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Synopsis

The research problem

This paper explores the association between postmaterialistic culture and corporate tax-avoidance behavior.

Motivation

Although corporate tax avoidance is prevalent, the degree of tax avoidance varies across countries. Previous studies have suggested that national culture is associated with the level of tax avoidance (e.g., corruption culture in [DeBacker, J., Heim, B. T., & Tran, A. (2015). Importing corruption culture from overseas: Evidence from corporate tax evasion in the United States. Journal of Financial Economics, 117(1), 122–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2012.11.009], and societal trust in [Kanagaretnam, K., Lee, J., Lim, C. Y., & Lobo, G. J. (2018). Societal trust and corporate tax avoidance. Review of Accounting Studies, 23(4), 1588–1628. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-018-9466-y], among others). Unlike prior studies focusing on longstanding cultural factors, this paper examined the association between corporate tax avoidance and an important current culture trend, i.e., postmaterialistic culture.

The test hypotheses

There is no association between postmaterialistic culture and corporate tax avoidance.

Target population

Various stakeholders that care about corporate tax avoidance including the government, policymakers, investors, auditors, and firm managers.

Adopted methodology

Linear Probability Model and Ordinary Least Squares regressions.

Analyses

We examined the association between postmaterialistic culture and corporate tax-avoidance behavior. We used a proprietary dataset of China tax audits spanning the 2011–2014 period and tested the moderating effect of tax enforcement. We also examined the external validity of our results using a cross-country sample from 21 countries over the 1993–2014 period.

Findings

Using a proprietary dataset of China tax audits, we found that firms owned by investors from countries with higher postmaterialism values were less likely to engage in tax-avoidance behavior in China. In addition, we found some evidence that the negative association between postmaterialism and tax avoidance is more pronounced when tax enforcement is stronger, indicating that national culture and formal institutions act as complements. To check the external validity of our main results, we further used a cross-country sample from 21 countries over 22 years. The evidence from the cross-country sample was consistent with the findings obtained from the China tax audits setting.

Although values in business have a long history, only recently has their pivotal role in innovation and its management become a topic attracting growing attention from both researchers and practitioners. Values-based innovation management is developing into a vibrant field of studies and practice with increasing relevance for innovation managers and entrepreneurs, providing a powerful toolbox of new methods and applications as well as having societal impact. We survey the state-of-the-art discussions in the field, including related concepts and methods and values-based approaches in areas such as innovation consulting and education, business modelling and entrepreneurship. As an introduction to the papers in IJIM’s Special Issue on Managing Values for Innovation, this editorial paper revisits and repositions some widespread assumptions about the nature, functions and potential of values in innovation contexts. We show to what extent values are an inevitable moment of innovation-related activities, requiring contributions from diverse stakeholders in normative, strategic and operational management dimensions. We illustrate their practicality to promote rather than handicap innovation and clarify their potential to change and assume different meanings rather than being static entities. The explanatory power of a values-based approach, its generative potential and its emancipatory impact motivate further research and development. Future avenues for research and development include impact management studies, attention to different levels of values and advancing the methodology and available tools to manage values for innovation in order to achieve more desirable outcomes.

The aim of this study is to assess the effect of culture on the performance of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). Using financial ratios relating to both the financial and social objectives of microfinance as performance measures and six variables from Hofstede’s cultural dimensions as culture measures, we assess the role of culture in determining MFI performance. Our final dataset comprises 503 MFIs from 44 countries over the period 2012–2018, extracted from the Mix Market database. A random effects model is used in the empirical analysis, followed by instrumental variables to cater for endogeneity. Our findings indicate that microfinance achieves better financial performance and is more self-sufficient in high power distance and in individualistic cultures. Meanwhile, microfinance achieves better social performance in more masculine and more indulgent cultures. Our results are robust upon inclusion of further controls for institution-specific characteristics, and macroeconomic and formal institution environment variables. Our findings provide further evidence to support the existence of a trade-off in microfinance. We thus argue that the extent of public support for microfinance should not only be a function of the broad objectives of funding parties, but should additionally depend on the cultural environment in which an MFI operates.

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.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a form of anxiety disorder that is often under-diagnosed. Commonly masked as shyness or introversion, many who are suffering from symptoms of SAD do not receive treatment. The onset of SAD is in childhood and/or early adolescence, and often accompanied by a wide range of comorbidities, including anxiety and depression. As a result, those who suffer from SAD are functionally impaired, likely under-achieve in work and school, and may possibly have unfulfilling relationships. The paper, firstly, reviews various available literature on SAD, its clinical symptoms, prevalence, onset, comorbidities and possible etiologies. Secondly, a case study, constructed based on the authors’ counselling experiences and observations, highlights the common behavioural patterns, cognitive distortions and emotional distress of clients undergoing SAD. Possible perpetuating factors and circumstances further provide a relevant and realistic perspective of the disorder within the Singapore context. Finally, through a review of the unique cultures of three countries, namely Singapore, India and Indonesia, the paper highlights the effects of social competitiveness, social appearance, social hierarchy, shame, technology and social media on the development and perpetuation of SAD amongst children, adolescents and females.

Folklores can epitomize the nation as a unifying principle crossing the horizons of regional divisions and subcultures. The connecting factors of folklores among regional and local levels give an understanding of manifold and contextual-based identities. The collective/coalesce of social memory is understood through the folk narratives. There is a cognitive and affective deliberation that structures the manner in which memory is interpreted. These narratives shape and reconstruct “identity” as they consist of a trans-subjective truth value providing ever new understanding of reality. The present research focuses on the Marwari folk Drama The Khyal of Amar Singh Rathoretranslated by Cecil Thomas Ault and folk performing art Khyal that constitutes meanings and symbols. Khyal, a popular folk dramatic art, is especially linked to martial and romantic ballads of Rajputana. It is indicative of the gap between past and present with spontaneity and originality and is seen as a transmissible entity with reference to the performing arts in the northern region of India. There is an exploration of the dynamics of the origin of the folk narrative of Amar Singh Rathore, a source of Rajasthani culture and identity thus paving way for the other folk narratives that form the pan-Indian identity. The folk literature draws cartographies of a nation or region giving a historical depth and continuity. The dissemination of historical folk anecdotes and their retellings are plausibly a move towards identification. The historical imagination and socio-cultural memory, mostly drawn from Rajasthani rural landscape, influences and reshapes history and culture of Rajasthan, thereby making it a historical artifact providing abidance and insights into folklore as a heritage/national construct. The research reflects and projects the values, feelings, ideas and identity of the groups which identify with and perform this art. Another dimension of the present study formulates an understanding of the forms and style of Khyal folk theater of Rajasthan and how The Khyal of Amar Singh Rathore communicates and travels through linguistic and cultural boundaries constructing new spatial cartographies serving as evidence of connectivity and consistencies.

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.

By school years, mathematics in the classroom becomes separated from real life. However, if teachers can bring context back into mathematics, like the kids experience outside of school, math becomes real. Beginning class by teaching students a bit about what it’s like to live in another part of the world brings class alive. Global Math Stories (GlobalMathStories.org) is a resource that helps educators make cultural and global connections in the classroom. In this presentation, participants learned about the resource and explored the value of making global connections in the classroom.

To look into the assumed difference between East and West in acceptance and use of robots, we performed a content analysis on 120 papers about social robots in two Asian-English (China Daily and The Japan Times) and two Western-English newspapers (The Guardian and New York Times) written between 2009 and 2018. From these papers, we drew a number of statements ($N=118$). We analyzed tone of voice (TOV) as well as the positive or negative framing of the consequences of the implementation of social robots in society, economy, health, and safety. Intercoder reliability $\mathrm{\text{was}}>0.7$, according to Krippendorff’s $\alpha$-reliability. Western newspapers presented significantly more negative social frames, negative fairness-and-equality frames, and negative safety-and-health frames than did Eastern papers, which presented significantly more positive economic frames than did Western papers. Western newspapers expected more negative social, health, safety, and equality issues than did the East. The West anticipated little economic benefit. The East expected little harm to society, safety, health, and equality but rather foresaw beneficial economic outcomes.

Values-based management and evidence-based innovation management both improve a company’s innovation performance. However, there are no systematic studies of how combining values-based and evidence-based innovation management influences the innovation culture in mid-sized B2B companies. In this exploratory case study, we describe how a longitudinal analysis of innovation culture and a values-based initiative were combined in a 7-step approach, which was applied in a global mid-sized B2B manufacturer of drug-delivery systems and pharmaceutical components over a three-year period. The results of the longitudinal innovation culture survey and the analysis of front-end innovation key performance indicators provided insight into the positive impact of new normative company values on the organisation’s innovation culture as well as on the effectiveness of the idea generation process. The exploratory case study demonstrates how a customised combination of values-based and evidence-based innovation management elements can systematically strengthen an organisation’s innovation culture and the effectiveness of its idea generation process.

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.

The chapter portrays the GCC region starting with its history. It overviews the evolution of the region and particularly the establishment of the GCC. Furthermore, it depicts the overall economic profile of the region and its socioeconomic development since its inception. It ends with the content description of the whole book.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the concept and state of the art of stakeholder management. The objectives include the coverage of the key aspects of stakeholder management from the perspective of the literature, the synthesis of some problems of implementing stakeholder management in developing countries and formulation of solutions to these problems, and guidance on implementation of stakeholder management in developing countries. Twelve semi-structured virtual interviews with practitioners in some developing countries informed most of the contents of the chapter: the problems and solutions concerning stakeholder management in developing countries where the traditional type of procurement is still commonly used for project delivery. The content analysis of the interview data showed that, apart from the internal stakeholders of clients, design consultants, contractors and their teams of professionals, and other workers, another set of project stakeholders would include community organizations, trade unions, non-government organizations and sundry individuals, or groups. These many stakeholders present high chances of conflicting stakes. Power influences the prioritization of stakes in developing countries, i.e., the interests of more powerful stake-holders are accorded higher priority. Government and public establishments are often considered to be powerful; hence, there is often a general reluctance to challenge their stakes and those of the stakeholders associated with them. Moreover, some traditions and cultures are strong in communities, regions, or nations, and stakeholder engagements follow these norms. Some details of traditional protocols that are observed while negotiating conflicting stakes are often not documented, and the knowledge needed is sometimes deployed tacitly. Meanwhile, some socio-cultural protocols and government bureaucracy may slow down project procedures, but claiming for time extensions and other reliefs by project participants is virtually never done on these grounds. Another major influence in some developing countries is land ownership, which tends to be a leveraging factor on which some external stakeholders either bargain for compensation and concessions or attempt to disrupt a project. As “knowledge is power,” there is scope for increasing the awareness and thus power of especially external stakeholders in developing countries.

Empirical research on the effects of culture on national entrepreneurship rates has been inconclusive, leading to contradicting theories to explain these mixed results. Results have also been sensitive to which covariates are in the empirical analysis. Given that culture might affect entrepreneurship directly and indirectly through institutions, we model the Direct and Total Effects of culture on entrepreneurship accounting for possible endogeneity effects. We use recent innovations in econometrics that are robust to model selection errors to estimate the direct and Total Effects of culture on entrepreneurship across countries. Using GLOBE’s nine dimensions of culture on an expanded sample size, we find that Future Orientation, Gender Egalitarianism, Assertiveness, and Institutional Collectivism have robust positive Total Effects on national entrepreneurship. In contrast, Uncertainty Avoidance has a robust negative Total Effect on entrepreneurship. We also find that the Total Effect is greater than the Direct Effect for Assertiveness, Institutional Collectivism, and Uncertainty Avoidance and smaller than the Total Effect for the remaining—Performance Orientation, Future Orientation, Humane Orientation, In-Group Collectivism, Gender Egalitarianism, Power Distance. This suggests strong institutions that serve as a catalyst that engenders entrepreneurship in high Assertiveness, high Institutional, and high Uncertainty Avoidance cultures. Conversely, in high-Performance Orientation, Future Orientation, Humane Orientation, In-Group Collectivism, Gender Egalitarianism, and Power Distance countries, strong institutions can sometimes impose significant compliance burdens that dampen the natural cultural proclivity that supports institutions and entrepreneurship.

Effective decision-making in innovation development is decisive for innovation success, but also poses a major challenge for companies. Building on the information-processing view of organisational design, this study investigates how companies should organise functional decision-making authority in innovation development to engender innovation success. Additionally, this research explores the interplay between the design of functional decision-making authority and organisational innovativeness representing an aspect of organisational culture. Based on two datasets garnered from a survey and an experiment with managers experienced in innovation development, the study demonstrates that the dispersion of decision-making authority across functional groups positively affects the performance of an innovation. Further, the results reveal that environmental turbulence positively moderates the effect of the dispersion of decision-making authority on innovation performance. Finally, organisational innovativeness leads to a higher dispersion of decision-making authority. This study offers important implications for managers seeking to organise functional decision-making authority in innovation development more effectively.

Successful new product development is of crucial importance for the survival of enterprises and for creating and securing competitive positions. In R&D performance in new product development is generally affected by interpersonal leadership. Empowering leadership, specifically, is suitable for this context, as the need for autonomy and achievement, as well as the cooperation of the followers, are taken into account through the support of the leader. However, so far no moderating effects of the context have been examined. Therefore, the present study examined the influence of the contextual factors of strategic, structural, and cultural orientation on the relations between empowering leadership and new product development performance in R&D. Additionally, a wide range of leadership behaviors with transformational and transactional leadership is taken into account in this study. Empowering leadership is assumed to have the highest impact on the R&D context. The moderating effects of the context were investigated in a quantitative design with 116 leaders and 371 respective followers from 32 R&D departments of various branches of industrial enterprises. The results confirmed a main effect of empowering leadership on new product development performance. Additionally, moderation analyses showed moderating effects on strategic and cultural orientation, while structural orientation had no moderating effect. It can be concluded that empowering leadership has a positive effect on new product development performance; nevertheless, the context in which leadership is practiced has to be considered.

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 discusses selected poems by three generations of Malay writers in Singapore from the first generation poets who received their vernacular education during British colonial period, before Malayan Independence in 1957; to second generation writers who received Malay education when Singapore was part of Malaysia (1957–1965) who established their poems in 1970s; and the third generation writers who received bilingual education after Singapore become a Republic in the 1980s. These iconic poems embody the aesthetic as well as the cultural and political values of Malay society. It is an early attempt to define and search for the canon of Singapore Malay poetry.

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.

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.