Abstract
Culture shock is defined as the confusion and discomfort caused by the conflict in perceived motives and expected behaviors between the home culture and the foreign culture. Several quantitative and graphical methods employing techniques of cluster analysis and similarity mapping are offered for predicting the magnitude of culture shock between pairs of countries using data extracted from Hofstede's 1980–83 studies of national cultural values. Implications for business, politics, and personal stress management are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adler, N. J. (1984). Understanding the ways of understanding: Cross cultural management methodology reviewer.Advances in International Comparative Management, 1, 31–67.
Hofstede, G. (1980).Culture's consequences: National differences in thinking and organizing. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Hofstede, G. (1983). The cultural relativity of organizational practices and theories.Journal of International Business Studies, 14, 75–90.
Kendall, D. G. (1971). Construction of maps from “odd” bits of information.Nature, 231, 279–284.
Schiffman, S. S., Reynolds, M. L., and Young, F. L. (1981).Introduction to multidimensional scaling. New York: Academic Press.
Spencer, R. (1986). Similarity mapping.Byte, August, 85–92.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zeitlin, L.R. How much woe when we go: A quantitative method for predicting culture shock. Int J Stress Manage 3, 85–98 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01857717
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01857717