Page 15 - Cultures and Organizations

xiv Preface

others than our compatriots a cross-cultural experience in itself, maybe
even a culture shock. That is OK. Studying culture without experiencing
culture shock is like practicing swimming without water. In Asterix, the
famous French cartoon, the oldest villager expresses his dislike of visiting
foreigners as follows: “I don’t have anything against foreigners. Some of
my best friends are foreigners. But these foreigners are not from here!”
In the booming market for cross-cultural training, there are courses
and books that show only the sunny side: cultural synergy, no cultural

conflict. Maybe that is the message some business-minded people like to
hear, but it is false. Studying culture without culture shock is like listening
only to the foreigners who are from here.

Geert in 1991 dedicated the first edition of this book to his fi rst grand-
children, the generation to whom the future belongs. For the second edition
Gert Jan’s eldest daughter, Liesbeth, acted as our documentation assistant,
typing among other things the Bibliography. This time her sister Katy
Hofstede was our indispensable help, especially in preparing the tables and
fi gures.
From our academic contacts we thank in particular Marieke de Mooij,
who was our guide in the worlds of marketing, advertising, and consumer
behavior, where culture plays a decisive role. References to her work are
found at many places in the book. For Chapter 12, which was an entirely
new venture, Gert Jan was inspired by David Sloan Wilson, and he ben-

efited very much from comments by his proofreaders Duur Aanen, Jose-
phie Brefeld, Arie Oskam, Inge van Stokkom, Arjan de Visser and Wim
Wiersinga.

The first edition appeared in seventeen languages (English with trans-
lations into Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French,
German, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian,

Spanish, and Swedish). The second edition has appeared so far in Chinese,
Czech, Danish, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Polish, and Swedish. We hope
that this new edition will again reach many readers through their native
language.