Do dimensions of culture exist objectively? A validation of the revised Minkov-Hofstede model of culture with World Values Survey items and scores for 102 countries

Decades ago, Hofstede claimed that dimensions of culture are entirely subjective creations. In this study, we claim that some measures of culture have an objective element. We focus on Hofstede's classic model, reduced to just two dimensions: individualism-collectivism (IDV-COLL) and long-term orientation, renamed “flexibility-monumentalism” (FLX-MON). Recent studies showed that: (1) all valid and reproducible dimensions of culture, from all models, are essentially variants of these two, (2) this 2D model has a close analogue in dimensions of behaviors measured across the world's countries, (3) the same model emerges across the 50 US states, (4) an analysis of all recurrent culture-related items in the World Values Survey (WVS) yields a similar 2D model that can be further aligned with it after targeted rotation, (5) the model is aligned approximately with the Earth's geographic axes. In this study, we used WVS items and expanded Minkov's IDV-COLL and FLX-MON 55-country indices with scores for another 47 countries. Our IDV-COLL and FLX-MON 102-country indices are predictors of 20 important extraneous variables, relevant in international business (such as transparency-corruption, political and economic freedom, competitiveness, innovation output, ICT adoption, fatalities in transport and industry, gender equality, economic equality, educational achievement, working hours, violent crime, etc.). Of all dimensions of culture, IDV-COLL and FLX-MON are the only predictors of the two factors behind these extraneous variables. IDV-MON and FLX-MON also yield the highest correlations with objective geographic variables, such as latitude-longitude, Welzel's “cool water”, as well as pathogen prevalence. This gives further credibility to the revised Minkov-Hofstede 2D model and confirms its objective element.     

Culture,connectedness, and international adoption of disruptive innovation

Why might nations vary in whether and how fast to adopt potentially disruptive innovations? Our study investigates this issue, specifically how a nation's adoption of creatively destroying innovations is related to two previously unexplored variables: cultural looseness, which is a norm-based measure of informal institutions, and global connectedness. To highlight potential contributions from these new variables, we control for within-nation contextual variables examined in prior research, including formal institutions, Hofstede's dimensions of cultural values, socioeconomic attributes, and between-nation economic grouping. Our empirical analysis of a specific disruptive innovation, agricultural biotechnology adoption, covers 47 nations over a 14-year period and provides broad support for the usefulness of cultural looseness and global connectedness for understanding innovation adoption. Cultural looseness is significantly related to adoption of agricultural biotech. Global connectedness dimensions of depth and breadth are not directly related to adoption, only interactively with cultural looseness. These findings highlight the role of informal institutions and global connectedness in shaping complex interactions between disruptive innovation and industrial evolution within and across nations. The findings also have implications for what public policy makers might do to influence the extent of adoption of such innovations.     

Does Cultural Difference Affect Investment–Cash Flow Sensitivity? Evidence from OECD Countries

We investigate the influence of national culture on corporate investment–cash flow sensitivity. We conjecture that national culture shapes managerial perceptions of information asymmetry and agency problems, thus impacting the investment–cash flow relationship. We document empirical evidence in support of our claim. By linking the investment–cash flow sensitivity to cultural differences, our findings show that, while collectivism has an attenuating influence, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and masculinity have a reinforcing effect on the relationship between cash flow and investment. Our results hold for a sample of 205,268 firm‐years across 24 OECD countries between 1990 and 2017, and are robust after accounting for alternative statistical approaches, sample compositions and measures of cultural dimensions, along with controls for institutional and governmental factors. In addition, by decomposing cash flow into uses and sources of funds in a dynamic multi‐equation model, where firms make financing and investment decisions jointly subject to the constraint that sources must equal uses of cash, we find that national culture shapes how firms react to changes in cash flow.     

Country differences in the relationship between leadership and employee engagement: A meta-analysis

Leadership is frequently related to important organizational outcomes such as follower engagement. However, to date we have little insight into the degree to which this relation is contingent upon (a) types of leadership style and (b) national culture. These two issues are addressed in a meta-analysis of 209 independent (257 effect sizes), mainly cross-sectional studies (79%), involving 82,386 participants from 45 countries. The findings show that whereas abusive supervision was negatively associated with work engagement, several leadership styles (e.g., servant, empowering, ethical, and charismatic leadership) have positive correlations with subordinate engagement; some dimensions of national culture (e.g., gender egalitarianism, human orientation, performance orientation, future orientation, and power distance) moderate the leadership–employee engagement relationship. However, the correlations between servant, ethical, and transactional leadership and subordinate engagement are less likely to vary across national cultural characteristics. Notwithstanding the proliferation of leadership–employee engagement literature with more than 200 published articles, a strong reliance on cross-sectional designs have impeded it to gain any solid conclusions about causality due to endogeneity biases. We conclude by providing a detailed future research agenda and discussing how our results can stimulate future leadership research and inform practices with regards to leader development.     

ATTITUDES,POLICIES, AND WORK

We study whether cultural attitudes towards gender, the young, and leisure are significant determinants of the employment rates of women and of the young, and of hours worked. We do this controlling for policies, institutions and other structural characteristics of the economy which may influence labor market outcomes. We identify the effect of culture exploiting the evolution over time within country, as well as across countries, of cultural attitudes. We also address the endogeneity of attitudes, policies, and institutions, and allow for the persistent nature of labor market outcomes. We find that culture matters for women's employment rates and for hours worked. However, policies, in particular employment protection legislation and taxes, are also important and their quantitative impact substantial.     

Motion picture performance: A review and research agenda

This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of empirical studies of motion picture performance published from 1977 to 2006 inclusive in the following five disciplines of the social sciences: strategy, organization theory, marketing, cultural economics and sociology. It introduces a novel framework which organizes the various dimensions and explanatory factors of movie performance into five distinct categories and underscores their relationships. The paper, which uses this model as a roadmap for discussions of film success, serves two complementary purposes. First, it clarifies the current state of the literature, stresses core contributions and exposes limitations in existing research by emphasizing hitherto neglected independent explanatory factors, dependent dimensions and correlations between them. Second, it introduces five conceptual, methodological and empirical suggestions for further cinema performance research aimed at addressing these limitations and, accordingly, at providing better accounts of motion picture performance in view of the fast-changing conditions of cinema production, marketing and consumption.     

Culture Formation in a New Television Station: A Multi‐perspective Analysis

Research which focuses on organizational culture formation is usually conducted within the context of change from an established culture to a transformed one. This longitudinal case study aims to trace culture formation from its genesis. It applies a multi‐perspective analytical framework to explore organization members' experiences as they adjusted to, and strove to shape, working life in the first three years of a new television station. The article presents three separate views of culture formation by applying divergent lenses to analyse the data. It then offers a dialogue between the competing perspectives in order to show the interrelatedness of contrasting evidence. Results of the study indicate that culture forms through a continuous sequence of integration, differentiation and fragmentation. This suggests that the cultural patterns of cohesion which emerge in organizational life are, at the same time, fluid, diverse and paradoxical. The article contributes to the current debate on multi‐perspective enquiry by providing empirical evidence to support the notion that reliance on a single analytical lens is insufficient to explain the complex realities of life in new, evolving organizations.     

The impact of national culture on negotiating behaviors across borders

Recent declines in American competitiveness and the increasing globalization of American business underscore the importance of one's culturally-based negotiating ability in international business transactions. This paper examines the impact of cultural dimensions on negotiating effectiveness on three levels: the role of a single dimension of culture, the interactive effects between multiple dimensions of culture, and the degree of cultural compatibility between negotiating parties. Two existing models of negotiation are integrated, outlining the critical importance of culture in each stage of effective international business negotiations. The integrated model is then applied to the cultures of eleven nations. Propositions and suggestions for future research are provided.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Academy of International Business Conference. The authors wish to thank two anonymous AIB reviewers and session participants at the AIB meeting for their constructive comments concerning the paper.     

Safety sans Frontières: An International Safety Culture Model

The management of safety culture in international and culturally diverse organizations is a concern for many high‐risk industries. Yet, research has primarily developed models of safety culture within Western countries, and there is a need to extend investigations of safety culture to global environments. We examined (i) whether safety culture can be reliably measured within a single industry operating across different cultural environments, and (ii) if there is an association between safety culture and national culture. The psychometric properties of a safety culture model developed for the air traffic management (ATM) industry were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5,176) and management staff (n = 1,230). Through employing multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, good psychometric properties of the model were established. This demonstrates, for the first time, that when safety culture models are tailored to a specific industry, they can operate consistently across national boundaries and occupational groups. Additionally, safety culture scores at both regional and national levels were associated with country‐level data on Hofstede's five national culture dimensions (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long‐term orientation). MANOVAs indicated safety culture to be most positive in Northern Europe, less so in Western and Eastern Europe, and least positive in Southern Europe. This indicates that national cultural traits may influence the development of organizational safety culture, with significant implications for safety culture theory and practice.     

The Effect of Language Differences and National Culture on Operational Process Compliance

With increasing frequency, firms are locating their operations in disparate countries with distinct national cultures and languages. This study develops and empirically tests hypotheses relating an operation's process compliance performance to (1) the presence of a language difference between the location of the operation and that of headquarters and (2) the national culture of the location of the operation and that of headquarters. Employing an international sample of pharmaceutical manufacturing plants located primarily in Western nations, the analysis reveals that a language difference between the location of a plant and the firm's headquarters is consistently related to decreased process compliance at the plant level. Regarding national culture, only limited evidence of a direct relationship between national cultural dimensions (at either the plant or headquarters location) and process compliance exists. However, the analysis does suggest that cultural congruence between the location of the plant and that of headquarters can relate to improved compliance performance. Such a relationship depends on the specific national cultural dimension studied. While these results are obtained in a specific manufacturing setting, they potentially have implications for process compliance in any global operation.     

Union Activism,Workers’ Satisfaction and Organizational Change

Abstract. This paper investigates the reaction of active union members towards workplace organizational changes. We use micro‐data from a large firm and estimate an empirical model which deals explicitly with the potential endogeneity of the union activist status. The data indicate that workers who become union activists are more likely to complain than members. Moreover, after proper allowance is made for the endogeneity of union activism, we find this effect to be reinforced. This result suggests that activists are not inherently against organizational changes, as compared to non‐activists, though they report higher dissatisfaction in anticipation of the greater loss in union rents that is likely to be associated with the change.     

National Culture and Industrial Relations and Pay Structures

The paper develops an explanatory model of comparative industrial relations and labour market structures based on national culture. The four cultural variables derived by Hofstede (Culture’s Consequences, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984) are used to investigate the relationship between national culture and various dimensions of industrial relations and pay structures. The paper finds national culture to be associated with the centralization of bargaining, the extent of corporatism, the degree of co‐ordination in bargaining, the coverage of collective bargaining, trade union density, the extent of worker participation in decision making, and most dimensions of the pay structure. Hofstede’s MAS variable, measuring cultural values representing gender social structuring, is associated with both industrial relations institutions and the pay structure. The results provide support for our cultural model.     

A review of the Chinese cultural influences on Chinese enterprise management

In order to create and sustain competitive advantage, a company should not only develop technologies to create products and processes that meet customer needs, but also stimulate a corporate culture that commits to continuous performance improvement. Managing corporate culture is one of a number of important factors that make for organizational change and business success. This paper reviews the cultural roots and identifies the characteristics of Chinese cultural values and management. A comparative analysis of the differences between Anglo-American and Chinese cultures is made. The cultural influences on Chinese management systems are then elaborated with reference to enterprise management in Mainland China and Hong Kong. With unique cultural heritage, collective orientation has a pervasive influence on the mode of Chinese management and organization. The prevailing Chinese culture values stress largely the paternalistic approach to management, acceptance of hierarchy and the importance of relationships. Today's Chinese enterprises need to determine changes in practice or value or both aspects of corporate culture in order to facilitate organizational change and maintain a competitive edge over their rivals. The paper also discusses the links of cultural values to employee involvement (EI) and total quality management (TQM), and initiates a need to manage cultural influences on EI/TQM practices to improve organizational performance in Chinese enterprises.     

Building Trusting Multicultural Organizations: Rethinking the Influence of Culture on Interpersonal Trust Development in the Workplace

Building trusting, multicultural organizations require us to accentuate ‘sharedness’ rather than identifying differences. This study investigates how organizational members activate multiple sources of cultural values to develop trust with their colleagues from different cultural backgrounds. Through a series of surveys followed by semi-structured interviews, data were collected from members operating in five different multinational organizations based in Germany and South Africa. Analyzed abductively, our findings illustrate the multiple sources of cultural values that influence members' disposition to trust and their assessment of their colleague's trustworthiness. We further show how four levels of trust emerge as an outcome of the interplay between these various cultural dimensions. Through our multidimensional operationalization of culture, we show how variations, not only across, but within individuals can hinder or promote trusting relationships in the workplace. This study highlights the need for more nuanced approaches towards the examination of the influence of culture on trust.     

Testing the Cultural Theory of Risk in France

Cultural Theory, as developed by Mary Douglas, argues that differing risk perceptions can be explained by reference to four distinct cultural biases: hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism, and fatalism. This paper presents empirical results from a quantitative survey based on a questionnaire devised by Karl Dake to measure these cultural biases. A large representative sample (N = 1022) was used to test this instrument in the French social context. Correlations between cultural biases and perceptions of 20 social and environmental risks were examined. These correlations were very weak, but were statistically significant: cultural biases explained 6%, at most, of the variance in risk perceptions. Standard sociodemographic variables were also weakly related to risk perceptions (especially gender, social class, and education), and cultural biases and sociodemographic variables were themselves inter correlated (especially with age, social class, and political outlook). The authors compare these results with surveys conducted in other countries using the same instrument and conclude that new methods, more qualitative and contextual, still need to be developed to investigate the cultural dimensions of risk perceptions. The paper also discusses relationships between perceptions of personal and residual risk, and between perceived risk and demand for additional safety measures. These three dimensions were generally closely related, but interesting differences were observed for some risk issues.     

Cultural Chameleons

This paper uses an empirical case study to present a new way of thinking about the dynamics of multicultural relationships within organizations. The paper initially uses subcultural analysis to identify how doctors became clinical directors and how their culture emerged as they learned to cope with problems of external adaptation and internal integration. Clinical directors were unique in working within and between the medical and managerial cultures, mediating the process of cultural learning and balancing the multicultural dynamics of the organization. They sustained this dynamic by becoming 'cultural chameleons' in both the medical and managerial cultures. It is also argued that clinical directors formed a 'cell culture' rather than a 'subculture' as they developed directly from the medical culture but emerged as different from it. The conclusions reveal how the empirical data describe a complex and dynamic pattern of multicultural relationships that are more interdependent than hierarchical. Consequently an alternative concept of cultural coconstitutionality is used to describe how these three cultures exist alongside each other in a relationship of asymmetric complementarity.     

Trust in Islamic Business-to-Business Relationships: Evidence from Indonesia

We examine the role of trust within Islamic culture in business-to-business relationships by exploring the link between credit officers’ trust in business customers and their financing decisions. In line with our framework, which is based on the fact that Islamic culture is characterized by a collectivistic approach and clan-based social structure, we find that value-based trust is more important than competence-based trust in explaining business relationships. The results support the argument that Islamic culture business relationships are grounded more on the principles, values and norms that a partner brings to the relationship than on business skills. Our results are robust to endogeneity and multilevel issues.     

Role of Leaders as Agents of Negotiation for Counterbalancing Cultural Dissonance in the Middle East and North Africa Region

This study provides a unique perspective in the field of cross-cultural management by exploring the relationship between “cultural dissonance”—the gap between cultural values and actual practice—and effective leadership attributes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Incorporating cultural dissonance into implicit leadership theory, the study uses measurements of dissonance on nine cultural dimensions to identify particular leadership preferences in seven MENA countries. The overall findings suggest that societies prefer leaders who counterbalance cultural dissonance by allowing space for negotiations by members of society to reduce disparities between cultural values—“the way things should be”—and actual practices—“the way things are.” The greater the disparity between cultural values and practices, the greater the citizens' desire that leaders act as agents of change by creating space for negotiation.     

Venture capital and risk perception

This study extends the current state of research on venture capital (VC) determinants by introducing a behavioral perspective. We focus on individuals’ risk perception and connect it to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of individualism and uncertainty avoidance. Individualism is related to overoptimism and uncertainty avoidance is related to overcaution, and hence affect the perception of risk. In a cross-country empirical analysis with 49 countries, we find that individualism is positively associated with VC activity, whereas uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with VC activity. Our results are robust to controlling for other determinants as well as using other proxies of VC activity, other time periods, and subsamples of countries.