Trompenaars’ Seven Dimensions of Culture

Fons Trompenaars worked with Charles Hampden-Turner to build upon Hofstede’s work and devised a different set of seven dimensions that can be used to compare and contrast cultures. Hofstede publicly criticized their work, but Riding the Waves of Culture, written by Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner in the late 1990s, is considered by many to be the apex of cultural studies in this area.

As with Hofstede’s dimensions, it is important to understand that cultural dimension “scores” must be understood in relational terms; in other words, the “score” is only meaningful when compared and contrasted to another culture’s “score.” Also, always remember that a discussion of culture is necessarily a discussion of generalizations (sometimes called “prototypes” or “cultural patterns”) and so the “score” of a particular culture is not necessarily representative of the values of every member of that community.  

Click on the link below to watch Fons Trompenaars explaining his theory on culture in his own words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veA0bLa8xAg

Melissa Ashman^[2] has summarized Trompenaar’s seven dimensions of culture:

1. Universalism vs. particularism

This dimension examines the extent that a culture is more prone to apply rules and laws as a way of ensuring fairness, in contrast to a culture that looks at the specifics of context and looks at who is involved, to ensure fairness. The former puts the task first; the latter puts the relationship first.

2. Individualism vs. communitarianism

This dimension examines the extent that people prioritize individual interests versus the community’s interest. Similar to Hofstede’s dimension of “individualist vs. collectivist”.

3. Specific vs. diffuse

This dimension examines the extent that a culture prioritizes a head-down, task-focused approach to doing work, versus an inclusive, overlapping relationship between life and work.

4. Neutral vs. emotional

This dimension examines the extent that a culture works to avoid showing emotion versus a culture that values a display or expression of emotions.

5. Achievement vs. ascription

This dimension examines the degree to which a culture values earned achievement in what you do versus ascribed qualities related to who you are based on elements like title, lineage, or position.

6. Sequential time vs. synchronous time

This dimension examines the degree to which a culture prefers doing things one at time in an orderly fashion versus preferring a more flexible approach to time with the ability to do many things at once.

In this TEDTalk^[3], Guillame Gervey talks about his experiences working in India and shows how time is valued differently by different cultures.

7. Internal direction vs. outer direction

This dimension examines the degree to which members of a culture believe they have control over themselves and their environment versus being more conscious of how they need to conform to the external environment.