MGT/312 Unit 2 Quiz — Hofstede's Framework

Management

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Questions (8)

A U.S. manager transfers to a high power distance subsidiary and opens by inviting the team to challenge her proposals and set their own priorities. The team becomes visibly uncomfortable and productivity drops. The most likely explanation is that:

MC1 pt

A. In high-PDI settings, a leader who declines to direct may be read as incompetent or as abdicating responsibility

B. The team scores high on indulgence and resents structure

C. High-PDI cultures are uniformly low in uncertainty avoidance

D. Participative leadership is ineffective in all cultural settings

Hofstede's decision to survey employees of a single multinational (IBM) was methodologically deliberate because it:

MC1 pt

A. Held organizational culture and industry roughly constant, so remaining differences were more plausibly national

B. Guaranteed a representative sample of each nation's general population

C. Eliminated the possibility of response bias in survey data

D. Allowed emic categories to emerge from each local sample

McSweeney's (2002) central critique of Hofstede argues that the model:

MC1 pt

A. Reasons circularly — inferring national culture from survey answers, then explaining those answers by national culture

B. Used too many dimensions to be practically useful to managers

C. Failed to include any Asian countries in the original sample

D. Relied on qualitative interviews rather than quantitative data

Which statement about uncertainty avoidance is most accurate?

MC1 pt

A. It measures discomfort with ambiguity, and is distinct from risk aversion — high-UAI cultures may accept familiar risks while resisting unfamiliar ambiguity

B. It is a direct synonym for risk aversion in financial decision-making

C. It measures the degree to which power inequality is accepted

D. It was added to the model in 2010 using the Chinese Value Survey

In a strongly collectivist culture, a manager institutes an 'Employee of the Month' award singling out the top individual performer. The most likely unintended consequence is that:

MC1 pt

A. The recipient feels embarrassed at being separated from the group, and group harmony suffers

B. The recipient demands an immediate individual pay raise

C. Uncertainty avoidance in the team rises sharply

D. The team interprets it as excessive power distance

Which are legitimate criticisms of Hofstede's framework? (Select all that apply.)

Multi2 pts

A. The core data was collected in the late 1960s and early 1970s and may no longer describe current values

B. It equates nation-states with cultures, which fails for multicultural countries

C. The IBM sample was predominantly male, urban, educated, and white-collar

D. Reducing culture to numeric scores discards locally meaningful detail

E. The dimensions have never been replicated in any subsequent independent research

Explain the difference between the Long-Term Orientation dimension and the original four dimensions in terms of how it was developed, and why its origin matters for the charge of Western bias.

Text3 pts

A colleague argues that because Hofstede's data is fifty years old and drawn from one company, the framework should be abandoned entirely. Construct the strongest defense of continued use of the model while conceding what is genuinely wrong with it.

Text4 pts

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