Hofstede’s Masculinity Index and How This Would Help an Expatriate Motivate and Give Feedback

Hofstede’s masculinity index and how this would help an expatriate motivate and give feedback

Name: Tingting Song

Student ID:Z5097329

1. Introduction

Globalization has played an important role in forcing company to create their own subsidiary around the world. Sending managers of headquarter is a common thing to deal with immediate business problems, transfer their knowledge to local employees and develop international leadership skills. However, managers struggle with Masculinity versus Femininity dimension which was searched by Hofstede.

1. Research Background

According to Hofstede’s theory, high masculinity index means that people focus on competition, achievement and success. They live for work but have strong family values. They prefer to get more money and materialistic reward. However, Hofstede(1983) reveal that in low masculinity society(femininity), people are more caring for their quality of life. When some problems happened, they prefer to negotiation and communication to deal with it. Therefore, combining cross-cultural management skills with Hofstede’s Masculinity index is effective to help an expatriate motivate local employees and give feedback.

1. Analysis

Based on Hofstede’s masculinity theory, when expatriate is from low masculinity country to high masculinity country, expatriate could design the rule of management on the basis of the high masculinity index. For example, Mexico is a high masculinity country, if expatriate comes from South Korea to manager Mexican employees, he has to focus on their culture and custom. Due to Mexican emphasize on career achievement and materialistic things, expatriate could provide more materialistic reward such as salary. In addition, expatriate could encourage employee to provide different opinion base on the transparent process of performance management (Nohria et al,2008), this means that company provide a free and competitive environment to stimulate employee to create innovative ideas. Furthermore, Mexican have strong family values, expatriate could set holiday date according to Mexican custom and they could spend more time on family members, which could improve their loyalty and efficiency during working hours. When expatriate provides feedback to Mexican employees, he has to pay attention on the attitude and strategy. Mexican employees need to maintain emotions (Hofstede,1980). Expatriate could provide private feedback by managing a one by one meeting, this is beneficial to maintain employee emotion and feelings. Private meeting also facilitates employees to say what they really think. and provide more positive feedback to encourage them to make great program.