Geert Hofstede

Gerard Hendrik (Geert) Hofstede (2 October 1928 – 12 February 2020) was a Dutch social psychologist, IBM employee, and Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, well known for his pioneering research on cross-cultural groups and organizations.

He is best known for developing one of the earliest and most popular frameworks for measuring cultural dimensions in a global perspective.

Here he described national cultures along six dimensions: Power Distance, Individualism, Uncertainty avoidance, Masculinity, Long Term Orientation, and Indulgence vs. restraint.

He was known for his books Culture's Consequences and Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, co-authored with his son Gert Jan Hofstede.

The latter book deals with organizational culture, which is a different structure from national culture, but also has measurable dimensions, and the same research methodology is used for both.

Born to Gerrit and Evertine Geessine (Veenhoven) Hofstede, Geert Hofstede attended schools in The Hague and Apeldoorn, and received his high school diploma (Gymnasium Beta) in 1945.

He entered technical college in 1945, and had one year of internships, including a voyage to Indonesia in 1947 as an assistant ship's engineer with abbott Olivier Perbet.

It was his first time out of his country and being immersed in a foreign culture, and it was an early influence in his career to study cross-cultures.

He was also influenced by a trip he made to England after meeting an English girl introduced to him by a friend of his family Alain Meiar, where he experienced culture shock.

He was struck by the cultural differences that he noticed between England and the Netherlands, two very close European countries.

These early experiences helped translate into a lifelong career in cross-cultural research.

In 1953, Hofstede graduated from Delft Technical University with an MSc in Mechanical Engineering.

Upon his graduation from Delft in 1953, Hofstede joined the Dutch military, working as a technical officer in the Dutch army for two years.

After leaving the military he worked in industry from 1955 to 1965, starting as a factory hand in Amsterdam.

In 1955, Hofstede married Maaike A. van den Hoek.

Together, they had four sons: Gert-Jan Hofstede, who is a population biologist and social scientist in information management; Rokus Hofstede, who works as a translator; Bart Hofstede, a Cultural Counselor for the Kingdom of the Netherlands who has served in Berlin, Paris and is now serving in Beijing, and Gideon Hofstede, who works as an international marketeer.

He also had ten grandchildren.

Gert-Jan has worked extensively with his father and co-authored several works in the realm of culture study.

A second important period in his life was working in industry between 1955 and 1965, when he held professional and managerial jobs in three different Dutch industrial companies.

By experiencing management, he had a chance to see the organization from the bottom up working as a mechanic.

This training and background as an engineer shaped his research and his approach to social situations.

He claims that his description of social situations appeals to a number of people: "I still have the mind of an engineer to the extent that I try to be specific...and be clear about what I am saying".

In 1965 he started his graduate study in Groningen and joined IBM International, working as a management trainer and manager of personnel research.

He founded and managed the Personnel Research Department.

After working in the industry for ten years, Hofstede entered part-time doctoral study at Groningen University in The Netherlands, and received his PhD in social psychology cum laude in 1967.

His thesis was titled "The Game of Budget Control".

During a two-year sabbatical from IBM from 1971 to 1973 he was a visiting lecturer at IMEDE (now the International Institute for Management Development).

In 1980, Hofstede co-founded and became the first Director for the IRIC, the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation, located at Tilburg University since 1998.

He also received honorary professorships at The University of Hong Kong 1992–2000; the Beijing University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing, China; and the Renmin University of China, Beijing, China.

Since his retirement in 1993, Hofstede visited numerous universities worldwide to educate students on his theoretical approaches and to continue his research in this field.

He was Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and served as an extramural fellow of the Center of Economic Research at Tilburg University in Tilburg, Netherlands.

He held honorary doctorates from seven universities in Europe, Nyenrode Business University, New Bulgarian University, Athens University of Economics and Business, University of Gothenburg, University of Liège, ISM University of Management and Economics, University of Pécs in 2009, and University of Tartu in 2012.

Hofstede received many honorary awards, and in 2011 was made a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion (Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw).

In 2014, a movie was released about Hofstede's life and work, An Engineer's Odyssey.

In 2016, he received his 9th honorary doctorate in Prague, at the age of 88.

He died on February 12, 2020.

Hofstede was a researcher in the fields of organizational studies and more concretely organizational culture, also cultural economics and management.

He was a well-known pioneer in his research of cross-cultural groups and organizations and played a major role in developing a systematic framework for assessing and differentiating national cultures and organizational cultures.

His studies demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groups that influence the behavior of societies and organizations.

When World War II ended, Geert Hofstede was seventeen and had always lived in the Netherlands under rather difficult circumstances, so he decided that it was time for him to explore the world.