A Comparative Study of HRM Practices Based on Hofstede Cultural Dimensions

ABSTRACT: With increasing globalization in today‟s world it seems necessary to consider culture as one important factor which has influence in designing and implementing HRM practices. This thesis applied Hofstede cultural dimensions for investigating cultural variation across countries. The goal of this study is to examine the impact of cultural dimensions on HRM practices with general looking on 24 countries which their data was available on CRANET and looking more closely on 4 European countries. Methodology: Countries selected from CRANET database. The independent variables were cultural dimensions (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism/individualism, and masculinity/femininity) and written documents, style of decision making (centralized or decentralize), action programs for women, team working and direct communication are considered as dependent variables. For analyzing data, regression analysis, one way ANOVA and T-test were used. Findings: The results demonstrated that cultural dimensions have an influence on HRM practices. The outcomes showed that high uncertainty avoidance has a weak influence on using more written documents, high power distance has a weak relationship with centralized decision making, in collectivistic countries the way of selecting employees is internally, organizations in low masculinity countries have action programs for women, employees in low power distance countries contact to their managers directly and results did not show that variable pay in collectivistic countries is based on team performance. Keywords: Culture, Cultural dimensions, HRM practices. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………