Saturday 28 April 2012

Professor Geert Hofstede on Romania

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Thank you to David Pratten for posting this link in a  comment on my site. This is an exceptionally interesting take on Romania. 

The question Professor Geert Hofstede asks in his site is also worth thinking about: will there be one big world culture in fifty years time?

A Romanian academic economist told me that he thinks in 50 years Romania will no longer exist. I said surely people will still speak Romanian in 50 years time but he looked doubtful. English is more economically useful. A young Romanian Yale graduate whom I know hopes that by that time the majority population of Europe will be African, which she says will be a fitting recompense for the sins of European colonialism.

6 comments:

  1. Paul, this is not even a joke - who he? And can you SERIOUSLY have a meaningful conversation with ANYONE based on his - errrrr - data/results/theory? Have you READ it even? HAS ANYONE?
    Give us a break - and let him cash in his however many-zeroed cheques elsewhere, this pig won't fly over Bucharest...

    Kind regards

    Ovidiu Galatanu, non-collectivist, non-whatever-"Professor"-Whoever-claims-I-am.

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  2. It's about as exceptional as a heart attack for a 300lbs person.

    Let's not get carried away.

    Andrei Postelnicu

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  3. For me, statistical approaches may be good when you have a sociological perspective, but not when you are an anthropologist that tries to understand a specific culture. Anthropologists approach cultures by considering they are unique and incomparable. They do not apply comparative questionaire-based studies that eliminate the possibility to understand specifics that do not apply elsewhere. To take this questionnaire-based pseudo study evern further, why not apply it to study pigmees, aboriginees, eskimos and then compare them to the Boston-Irish cop culture. I'm sure that will be enlightening for a lot of intellectual socialites.
    Alain Cardon

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  4. More interesting in this area of comparative cultural study is Fons Trompenaars Riding The Waves of Culture
    Andy Taylor

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  5. Interesting is a better word than "exceptional". Especially for a dataset that gives you a 90 score reflecting a culture where "punctuality is the norm"... Andrei Postelnicu

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  6. Luca, A., 2005. Where do we stand? A study on the position of romania on hofstede’s cultural dimension [online]. Available from:

    http://alingavreliuc.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/hofstede-romania-comparativ.pdf

    The above link will work if pasted in to a browser.

    Should feed the fire :).

    Enjoyed the blogs I read.

    Regards,

    David Pratten

    ReplyDelete