When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled: the GLOBE and Hofstede projects

Four aspects of the debate between Hofstede and Javidan et al. are highlighted. First, it is shown that characterizing cultures either on the basis of aggregated self-perceptions or on the basis of aggregated perceptions of others in one's society are not equivalent procedures. Each has inherent errors, and neither can be considered as providing the one best way to denote national cultures. Furthermore, the number of dimensions of national...