Narrow Results

This study explores the role of cultural practices on female entrepreneurship with some insights from the Nabdam district of Ghana. The views of twenty (20) female entrepreneurs were gathered through face-to-face in-depth interviews, which were analyzed according to identified themes. The key finding of the study is that, because of cultural influences and norms, entrepreneurship is perceived to be a field for uneducated women as highly educated women seek formal employment than self-employment. Also, the value and respect for traditions was found to be a limiting factor to the growth and expansion of female-owned enterprises. Therefore, this study concludes that the general poor performance of female entrepreneurs in the study area can be attributed to long-held traditional beliefs and practices rather than managerial inability on the part of women. The stereotype threat theory is used to explain the state of female entrepreneurship in the study area. Therefore, there is a call on policy makers to formulate policies that could eliminate the negative impact of culture on female-owned businesses.

Prior studies on the relationship between culture and discretionary disclosure fail to account for concurrent managerial incentives to reveal private information to the capital market. Our study extends the literature by investigating whether these managerial incentives offset the cultural influence on managers’ discretionary disclosure decisions. To this end, we exploit a setting in which managers have the discretion to influence both the quantity and quality of disclosure and can thereby either conceal or reveal private information. For a sample of European firms, we find that despite incentives to reveal private information, managers’ culturally determined preference for secrecy leads them to provide a low quantity as well as a lower quality of disclosure. Our results are robust to several sensitivity checks and demonstrate the relative importance of cultural influence on discretionary disclosure decisions.

This paper examines the extent to which cultural proximity influences, and is influenced by, bilateral trade flows. Variables measuring common language or religion, commonly considered to be measures of cultural proximity, have been found to be highly significant in explaining the volume of trade between countries, but these measures have the distinct disadvantage of being static; they do not change over time. In fact, however, culture does change, possibly in response to exposure to the foreign goods, methods, and ideas brought across borders by trade; the cultural "distance" between two countries can therefore be seen to fall or rise over time. In this paper, responses to World Values Survey questions regarding trust, respect, control, and obedience are used to create a measure of cultural distance. I use this cultural distance variable in gravity regressions and show that more culturally-distant countries trade less, but that more traditional measures of culture are more significant in explaining trade. I then explore the determinants of cultural distance, finding that exports reduce cultural distance.

Contracting Global Virtual Teams as part of global IT outsourcing is currently en vogue. As might be expected when virtual team members are from different countries, cultural factors play an important role in the success of outsourcing. However, there have been very few studies that assess the effect of culture on IT outsourcing and virtual teams. This conceptual chapter addresses this oversight by looking at the effect of cultural differences on IT outsourcing and virtual teams’ performance. The applicable literature on outsourcing, virtual teams, and culture is analyzed and a framework of offshore outsourcing success is developed. This framework includes the concept of psychic distance to better understand the phenomenon of virtual teams and outsourcing success. Adding this as a key research component provides a more realistic way of researching global virtual teams. Future directions for research based on the developed framework are also provided. By assessing the cultural differences of virtual teams in IT outsourcing, our research framework will help academics pursue this growing business phenomenon.

It is a basic consensus that culture affects savings, but the empirical evidence is inadequate. This paper investigates the relationship between culture and savings by using the Hofstede cultural indices, and macro data across 48 countries over the period 1990–2013. The results show that country-fixed effects are highly significant, even if traditional variables are controlled for. We discover that culture can explain much of these individual effects and thus is very important in explaining differences in savings across countries. We use the method of Relative Importance Analysis (RIA) to measure the relative importance of the various cultural dimensions in affecting saving rates. We find that culture-related variables are among the most important saving determinants, along with other variables more commonly used in the economics literature, such as economic growth, social security, and demographics.

This study identifies the cultural influences on the adoption of mobile commerce based on the comparative cases of Taiwan and Malaysia, so as to give insights to mobile operators' global entries. Using Hofstede's five cultural orientations as moderators in conjunction to Davis' technology acceptance model (TAM), the combined model has been tested by the confirmatory factor analysis for measurement validity and the multiple regression approach for the moderation effect of cultural influences on the adoption of novel mobile services. This results show that uncertainty avoidance (UA), individualism (ID), and long-term (LT) orientation have significant influences on the influence of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) regarding the adoption intentions of mobile commerce. However, the power distance (PD) and masculinity (MA) have different effects in Taiwan and Malaysia. These results not only supplement the explanation of the technology adoption, but also hold strategic implications for the global expansion of mobile operators by emphasizing on local preferences and their differentiation advantages.

This study examines the impact of national cultural values and the development of market institutions on three aspects of entrepreneurship (desire, intention, and confidence in creating new ventures). We ask: What different kinds of effects do cultural and institutional factors have on different aspects of entrepreneurship? Our samples come from Vietnam, Taiwan, and the United States (US). The use of three countries allows us to distinguish the separate influences of culture and market institutions on entrepreneurship. Our results suggest that only culture has a significant impact on individuals' desires to create new ventures. However, we found mixed results on whether culture or institution affects individuals' intentions and confidence in creating new ventures. Contrary to our hypotheses, the Vietnam sample had higher scores on intention to create new ventures than both the US and Taiwan samples. The Vietnam sample was also higher than Taiwan on the confidence in creating new ventures. This may suggest an interaction effect of cultural and institutional factors on entrepreneurship. This interaction deserves more attention in future research.

This research is an approach to connect creativity and multicultural experiences (MCEs): we give insights into how and what type of MCE influences people’s perceptive abilities such as creativity. We offer one of the first empirical examinations that links the perception of creativity concept to strategy of acculturation. This study addresses an often-mentioned research gap by examining laypersons’ ability to perceive different levels of creativity. For this, a sample of 195 participants from 26 countries with and without MCE was researched. Findings indicate that attitudes as well as personal and professional goals apparently influence people’s creativity perception. The acculturation strategy integration seems to be a determining factor in this respect. As MCE has become a firm part of many people’s CV, the present paper adds to an omnipresent phenomenon in today’s society, which is worth studying.

Using modified versions of the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale, we conducted surveys among German and Chinese university students. Our tests confirm previous findings that risk taking is indeed domain-specific. More importantly, our results show that differences in risk behavior are attributable more to perceived risk than to expected benefits. Risk behavior is almost entirely predictable by differences in the attitude towards perceived risk, but less so by differences in the subjective evaluation of expected benefits. Additionally, our study measures risk attitude through two distinct methodologies: on an individual-subject level and on a group-level. We find that the individual-subject risk attitude can lead to inadequate conclusions. Furthermore, our research highlights the relevance of national culture as an important factor for explaining risk-taking propensity. Our findings yield substantial support for the ‘cushion hypothesis’ and highlight the usefulness of the cultural dimension of individualism versus collectivism in order to explain risk behavior.

This chapter examines abstract concepts of innovators' competences and innovation culture. For people to be innovative, both concepts need to be considered. Ontologies provide a way to specify these abstract concepts into such a format that practical applications can be applied in organizations. Self-evaluation of innovation competence and innovation culture in organizations can be conducted by utilizing a fuzzy logic application platform called Evolute. The approach described in this chapter has management implications. The abstract concepts of innovation culture and innovation competence become manageable, which suggests that organizations should be able to get better innovation results.

Applying Ajzen’s planned behavior theory, we study the impact of control beliefs (reflected by an internal locus of control) and normative beliefs (investigated via individualistic cultural orientation) on entrepreneurial attitudes and self-employment intentions of final year university students. We particularly explore the interactive effect of internal locus of control and culture when explaining entrepreneurial attitudes, which consequently shapes self-employment intentions. The data were collected at a German university and three universities in East Africa. We received 590 complete responses. We used PROCESS Macro to test our model and hypotheses. Our findings show that both internal locus of control and culture predict entrepreneurial attitudes and self-employment intention. The effects of international locus of control are mediated by entrepreneurial attitudes. Moreover, the indirect effect is further conditioned by culture. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

This study tests the effect of unbalanced power distance (PD) (i.e., Hofstede’s cultural dimensions PD index) and individual stock price crash risk. We examine the stock price behavior of listed firms in 37 countries from 2004 to 2016 and use multivariate analyses to document that societal PD is important in explaining firms’ propensity to release accounting information. This propensity suggests a psychological tendency regarding timing management, particularly for bad news. As countries with large PD prefer to keep things under control, the result is fewer unexpected stock price crashes during the long windows between election events. However, because large-PD countries focus their markets on maintaining temporary peace before and during periods of political events (i.e., national elections), crash risk increases after the political event window. Consistent with these predictions, we find that in large-PD countries, companies generally have less incentive to hide negative information and thus generate stock price crashes. This situation is substantially changed during the postpolitical windows, when firms and ways of spreading information are more controlled by the government. Our findings suggest that formal mechanisms alone are insufficient to explain the behaviors of corporate disclosure that are entangled with informal instruments.

Synopsis

The research problem

In this study, we investigated the relationship between future-time reference (FTR) in languages and goodwill impairment.

Motivation

Previous studies on goodwill have focused mainly on firms’ economic and reporting incentives in single-country settings using economic theories. There have been recent calls for more research on goodwill accounting across countries (d’Arcy and Tarca, 2018), and greater use of behavioral theories in goodwill accounting studies (Amel-Zadeh et al., 2021). In response, we applied the linguistic relativity hypothesis to a new and highly significant area of future-oriented behavior (impairment decision) to explain cross-country variations in goodwill impairment reporting.

The test hypotheses

We hypothesized that firms in countries that use weak-FTR languages have higher levels of (and greater quality) goodwill impairment than those in countries that use strong-FTR languages.

Target population

We used a sample of 15,179 firm-year observations taken from firms reporting under IFRS across 21 countries for the fiscal years 2005–2018.

Adopted methodology

We used Tobit regressions, logit regressions, mixed-effects modeling, and propensity score-matching analyses for robustness.

Analyses

We tested the relationship between FTR in languages and (a) goodwill impairment decisions, (b) goodwill impairment amounts, and (c) abnormal goodwill impairments. We repeated our main analyses using several subsamples, different measures of FTR, and alternative regression specifications.

Findings

In line with the linguistic relativity hypothesis, our findings indicate that managers who speak weak-FTR languages are more willing to bear the costs of their impairment decisions in the present and are less motivated to shift current impairment into future accounting periods. In contrast, speakers of strong-FTR languages tend to delay the recognition of current impairments to future periods to reduce their anxiety about the negative effects of current impairment decisions. Findings from further analyses indicate that firms in weak-FTR countries report lower abnormal goodwill impairment, thereby bringing impairment levels closer to their normal optimal levels. Our inferences are robust to alternative samples, different measures of FTR, and alternative model specifications.

This chapter aims to illustrate the different environmental factors and their impact on entrepreneurship in Qatar. Despite its economic prosperity and governmental efforts to foster entrepreneurship Qatar still has not achieved its full potential in this regard. The analysis of the situation of entrepreneurship in Qatar shows no insurmountable difficulties at the macro-level. The problems are rather due to culture generated personality traits that are common among Qatari people. In fact, the fear of failure and the aversion towards risk and stress are negatively impacting entrepreneurial intentions among the population. The example of Qatar shows that a favourable economic situation does not necessarily promote entrepreneurship. The Qatari government is making huge efforts to optimise the legal and economic situation in order to reduce business risk and facilitate start-ups. However, it still has to invest more in human development in order to make Qatari people aware of the opportunities that their country is offering for innovative business ideas.

Globalization enhances efficiency and economic growth and expands the domain of personal contact and communication. Nonetheless, globalization has also evoked discontent because of claimed social injustice. The relation between globalization and social justice therefore merits attention, in order to identify whether justifications for discontent are present and, if there are reasons for discontent, to establish whether globalization should be blamed.

In this paper, we attempt to shed light on whether Japanese households are rational or if their behavior is influenced by culture and social norms by examining their saving and bequest behavior. To summarize our main findings, we find that Japan’s household saving rate showed great volatility, was often low and even negative and was high only during the 25-year period from around 1960 until the mid-1980s (if we exclude the war years) and that we can explain the high level of, and trends over time in, Japan’s household saving rate via various socioeconomic and policy variables. This seems to suggest that the Japanese are not a saving-loving people and that their saving behavior is not governed by culture and social norms. Moreover, the bequest behavior of the Japanese suggests that they are less altruistic toward their children and less reliant on their children than other peoples, suggesting that the alleged social norm of strong family ties in Japan is largely a myth, and that the Japanese do not appear to be appreciably more concerned about the continuation of the family line or the family business than other peoples, suggesting that the influence of the “ie” (family) system is apparently not so pervasive either. However, we argue that these findings do not necessarily mean that culture and social norms do not matter.

Research on innovation practices reinforces the notion that majority of innovation projects fail systematically due to being managed as raw technology projects. Open forms of innovation where internal and external ideas are leveraged across the organisation are gaining importance over the internal and centralised approach to R&D. India, during the last 15 years, has been spiralling ahead towards ultimate economic success based on its 'knowledge-based talent pool'. Innovation has become a top strategic focus for most Indian companies. Seeing the growing importance of innovation and knowledge management, a need was felt to understand how organisations manage their knowledge capital so as to promote innovation.

This paper aims to provide insights into how an organisation manages knowledge through culture, structure, technology and leadership, so as to promote acquisition and application of knowledge which leads to innovation. The study brings out the importance of tacit knowledge embedded in the firm's culture, structure and leadership as a complement to the explicit knowledge embedded in the firm's technology and documents.

This qualitative study focuses on the relationship between culture and entrepreneurship in the Torres Strait Islands. Similar to other countries with a low per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), aggregate evidence suggests that entrepreneurial activity is commonplace among the indigenous community. Closer investigation revealed this is particularly so for a form known as "marginal" entrepreneurship. Using Hofstede's (1994) model of cultural dimensions linked to key western entrepreneurial traits, a sample of 61 Torres Strait entrepreneurs showed sizable perceptual trait differences compared with western theory. This has implications on the received current wisdom regarding typical values and characteristics of entrepreneurs. It would appear that cultural differences exist between the entrepreneurs of the Torres Straits and others. The implications of this finding have a potentially significant impact on policy and the level and types of investment funds made available for enabling entrepreneurship in the Torres Straits.

Entrepreneurs are critical for countries’ industrial dynamics and economic growth. Although there are several studies focusing on the attitudes, cognitions and traits of entrepreneurs, only a few have explored the link between entrepreneurship and the job features entrepreneurs most value in the work setting. Taking a longitudinal perspective, over two periods of time, 1990–1993 and 2008–2010, the present study resorted to the European Value Study dataset, encompassing 27 European countries and more than 100 thousand individuals. Based on logistic estimates, we found that, compared with non-entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs consider work more important than other life dimensions (except family). Moreover, some work values associated with entrepreneurship (e.g., use initiative, achieving something, responsible job, meeting abilities, have a say, and learning new skills) are indeed mentioned the most by entrepreneurs and emerged significantly related with entrepreneurial propensity. Finally, some work values (e.g., have a say) are associated with entrepreneurship propensity regardless of country’s culture, whereas others (e.g., interesting job) are strongly influenced by culture.

This paper assesses the impact of Ghanaian culture on the entrepreneurial disposition of Higher National Diploma (HND) graduates of Accra Polytechnic from 2007 to 2012. Since the turn of the millennium, there has been more attention given to job creation than job seeking, especially among the youth, to address unemployment in developing countries. This is because of governments' inability to match the growing number of job seekers to job creation across the globe. One way to address this deficit in Ghana is the introduction of courses in entrepreneurship in almost all tertiary institutions, coupled with the setting up of institutions such as Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Development Agency (GYEEDA), National Youth Employment Program (NYEP), Youth Entrepreneurship Agency (YEA), Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES), among others. Reporting on 2015 data from Accra, the main finding was that collectivistic culture has negative effects on capital accumulation, human resource management and the urgency the unemployed graduates attached to self-employment. Therefore, this paper calls for some ways to address the issue of graduates' inability to be enterprising.