INDIVIDUALISM AS THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE FORMATION OF BUSINESS CULTURE

The purpose of this article is to systematize data on national business cultures included in Hofstede's database and to clarify the positioning of Russian business culture within his framework. To achieve this goal, the article addresses the following objectives: clarifying the meaning of the concepts of collectivism and individualism, examining the relationship between collectivism and individualism at different levels of the pyramid of human needs, and conducting a comparative analysis of collectivist and individualistic cultures. The objects of the study are national business cultures from around the world, and the authors' methods include comparative and correlational analysis. The collectivism-individualism dichotomy is known to be the most important dimension in Hofstede's framework of business culture, and a country's individualism index closely correlates with its Gross Domestic Product per capita at purchasing power parity, which characterizes the level of its economic development. However, the content of Hofstede's individualism index is not always interpreted correctly, so the rise of individualism is a concern for sociologists. In fact, when compiling his database of countries, Hofstede used moderate versions of the typology proposed by G. Triandis and M. Gelfand: vertical collectivism and horizontal individualism. Therefore, Hofstede's individualism index reflects the degree of independence of an individual, acting in their own interests and the interests of their family, and their independence from the group. Over the past thirty-five years, Hofstede's individualism index for Russia has increased fifteenfold, from a value of 3 points in 1990 to a moderate value of 46 points in 2024 on a 100-point scale. The article demonstrates that in the business environment, the increase in the individualism index, as used by Hofstede, is progressive, as it corresponds to an ascent up the steps of A. Maslow's hierarchy of needs.