Hofstede’s primary data were extracted from a pre-existing bank of employee attitude surveys undertaken around 1967 and 1973 within IBM subsidiaries in 66 countries. In retrospect, some of the survey questions
McSweeney Hofstede’s model of national cultural differences
seemed to Hofstede to be pertinent to understanding the respondents’ ‘values’ which he defines as ‘broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others’ and which are for him the ‘core element in culture’