Abstract
Geert Hofstede received an M.Sc. in mechanical engineering from Delft Technical University in 1953 and earned his Ph.D. in social psychology, cum laude, from Groningen University in 1967. He worked for six years for IBM Europe where he founded and managed the Personnel Research Department. He first entered academics in 1971 when he assumed a visiting lecturer position at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. Subsequently Professor Hofstede held faculty positions at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels and at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. In 1980 he returned to industry as a director of human resources of Fasson Europe in Leyden, the Netherlands. Just previously, he had published Culture's Consequences, the book which is the subject of this Retrospective, and opened wide the door of comparative cultural analysis in business and elsewhere, as a tool for both academics and practitioners. He returned to academics in 1983 to serve as dean of the Semafor Senior Management Program in Arnhem. In 1986 he was appointed professor of organizational anthropology and international management at Maastricht University where he received emeritus status in 1993. During his time at Maastricht, he published a student-level book. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991) which has been translated into 16 other languages. Since retiring in 1993, Professor Hofstede has served as a fellow at the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation and of the Center for Economic Research, both at Tilburg University, and has held visiting professorships in Hong Kong, Hawaii, and Australia. An entirely re-written second edition of Culture's Consequences appeared in 2001, and a re-written Third Millennium Edition of Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, co-authored by Gert Jan Hofstede, followed in 2004. Professor Hofstede is a fellow of the Academy of Management and an eminent scholar with the Academy of International Business. He has received honorary doctorate degrees from universities in the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Greece, and Sweden. Geert Hofstede has been married to Maaike van den Hoek since 1955. They have four sons and eight grandchildren. Contact: hofstede@bart.
