Cultural Differences: Results from Empirical Research Conducted in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary

Abstract

The paper presents results from the empirical research conducted during year 2005 in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary and Finland. The instrument used in the research was Value Survey Module 1994, a modified version of the original Hofstede’ s questionnaire that was defined by the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation (IRIC) for the purpose of recurrence of the original research on national culture’ s dimensions and for comparison with original research. Estimated positions on the dimensions of national cultures (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity and long versus short-term orientation) were done by using a narrow-sample strategy. The narrow-samples were postgraduate and doctoral students in the field of business and economics. Results from Finland were used for standardization purposes. The overall cultural distance between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina appeared to be trivial in comparison to Slovenia and Hungary. The estimated positions on each dimension confirmed the ranking from Hofstede’ s original research and additionally confirmed the global trend of decreasing power distance and significant movement towards the individualism.