This document is part of a series of documents on culture, which in turn is part of a wider project. The overall objective is to enhance the understanding of culture and to learn how to deal with it. The core of this project is the website www.culturalcompetence.eu. The website consists of a mind-map with some 100 labels on culture. Each label contains three icons, one with quotes on the topic in question, one with a summary of the literature and one with a self-study exercise.

The study of national cultures originates from needs of international business in the sixties of the last century. Business learned rather quickly that it had to deal with staff in a daughter company abroad in a different way to succeed; but how? Business had a need for a model or theory through which it could compare national cultures in such a way that the results of that comparison would give instructions on how to deal with the differences found.