ways depending on the context. Acceptance or rejection of new social practices – especially in the developing world when the new practices derive from the developed West, such as is the case with mobile banking – is patterned by local culture. In this way, the results of questionnaires which weigh the levels of acceptance of m-banking must be interpreted with reference to cultural templates.

Naturally, the questionnaire format itself does not explicitly inquire into the cultural bases for consumer decisions, but the patterning revealed can only be partially explained if cultural assumptions are not brought into the interpretative equation.  Further, it is not enough for companies to create the technological, corporate and logistical structures required for m-banking. The culture of m-banking usage must be fostered, and cultural expectations which are barriers to trust in this new system must be removed if the sector is to meet its potential. Thus, culture is a vital concept in the evaluative work of this study.

The word “culture” derives from a Latin word, “colere,” which means “to care for” or “to cultivate.” The thought behind a cultural phenomenon is cultivation, or something that is derived from the human interaction that gives rise to culture. For Hall (1973), culture stands for the way of life of groups of people: the sum of their learned behaviour patterns, attitudes, and material things. Culture is an orientation system that is universal but highly typical of a society, organization, or group (Boli, 1997).

Hofstede (1991) describes culture as the software of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another. He indicates that culture is cultured, not inherited; people acquire patters of thinking, feeling, and potential action from their surroundings. He further argues that culture is not reliant on heredity but is influenced by the social environment in which people intermingle. Hofstede (1991: p.5) extends his definition of culture as a distinctive “collective programming of the mind, which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.”

All of the above definitions of culture have the common background of how people behave, as influenced by their environment. Such a sphere of culture might describe a city, country, or organization. The implication of culture and its use as an abstract entity involve a number, of collective and shared artefacts, behavioural patterns, values, or other concepts that, taken together, form the culture as a whole (Dahl, 2006).
Culture is like an onion peel: there are layers within layers.

In fact, there are often cultures within cultures. The company might have its organizational culture as well we small groups within it defining their own culture. Various small communities at different times and places define their own culture. People unavoidably carry several layers of mental programming, such as gender, age group, education, profession, language, and religion (Hofstede 1991).

To this, Bourges-Waldegg (2000), who views culture as an organization of social factors such as values, traditions, religion, language, conventions, and social behaviour, argues that it is, at times, not possible to specify the bounds of one particular culture in the layers of mental programming, as many of these cultural attributes are not unique and cultural boundaries are not generally neat.
Culture influences human behaviour to a large extent and encompasses interaction with other people, decision-making processes, and perception of others. Del Galdo (1996) says that culture is a learned behaviour of a group or society, induced by their immediate environment and surroundings, the history and traditions they have grown accustomed to, and their social rules and communication practices. Krober and Parsons (1958) argue that culture creates patterns of values and ideas that shape human behaviour. If the culture affects human behaviour, it can be concluded that it would also affect the trust of online consumers.

•    Cultural effects – Hofstede’s Model of Culture
Cultural studies generally encompass cultural models to compare the similarities and differences of two or more cultures or sub-cultures by using cultural variables, which are categories that organize cultural data (Hoft, 1996). Researchers have proposed models based on questionnaires, interviews, surveys, extensive research, and observation. This section examines Hofstede’s (1991) model.
Hofstede’s (1991) cultural model is the one considered in this thesis, as it is highly influential in many fields of social science research (Pavlou & Chai, 2002). Hofstede concludes his research and develops his model using questionnaires distributed among IBM professionals. The questionnaire was designed to evaluate work values and, thus, has more applicability in that field. According to Hofstede, his survey encompass results from employees working in local subsidiaries of a large multinational organization, but individuals span different nationalities.

Hofstede (1991) identifies five cultural variables based on his research and survey of IBM employees as follows:
o    Power distance, which refers to one’s outlook on authority and power
o    Collectivism versus individualism, which refers to one’s outlook on group membership
o    Femininity versus masculinity, which refers one’s outlook on work goals depending on gender
o    Long-term versus short-term orientation, which refers to concerns about the present, past, and future
o    Uncertainty avoidance, the degree to which individuals feel threatened by the unknown
Hofstede identifies the prevalence of these cultural variables in different parts of the world as follows:
o    Power distance: Prevalent in Latin American, France, and Asian countries where the distribution of power is unequal.

o    Collectivism versus individualism: The United States and Germany are individualistic; people look out for themselves, whereas Asian countries such as China and Japan have a collectivistic culture.
o    Femininity versus masculinity: This is, in general, a difference between western and eastern culture. Western culture has generally equal status among men and women compared to Asian and Arabic countries. Arab countries are masculine-oriented; the role of women in making important decisions is very trivial, but this is changing with the changing times.
o    Long-term versus short-term orientation: This difference occurs in various parts of the world.
o    Uncertainty avoidance: Egyptian culture is found to have strong component of uncertainly avoidance whereas Great Britain has weak uncertainty avoidance. This reflects upon the relative  traditionalism or conservativism of a culture.

Walsham (2002) criticizes Hofstede’s (1991) model as rather crude and simplistic when the same model is applied to information technology; he argues that this model views culture as a static phenomenon, while the culture is generally reflexive and easily changeable.

He also claims that Hofstede (1991) describes aggregate differences between cultures but provides no link to cross-cultural contradiction and conflicts. Further, he argues that the model’s cultural variables are incapable of easy translation for work patterns. Hofstede (1991) agrees that profound cultural differences based on region or social stratum may emerge within a single nationality, but most of the criticisms of his work focus on his implicit assumptions about the homogeneity of national culture (Walsham, 2002).

Another criticism of the model comes from Spector and Cooper (2002), who question the ability of Hofstede’s (1992) scales due to their poor internal consistency reliability; they are incapable of assessing a single homogeneous construct. Hofstede (2002) clarifies that the model was intended to compare and contrast country-specific data and admits that his scales might produce low reliability scores at the individual level.