Culture Analysis Trompenaars / Hofstede on the Example of Mexico and Spain

Culture Analysis Trompenaars / Hofstede on the example of Mexico and Spain

By increasing influence of today's internationalisation of markets, business activities and business portfolios of companies have change over the last decades.

Therefore more and more enterprises operate worldwide and expand to foreign countries to stay competitive in the long term. It is not sufficient for an executive just to settle in a foreign country and force collaboration. A behaviour which is common in one country, can lead to serious problems in another. As a result, it is necessary to understand the culture of foreign workers, what attitude they have towards work and which style and tools of management they are used to and expect of a superior. In order to overcome cultural differences a range of theorist and experts analyse different cultures and have been examining the effect of cultural varieties from a business perspective. This assignment critically analyses the widely known theorist Hofstede (2001) and Trompenaars (1998). Both frameworks referred to empirical basis (Interviews and Questionnaires) and summarizing the results into five and accordingly seven cultural dimensions. The study focuses on Spain and Mexico precisely because these two countries share one language but in a cultural context they are two very different countries.

Spain is much more European orientated in contrast to Mexico which is much more influenced by the Latin American culture but for about three hundred years Mexico was Spanish territory. Therefore it is interesting to know how much Mexico has been influenced by Spain. Furthermore this paper containts a critical evaluation of both frameworks and a comparison of the accountability of these two theorist.