International Business 13th Edition by Donald Ball,Michael Geringer,Michael Minor ,Jeanne McNett

Exercise 5

Use the globalEDGE site (http://globalEDGE.msu.edu/) to complete the following exercises:
The cultural distance of countries in which your firm operates is one of the many explanations of significant differences that your U.S.-based employees face when traveling to different affiliates worldwide. Typically, an index of cultural distance can be determined by summing the differences of country-level scores such as those introduced by Hofstede's cultural dimensions. At the present time, your firm has operations in Turkey, Poland, Costa Rica, South Africa, and Indonesia. Using the Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Resource Center based on studies involving cultural dimensions to assess all five countries, determine which affiliates are located in a culture that is least and most similar to the United States. As there are four main components of each overall cultural distance score, which component(s) can be considered most influential for each country?