UK

The UK is a masculine society, wich means they are highly success oriented and
driven. They have a culture of modesty and understatement but at the same time a
underlying success driven value system. The British culture is also classified as
indulgent. That means people generally exhibit a willingness to realise their impulses
and desires with regard to enjoying life and having fun.

The British are also a highly individualistic and private people. The UK is amongst the
highest of the individualistic scores together with Australia and the USA. Children are
taught from an early age to think for themselves and that the route to happiness is
through personal fulfillment.

Laurent (1986) reveals that decision making is quite decentralized in the UK. Companies tend
to have promotion from within policy, and spend quite a lot money for employee well-being
and middle management development programs (Dartey-Baah, 2013).

References:

Laurent, A. (1986) The Cross-Cultural Puzzle of International Human Resource Management:

International human resource management: a fiels in infancy. Human Resource Management.
25, 91.

Dartey-Baah, K. (2013) The Cultural Approach to the Management of the International

Human Resource: An Analysis of Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions. International Journal of
Business Administration. 4.

Problems

The United States and the UK is the most equal countries in this culture comparison. You can
just se a little bit of differens in the power distance, uncertaity avoidance, and pragmatism
dimensions.

Both countrys has a fairly low score on power distance in combination with a high
indiviualistic culture.
The pragmatism dimension describes how every society has to maintain some links with its
own past while dealing with the challenges of the present and future. Different societies
prioritise these two existential goals differently.

Normative societies like the United states who score low on this dimension, prefer to maintain
time-honoured traditions and norms while viewing societal change with suspicion. For
example americans are prone to analyse new information to check whether it is true, and
many Americans have very strong ideas about what is “good” and “evil”. This may concern
issues such as abortion, use of drugs, weapon. The United States is one of the few western
countries in the world where, since the beginning of the 20th century, visiting church has
increased.

Those with a culture which scores high on thid dimension, take a more pragmatic approach,
wich means they encourage thrift and efforts in modern education as a way to prepare for the
future. The UK has an intermediate score in this dimension. Their score is a bit higher
compared to the US wich means that they are more pragmatic.

Rekommendations

Research into countries values, cultures and beliefs – Hofstede and critics of his work
When companys are expanding or entering new markets its important to examin this markets
because all societys has different culture and buying behavior. Walmart has over all had quite
successfull strategies when entering most of the markets, but also made some mistakes. By
using Hofstedes theories might have been helpful for them. Though his theories has also been
criticized mostly because of his functionalistic approach. For example he is criticized for
adding too much focus on national cultures and is this way forgetting about other important
factors and subcultures. Other researches in the field believes that in this approach is risking
to make stereotypical judgments of people and events on the basis of national origin (Berthoin
& Friedman, 2005). Sackmann and Phillips (2002) also believes that in today's complex
society requires more complex approach than that a functionalistic perspective can offer.

Examin which models in terms of low price, high quality etc successful businesses in the
country are using
Companies in different countries use different types of models to succed. As mentioned
earlier Japanese consumers for example are quite demanding in terms of quality and
appearance of the products, rather than whether the products are well-functioned and easy to
use or not (Johansson, 1986, p.38). this means company can use a high quality model in this
culture.
References

Berthoin, A. & Friedman, V. (2005) Negotiating Reality: A Theory of Action Approach to

Intercultural Competence in Management Learning. Management learning, 36, 69-86.

Sackmann, S. & Phillips, M. (2004). Contextual Influences on

Culture Research: Shifting Assumptions for New Workplace Realities. International Journal
of Cross Cultural Management, 4, 370-390.