Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, 3rd Edition

by Geert Hofstede   

Based on research conducted in more than seventy countries over a forty-year span, Cultures and Organizations examines what drives people apart—when cooperation is so clearly in everyone’s interest. With major new contributions from Michael Minkov’s analysis of data from the World Values Survey, as well as an account of the evolution of cultures by Gert Jan Hofstede, this revised and expanded edition:

• Reveals the “moral circles” from which national societies are built and the unexamined rules by which people think, feel, and act
• Explores how national cultures differ in the areas of inequality, assertiveness versus modesty, and tolerance for ambiguity
• Explains how organizational cultures differ from national cultures—and how they can be managed
• Analyzes stereotyping, differences in language, cultural roots of the 2008 economic crisis, and other intercultural dynamics

Twelve Angry Men is an American theater piece that became a famous motionpicture, starring Henry Fonda. The play was published in 1955. The scene consistsof the jury room of a New York court of law. Twelve jury members who nevermet before have to decide unanimously on the guilt or innocence of a boy from aslum area, accused of murder. The quote cited is from the second and final actwhen emotions have reached the boiling point. It is a confrontation between thetenth juror, a garage owner, and the eleventh juror, a European-born, probablyAustrian, watchmaker. The tenth juror is irritated by what he sees as theexcessively polite manners of the other man. But the watchmaker cannot behaveotherwise. Even after many years in his new home country, he still behaves theway he was raised. He carries within himself an indelible pattern of behavior.