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荷兰留学生硕士课程作业The essentials of scholarship: A reply to Geert Hofstede
Brendan McSweeney
I shall attempt to engage with Geert Hofstede’s reply to my January 2002
article – a reply which is unfortunately characterized by evasion.
Evasion 1: I’ve answered elsewhereHofstede states that the new edition of Culture’s consequences (2001a) (hereafter
the second edition) makes ‘many [of my] comments obsolete’. If
Hofstede really meant ‘obsolete’ then he would be acknowledging that my
criticisms had been valid prior to the remedial work on his research for thesecond edition. However, I presume that instead he is claiming that he
answered criticism of my type in the new edition. If my criticisms are
answered in the second edition, then Hofstede could readily have engaged
with them and rebutted them. But he does not. Instead, he reproduces a
lengthy extract from the second edition and fails to respond to the multipleissues I raised. The fact is that the same profound methodological flaws thatcharacterize his original analysis of the IBM data remain in the secondedition, and my criticisms of them remain unanswered.
Evasion 2: Other people laud my work
Hofstede – relying on a misunderstanding of the magnitude of Kuhn’s
concept of a paradigm shift which encompasses, for example, the change in
physics from Newton to Einstein – boasts that he achieved such a shift. Healso claims to have ‘introduced’ the ‘four or five dimensions’ into the culturalliterature. No mention of the pioneering work of others; or of the existenceof earlier literature on the dimensions he claims to have discovered; or of the
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New Delhiprior contribution of Michael Harris Bond et al. to the development of thefifth dimension. He concludes his reply by citing a eulogy from a British
anthropologist which he contrasts with the utterances of a mere British
accountant. That is bogus analysis – a laudatory quotation from an anthropologist(or anyone else) can easily be countered by a critical quotation fromanother anthropologist.
For Hofstede, nationality is clearly a crucial explanatory and predictive
variable but, ironically, he failed to deduce my own. I am not British, nor
as it happens an accountant.
Evasion 3: Insult the critic
Hofstede peppers his reply with insults. I’m careless because, allegedly, I havenot read some crucial articles or parts of one of his books. In fact, I have readeverything to which he refers. It is time for Hofstede to acknowledge thatthere are critics who have comprehensively read his extensive, though frequentlyrepetitious, research and disagree with it.
Although I have a doctorate from the LSE and am the research director
of a department of accounting, finance, and management at a leading UK
research university, Hofstede asserts that I’m ‘unfamiliar’ with statistical
inference. Ironically, my article actually exposed multiple and crucial flawsin Hofstede’s statistical inference and the unwarranted conclusions he drewfrom it.
When confronted with scholarly criticisms of his research Hofstede
usually resorts to ungracious comments about the critics – in the language ofsoccer: he ‘goes for the man [or woman] not the ball’ (see Hofstede, 1996and 2001b, for example).
Evasion 4: Deny you said it
Without referring directly to my statement that he ‘essentially endorses
national cultural determinism’ (McSweeney, 2002: 92), Hofstede presents aradicall本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。