Resumen

FARIAS NAZEL, Pablo. Changes in the Cultural Distances Between Countries: An Analysis of Hofstede’s Culture Dimensions. Opcion [online]. 2007, vol.23, n.52, pp.85-103. ISSN 1012-1587.

In the seventies, Hofstede (1980) identified and quantified four dimensions of the national culture. Two decades later, Fernández et al. (1997) quantified these four dimensions using a different scale (Dorfman and Howell, 1988). Hofstede proposes that economic, demographic and geographic variables, among others, can affect these dimensions. Consequently, one would expect the cultural distances between countries not to be static. In order to verify this hypothesis, a standardized index of cultural distance was used in both studies (Kogut and Singh, 1988). Subsequently, multidimensional scaling (MDS) was used to represent these distances. The analyses performed confirmed the research hypothesis.

Palabras clave : Cultural dimensions; cultural distance; national culture; Hofstede; multidimensional scaling.