Relevance of Hofstede's model in identifying specific national cultural character: the case of a North African country

Purpose Foreign economic partners and researchers on previous studies on national culture have used Hofstede's (1980) model of Arab countries to represent Tunisia's culture. There is a problem with the validity of management science studies using a transposition to describe Tunisian culture. This research examines the relevance of the Hofstede model for differentiating national and transnational cultural specificities. It also aims to explore whether there are substantial differences between Tunisian culture and those of other Arabicspeaking countries that predispose local companies to respond favorably to contemporary social commitments such as Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development. Design/ Methodology/ Approach The intention of this study is to empirically reproduce Hofstede's model using the Value Survey (VSM-1994) in the Tunisian context. The survey is undertaken among a population of 291 Tunisian respondents working in 125 domestic firms with similar characteristics to those of Hofstede's IBM sample. Findings The Tunisian national culture has convincing properties that differentiate it from transnational Arab culture. Comparatively, Tunisia's national culture has a low Power Distance index (18), a high individualistic society (index 62), and a greater preference for feminist values of care and quality of life (index Masculinity - Femininity: 5). The other two dimensions show a strong propensity to avoid the uncertainty (index 68) and a medium long-term goal (index 50). The results also give evidence that three out the five dimensions (i.e.low power distance, low masculinity and high uncertainty avoidance) predispose to the adoption of CSR in Tunisia. Limitations This research is exploratory and does not look at other features ignored by Hofstede's model, nor discuss the relevance of some of them. Contribution Tunisia's specific cultural scores in relation to other Arab countries (Hofstede et al., 2010) are useful for cross-cultural studies and public policy studies in order to analyse national cultural phenomena precisely. Moreover, this study intends to show the limitations of the original model in distinguishing national and transnational cultural specificities. This study also has a secondary contribution by adding to the existing literature investigating countries' cultural dimensions and CSR adoption. Finally, a major contribution of this research is to demonstrate that it is misleading to attribute the same cultural model to countries belonging to the same geographical, religious and linguistic group. Careful use should be made of Hofstede's model indexes, considering both historical background and political and sociological changes that take place over time.