Abstract

In this paper I try to synthesize the main dimensions of collectivism as opposed to individualism, as they appear in Cultures and Organizations. Software of the Mind. Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival, the book that Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov published in 2012. Then I add the considerations of Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars about individualism versus communitarianism, and their formula of reconciling opposite values. Based on these ideas, I offer some reflections on our national culture’s traits which give us some hints of our people’s specific collectivist mentality, and of the impossibility of applying the reconciling formula. My approach is partially based on the results of an anthropological field research of a team that I took part in, in 2010, in a Romanian village.