New developments in Hofstede’s Individualism-Collectivism: A guide for scholars, educators, trainers, and other practitioners

Abstract

Introduced as a measure by Geert Hofstede in 1980, the cultural dimension of Individualism-Collectivism (“I-C”) has dominated the field of cross-cultural research and guided intercultural trainers, educators, and other practitioners up to the present. In 2023, The Culture Factor, the global cultural analytics and strategy advisor company associated with Hofstede’s framework, updated their I-C scores due to mounting concerns with Hofstede’s operationalization and measurement of I-C, specifically over its old and non-representative data, as well as its limited face and content validity. These newer I-C scores are derived from the work of Hofstede’s former collaborator, Michael Minkov, and are based on two distinct datasets: a 2015 Hofstede Insights survey covering 55 countries and the World Values Survey covering 47 more, for a total of 102 countries/regions. Conceptually, the model redefines I-C as consisting of three facets: conformism, social ascendancy, and exclusionism. We discuss three major sources of country-level scores associated with Hofstede’s name that pertain to his cultural dimensions, present a synthesized overview of the new developments in understanding and measuring I-C as it pertains to Hofstede’s work, and examine the suitability of both Hofstede’s original work and Minkov’s subsequent revisions to I-C for academic research, intercultural training, and education. Our article concludes with recommendations to (1) rigorously scrutinize the construction of cultural dimensions—in this case I-C—by critically assessing their validity, data sources, and methodologies; (2) validate these dimensions against external evidence; and (3) continue refining I-C measures by emphasizing reliable, representative data and stringent methodological validation.