From cultural distance to cultural archetypes

123 Pages·2017·2.04 MB·English

UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA

DIPARTIMENTO DI SCIENZE ECONOMICHE ED AZIENDALI
“M.FANNO”

CORSO DI LAUREA MAGISTRALE IN
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

TESI DI LAUREA

FROM CULTURAL DISTANCE TO CULTURAL ARCHETYPES:
AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO DEFINE CULTURAL PATTERNS

RELATORE:

CH.MO PROF. MARTINA GIANECCHINI

LAUREANDA: AURORA PIETROBELLI

MATRICOLA N. 1129997

ANNO ACCADEMICO 2017 – 2018

Il candidato dichiara che il presente lavoro è originale e non è già stato sottoposto, in tutto
o in parte, per il conseguimento di un titolo accademico in altre Università italiane o
straniere.
Il candidato dichiara altresì che tutti i materiali utilizzati durante la preparazione
dell’elaborato sono stati indicati nel testo e nella sezione “Riferimenti bibliografici” e che
le eventuali citazioni testuali sono individuabili attraverso l’esplicito richiamo alla
pubblicazione originale.

Firma dello studente

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From Cultural Distance to Cultural Archetypes: an innovative Approach to define Cultural Patterns

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1
1. CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................... 3
INTERNATIONALIZATION AND MULTICULTURALISM .......................................... 3
1.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 3
1.2 Globalization ..................................................................................................................... 4
1.2.1 Economic and Political Development ...................................................................... 4
1.2.2 Technological development ..................................................................................... 6
1.3 Cultural convergence and divergence........................................................................... 7
1.4 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 10
2. CHAPTER TWO .................................................................................................................. 11
CULTURAL STUDIES: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................... 11
2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 11
2.2 Culture ............................................................................................................................ 11
2.2.1 Elements of culture: collectivity ............................................................................ 11
2.2.2 Elements of culture: values .................................................................................... 12
2.3 Cultural dimensions and cultural distance: the traditional approach .............................. 14
2.3.1 Hofstede model ...................................................................................................... 14
2.3.2 Trompenaars’ Model .............................................................................................. 17
2.3.3 The GLOBE Project ............................................................................................... 18
2.4 The Basic Human Values: Schwartz model of culture ................................................... 19
2.5 Shenkar and criticism towards the traditional approach ................................................. 21
2.5.1 The illusion of stability .......................................................................................... 22
2.5.2 The illusion of causality ......................................................................................... 22
2.5.3 The illusion of symmetry ....................................................................................... 25
2.5.4 The illusion of linearity .......................................................................................... 26
2.5.5 The illusion of discordance .................................................................................... 28
2.5.6 The assumption of spatial homogeneity ................................................................. 30
2.5.7 The assumption of equivalence .............................................................................. 34
2.5.8 The assumption of corporate homogeneity ............................................................ 35
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From Cultural Distance to Cultural Archetypes: an innovative Approach to define Cultural Patterns

2.6 Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 40
3.CHAPTER THREE............................................................................................................... 41
LOOKING FOR NEW CULTURAL BOUNDARIES ....................................................... 41
3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 41
3.2 Exogenous cultural delineation: Geography and Demography ...................................... 41
3.2.1 Geography .............................................................................................................. 41
3.2.2 Demography .......................................................................................................... 43
3.3 Endogenous cultural delineation: Cultural Archetypes .................................................. 45
3.3.1 Introduction of Cultural Archetypes ...................................................................... 46
3.3.2 Employment of Cultural Archetypes ..................................................................... 49
3.4 The research proposal ..................................................................................................... 52
3.4.1 Which research approach is preferable and why ................................................... 53
3.4.2 The choice of countries by Venaik and Midgley ................................................... 54
3.4.3 Our choice of countries .......................................................................................... 56
3.5 Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 58
4.CHAPTER FOUR ................................................................................................................. 59
METHODOLOGY................................................................................................................. 59
4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 59
4.2 The sample: World Value Survey .................................................................................. 59
4.3 Measurement of Schwartz Values in WVS .................................................................... 61
4.4 Pre-process of data ......................................................................................................... 62
4.5 Test of heterogeneity in Country Values ........................................................................ 63
4.6 The analysis .................................................................................................................... 63
4.6.1 Archetypal analysis ................................................................................................ 64
4.6.1.1 AA technical explanation ............................................................................... 64
4.6.1.2 AA results on isolated countries .................................................................... 66
4.6.1.3 AA results on pooled eight-country data ....................................................... 77
4.6.2 Analysis of archetypes through OLS regression ................................................... 86
4.7 Limitations and possible directions for future research ................................................. 96
4.8 Managerial implications ................................................................................................. 97
4.8.1 The external environment ...................................................................................... 98
4.8.2 The internal environment ..................................................................................... 101
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From Cultural Distance to Cultural Archetypes: an innovative Approach to define Cultural Patterns

4.9 Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 104
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 105
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 107
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SITOGRAPHY ........................................................................... 107
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 107
Sitography ........................................................................................................................... 115

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From Cultural Distance to Cultural Archetypes: an innovative Approach to define Cultural Patterns

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this thesis is to present an innovative approach in the field of cultural studies,
which emerges as the most recent and successful attempt to describe cultural patterns within
and across countries. In 2015, cultural archetypes established as an alternative approach to the
cultural distance construct, introduced by Geert Hofstede in the 1980s.
In the last decades, researcher in the cultural studies have advocated the need to go beyond the
“one country= one culture” axiom, and investigate the heterogeneity characterizing national
cultures, in order to find the most suitable criteria to disentangle it.
After a stream of researchers concentrating on what Venaik and Midgley call “exogenous
criteria” (regional location, educational or work status, age, and so on), the authors came up
with “an endogenous delineation of culture”. Rejecting an arbitrary, a priori cultural
segmentation, they decide to start from the core, and define cultural boundaries on the basis of
values diversity, the very essence of culture itself, and define a posteriori the characteristics of
the individuals belonging to the cultural groups identified.
This would be able to outline cultural patterns in the most faithful, precise and exhaustive way
possible.

In Chapter One, we will present the Internationalization topic. We will use macro-economic
lenses to show how economic, political and technological changes impact on cultural formation
and development, demonstrating why multiculturalism is still a relevant issue for multi-national
corporations managing their internationalization process.
In Chapter Two, we will go through the major cultural studies with a literature review. This
will include, first, the milestone research of Hofstede and those studies inspired by his approach
to culture; second, the Basic Human Values Theory of Schwartz; third, the criticism towards
the “traditional approach” to culture, taking Shenkar critics to Hofstede as initial imprint to
present analogous studies on those topics.
In Chapter Three we go through those studies “looking for new cultural boundaries”, in light of
the need to capture cultural heterogeneity within countries. As hinted above, we will first
present studies associated to an “exogenous cultural delineation”; then, we will present cultural
archetypes and their applications by researchers. As the construct will be implemented in the
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Introduction

thesis, we try to pinpoint the most suitable method for that. The chapter concludes stating our
research proposal and presenting its initial assumptions and setting.
In Chapter Four we present the methodology used, explaining sample characteristics, variables
used, pre-process and process of data, results and related discussion. Then, we show limitations
of the work and possible directions for future research. At last, we conclude with managerial
implications deriving from our research.

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