News

Gert Jan’s farewell address On 21 March 2024, Gert Jan Hofstede holds his official farewell address as professor. This is a ritual that changes a professor into a “professor emeritus” (announcement here). Actually, it’s not really a farewell, since he is still attached to Wageningen University, Urban Economics Group. Online access The talk will be … Read more

Geert Hofstede, 1928-2020 On 12 February 2020 – three years ago – my father Geert Hofstede passed away. He had been declining since a few years. We suspected nothing at first; after all he was from 1928. From around 2016, he started to have more problems. Just after his 90th birthday, he could no longer … Read more

Uprisings are alike There is a certain historic continuity in the dynamics of uprisings. This has been true since many centuries. In this century, we have seen these dynamics particularly in countries in the Maghreb and the Middle East. At this moment, Iran is in turmoil since the death of 22-year old Mahsa Amini, a … Read more

Here, you can see a tutorial lecture by me (Gert Jan) about human sociality and culture. In November 2022, I was invited for a keynote at the “Global Entrepreneurship Week” of Windesheim University of applied sciences in Zwolle, the Netherlands. It was good fun. Thank you, Ferdi Hofstede (unrelated), for inviting me! The lecture, and … Read more

Thanks to Handan Akkas, Cultures and Organizations, 3rd edition, has now appeared in the Turkish language.

What will distance mean to our children? What does it mean across cultures? Here, I’ll philosophize. The blog follows two others: I had written a blog ahead of time that summarised my message on “Die Zukunft von Abstand”. It’s in German, the language of my lectures. It has some history and some poetry in it. … Read more

On May 5, 2021, I received the following email message: ‘Dear Colleague, As a member of the German non-profit association “Wirtschaftsclub im Literaturhaus e.V.” (Business Club in the House of Literature, located in Stuttgart, Germany), I would like to ask you if you see a possibility to give us, i. e. the members of the … Read more

In den Niederlanden spaltet sich der Rhein. Der Niederrhein ist einer von drei Rheinarmen. Ich war während des Lockdowns oft dort mit meinem Enkel Gideon. Schiffe reisen zwischen Rotterdam und Basel. Das ist weit. Schiffe und Gideon grüssten sich. Das brachte sie nah. Abstand in vielen Dimensionen Laut Wörterbüchern heisst Abstand entweder “räumliche Entfernung” oder … Read more

Are we doomed? In pessimistic moods, I tell myself that my quest for unravelling human sociality is pointless, because we’ll have destroyed our planet before getting a grip on ourselves. The perspective of my flat country becoming an underwater museum when the Antarctic ice gives way, or of a deadly successor pandemic to Covid that’s … Read more

It is now over 40 years ago that Geert managed to get his major study published. This became Culture’s Consequences: International differences in Work-Related values”, published by Sage publishers. Sage have initiated a series of entries on their blog Socialsciencespace.com. Rightly so, for the book changed the world. “Paradigm” is an overused word, but Culture’s … Read more