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      From a business point of view, it is not interesting to study culture per se but to use information about cross-cultural differences in order to derive a guideline for meeting the leadership challenges of the 21^st century. This view was taken by the management consultants Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner when they deduced their “Seven Dimensions of Culture” from an extensive research database. The 2012 edition of their book “Riding the Waves of Culture” comprises data from 25 years of research with a sample of 80,000 participants (75% of them managers) from a diverse range of companies spanning more than 60 countries.²⁷ Its aim is to help explain national and organisational cultural differences and to provide advice on managing (with) these.²⁸

      Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner define culture based on Schein: culture is “the way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas.”²⁹ In a broader sense, culture is basically understood as a dynamic process of solving human problems, that can be stated as dilemmas, in the general areas of human relationships, time orientation and nature dependency. The problems posed for humans are identical everywhere but the solutions usually can be approached from two different sides. For example, some people start with a generalisation and use this to define detailed standards or others sstart with the look at an individual case and then generalise from this experience. Both approaches are in themselves logical and consistent. Even the outcome could be quite similar, but the approach from two opposite poles requires acceptance and understanding in an environment where both sorts of people have to cooperate. What starting point people take is deeply rooted in their cultural background, far below the waterline of the cultural iceberg of Figure 2-2. The implicit culture created by norms and values includes basic assumptions about the right way to approach certain problems. In easy cases, where problems posed are not of special individual relevance, different approaches are usually tolerable. But when it comes to problems that touch the core of each individual – the belief of the sacredness of friendship, for example – solutions differing from the culturally based basic assumptions are hard to accept. These special kinds of problems, where basic assumptions come to light in lack of easy solutions, are called dilemmas. Trompenaars’ and Hampden-Turner’s dilemma framework lists seven (cultural) value dimensions that describe certain situations and measure the percentage of survey participants preferring a certain specified option. The value dimensions were mainly derived from former research of other scientists, but the dilemma approach itself is unique.

      Figure 2-22: Cultural differences Expressed as Normal Distributions³⁰

      Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner stress that people from one culture are not at all alike in their norms and values. For each culture, however, a kind of normal distribution of norms and values based on the preferred options could be shown. This allows the depiction of a most predictable, average behaviour. Problems occur when the normal distribution of two cultures display significant differences – meaning that the “typical” behaviour differs significantly and people of one culture will most probably opt for a solution that is usually not deemed acceptable for people of the other culture. According to Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, the values of the observed parameters that are furthest away from the normal distribution of one country also create the basis for stereotypes. This idea is expressed in Figure 2-22. US-Americans expect French people to be emotional, flamboyant and even arrogant (blue area) whereas the French see the US-Americans as aggressive, unprincipled workaholics (grey area). As this example illustrates, people tend to notice differences rather than commonalities. The observed “odd” behaviour is exaggerated and caricatured, thus creating a very limited view on the average or “typical” behaviour of people in a certain environment. Stereotyping could therefore be defined as the ascription of extreme forms of behaviour to people from other cultural groups. In any kind of international business environment, an exertion of this extreme and limited view endangers adequate managerial responses to usual challenges, be it on the individual, team or company level.

      The following chapters explore Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s seven dimensions of culture in detail.

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