Cultural dimensions in organizations: a study in Tanzania
Abstract: Understanding people from different cultures is essential but differences in thinking, which can cause misinterpretations and further on conflicts, are often neglected. To be able to understand peoples' actions as aresult of their culture makes their behaviors apprehensible and acceptable.This type of understanding is important in schools and organizations as wellas in societies in general. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how Hofstede's (2001) three cultural dimensions individualism or collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and power distance appear in Tanzanian organizations. The study was accomplished by doing interviews within each dimension, which was compared with the theory. The results showed that the respondents tended to be more collectivistic than individualistic, to have a low tolerance for uncertainties and to perceive a large power distance in some situations but a small in others.
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