Conceptions of ‘culture' in international communication - Limits to cultural explanations? Human error in multi-national manning - Hofstede's cultural dimensions: a critical approach

The paper addresses a critical approach to static, objective and context-independent concept of culture. Conceiving of another culture as objective, persistent, and evenly shared features within a nation may bring some basic order while facing an unknown culture, but it may also have unintentional outcomes. E.g. it may lead to a deterministic view of other cultures, thereby reinforcing prejudices and underestimating other forms for identity; it may tend to hide the universality and the individuality which every man also acts up to, and which makes empathy possible across cultural differences. Above all, it risks ‘blinding' the participants for the specific context of a given communicative situation.