est the
following comprehensive definition:
Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of
and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols
constituting the distinctive achievements of human
groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the
essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically
derived and selected) ideas and specially their
attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand,
be considered as products of action, and on the other as
conditioning elements of further action.
Kluckhohn (1962, p. 25) offers a more concise definition of
culture as the part of human makeup that “is learned by
people as the result of belonging to a particular group, and is
that part of learned behavior that is shared by others. It is our
social legacy as contrasted to our organic heredity.”
Cultural dimensions characterize particular groups of
people, which take on a supraidentity that constitutes the
framework for each individual in the group (Hall 1973; Martin
2001). Recently, House and colleagues (2004) identified
nine dimensions of culture on the basis of a study conducted
by 150 researchers and data collected from 15,000 middle
managers from 875 organizations in diverse industries in 61
countries. Hofstede (1991, 2001) defines culture as “the collective
programming of the mind” and finds distinct cultural
differences among people from different nationalities. He
created five dimensions of cultural values that different英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】iate
people’s national culture: collectivism versus individualism,
uncertainty avoidance, femininity versus masculinity, power
distance, and long-term versus short-term orientation.
The first dimension of cultural values, collectivism, pertains
to “societies in which the ties between individuals are close:
it pertains to societies in which people from birth onwards
are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which
throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in
exchange for unquestioning loyalty” (Hofstede 1991, p. 50).
In other words, a collectivist’s identity is based on the social
network to which he or she belongs, his or her opinions are
predetermined by group membership, and harmony and consensus
in society are the ultimate goals. Japanese and most
other Asian cultures are examples of high-collectivist cultures,
whereas U.S. and Western European cultures are typically
low in collectivism.
Cultural Values on Marketing Ethical Norms 31
The second dimension of cultural values is uncertainty
avoidance, which is defined as “the extent to which the
members of a culture feel threatened by uncertain or
unknown situations” (Hofstede 1991, p. 113). For example,
people of certain cultures, such as Greece and Portugal, seem
to be more uncomfortable with unclear, ambiguous, or
unstructured situations than people from India and Hong
Kong.
Hofstede (1991, p. 82) defines the third dimension of cultural
values, masculinity, as pertaining to “socie
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