Cross Cultural Management: Belgium

Cross Cultural Management: Belgium

Because of globalization managers have to deal more and more with people from all around the world. This is why it is so important that they truly understand their employees’ attitude and believes, in order to manage them right. Hofstede found that national culture explained a lot of the differences in work-related values, he illustrate his theory through 5 dimensions. In this paper will try to describe my culture thanks to those 5 dimensions and some of our Belgian proverbs.
Most Belgians tend to view their culture as an integral part of European culture or Western culture; even though we differ from most European countries in many ways.   Lets’ start with a brief history of Belgium in order to truly understand where my culture is coming from. The best way to present the origin of our country seems to be thanks to our national motto: “l’union fait la force” (French), “Eendracht maak macht” (Dutch), “United we stand, divided we fall” (English). Indeed, until the twentieth century, Belgium didn’t exist as a country. It was just a territory that had been under different foreign influences. In 1815 a buffer zone (regrouping Belgium and the Netherlands) was created in order to stop the French expansion. That state linked 2 different languages (French and Dutch) and 2 different believes (Protestant and Catholics). Unfortunately it only lasted for 15 years because in 1830 the French and Dutch speakers from the south formed an alliance and created their own Catholic country: Belgium. Nowadays the emergence of two separate political systems in Belgium seems to be the logical consequence of a gradual cultural and social divergence between Flanders and Wallonia. Even religion, which was the cement between those two cultures, doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. But we still have more in common than what we want to admit, this is what I’ll try to illustrate in this paper thanks to Hofstede methode..