Date/Horaire
10/06/2026
12h00 - 13h00 Europe/Paris
Categories
Collaborative webinar SIETAR Europa, SIETAR Deutschland, SIETAR France, SIETAR Polska, SIETAR NL, SIETAR UK: Critical Engagement with Hofstede’s Individualism-Collectivism with Prof. Adam Komisarof
Register here: Zoom link
DESCRIPTION:
Individualism-Collectivism (“I-C”) has been a central construct in intercultural communication and guided intercultural trainers, educators, and other practitioners since Geert Hofstede’s seminal research was first published in 1980. In 2023, The Culture Factor, the global company associated with Hofstede’s framework, updated their I-C scores due to longstanding concerns with Hofstede’s operationalization and measurement of I-C. These newer I-C scores are derived from Hofstede’s former collaborator, Michael Minkov, and they constitute a substantial departure from the past. For instance, Japan’s score has shifted very close to the US, and Northern European cultures are broadly conceived as more individualist than the US.
The aims of this online workshop will be for participants to better grasp new research on I-C, how the concept has evolved since Hofstede’s work was popularized, and critically evaluate how they, as intercultural educators and trainers, can most efficaciously integrate such concepts into their work.
To help participants make sense of abundant and often contradicting literature on I-C and more broadly on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Prof. Adam Komisarof will begin with a synthesized overview of the new developments in understanding and measuring I-C as it pertains to Hofstede’s work. As time permits, participants will also examine and clarify their own assumptions about I-C and to what extent these align with both Hofstede’s actual measurement of the concept, as well as those of Minkov. Ultimately, participants will be empowered to generate their own action plans for implementing their learnings from the workshop and integrate the teaching of individualism-collectivism and other cultural dimensions in their work.
Bio of the speaker:
Adam Komisarof, PhD, is Professor in Keio University’s Faculty of Letters in Tokyo and has been a member of SIETAR Japan since sometime in the 20thcentury (1999 to be precise). He has spent two sabbaticals at the University of Oxford, first as a Visiting Academic at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies (2012-13), and then at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) (2022-23). A widely sought public lecturer, Dr. Komisarof has given over 130 invited lectures and paper presentations in 14 countries around the globe. He is the author of over 50 publications and four books about intercultural communication and acculturation, most recently The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Communication (Sage, 2025, with Shuang Liu, Zhu Hua, and Levi Obijiofor). He has worked as a bicultural (Japanese and English) intercultural trainer since 1997, and he is the Executive Director and President Emeritus of the International Academy for Intercultural Research, an academic organization dedicated to advancing research in intercultural studies and intergroup understanding in the world.”
Organised by Grazia Ghellini and Lidia Wisniewska