Alfonsus (Fons) Trompenaars is a Dutch-born interculturalist with a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; his dissertation addressed cross-cultural differences in conceptions of organizational structure. After 8 years with Royal Dutch Shell, he founded the Centre for International Business Studies, an Amsterdam-based consulting firm. He has collaborated closely over many years with the British scholar Charles Hampden-Turner.

This entry reviews their work, defining and describing the cultural characteristics developed by Trompenaars, as well as the databases he created and the Corporate Culture Model he designed.

Concepts and Categories for Understanding Culture

Trompenaars understands culture as the way in which a group of people solve problems and reconcile dilemmas. Like other interculturalists (he particularly cites Edgar Schein), he views culture as layered, like an ...

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