Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Culture at the Country Level

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Cross Cultural Issues in Consumer Science and Consumer Psychology

Abstract

This chapter introduces and critically discusses the idea of measuring the culture of countries and cross-national differences therein. We start by elaborating the theoretical foundations for studying culture at the country level. We highlight the use of countries or nations as a unit of analysis and pay special attention to the way in which a group-level construct such as culture has implications at lower levels of analysis, affecting the values and beliefs of individuals. After briefly tracing the history of national culture studies, we then offer a short description of the current leading frameworks of national culture such as those by Hofstede, GLOBE, Inglehart, and Schwartz. Throughout the chapter, the emphasis is on debates concerning extant frameworks conceptualizing and quantifying cultural differences between countries in different dimensions, which feeds into open questions concerning culture at the country level. We end with some concluding remarks.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Cross-country surveys are the most popular instruments for measuring national culture by far (Taras, Rowney, & Steel, 2009). In addition to experiments (e.g., Herrmann, Thöni, & Gächter, 2008), people have also used systematic analysis of published texts to derive and quantify differences in national culture (see, for example, McClelland, 1961; Michel et al., 2011; Skrebyte, Garnett, & Kendal, 2016).

  2. 2.

    Values can be defined as non-situation-specific guidelines that provide the basis for evaluation and direct people in selecting between alternative courses of action (Schwartz, 1992, p. 5).

  3. 3.

    As alluded to above, in later work, Hofstede implicitly acknowledges this concern with his original work and the likely cultural bias present in his framework. Specifically, Hofstede (1991) includes a fifth dimension, long-term orientation, which was identified by The Chinese Culture Connection (1987).

  4. 4.

    So far, the national culture literature has not settled on a clear guideline concerning the minimum number of individual respondents that would be required to ensure that the country scores that one obtains are representative. Hofstede’s work suggests that 20 respondents would be enough, although a minimum of 50 respondents would be preferred (e.g., Hofstede & Minkov, 2013). However, if we consider what researchers have done in practice, we can find that the GLOBE project has calculated scores for one of the countries in its sample using 13 respondents (House et al., 2004). In contrast, the World Values Survey and European Values Study, as used by Inglehart, have at least a couple of hundred respondents per country and many times several thousand.

  5. 5.

    A typical decomposition is that between 5 and 15% of total values diversity is between countries and that the remaining 85–95% of total variation in values is between individuals from the same country. Note, though, that this latter number is inflated and the former number deflated, as both total variation and within-country variation comprise invalid variance that is due to measurement error (van Hoorn, 2015a).

References

  • Allport, F. H. (1924). The group fallacy in relation to social science. American Journal of Sociology, 29, 699–706.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Appadurai, A. (2011). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy 1990. Cultural theory: An anthology, 282–295.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barth, F. (1998 [1969]). Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference. Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benedict, R. (1946/1967). The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beugelsdijk, S., & Maseland, R. (2011). Culture in economics: History, methodological reflections and contemporary applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beugelsdijk, S., Maseland, R., Onrust, M., van Hoorn, A., & Slangen, A. (2015). Cultural distance in international business and management: From mean-based to variance-based measures. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26, 165–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beugelsdijk, S., Maseland, R., & van Hoorn, A. (2015). Are scores on Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture stable over time? A cohort analysis. Global Strategy Journal, 5, 223–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography: A School of American Research advanced seminar. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Montesquieu, B. (1949). The Spirit of the Laws. Thomas Nugent (Trans., pp. 293–294). New York: Hafner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desmet, K., Le Breton, M., Ortuño-Ortín, I., & Weber, S. (2011). The stability and breakup of nations: A quantitative analysis. Journal of Economic Growth, 16, 183–213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, R., & Schwartz, S. (2011). Whence differences in value priorities?: Individual, cultural, or artifactual sources. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1127–1144.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, R., Vauclair, C. M., Fontaine, J. R., & Schwartz, S. H. (2010). Are individual-level and country-level value structures different? Testing Hofstede’s legacy with the Schwartz Value Survey. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41, 135–151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In The interpretation of cultures (pp. 3–30). New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghemawat, P. (2001). Distance still matters. Harvard Business Review, 79(8), 137–147.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 481–510.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harootunian, H. (2005). Some thoughts on comparability and the space-time problem. Boundary, 32(2), 23–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harzing, A. W. (2006). Response styles in cross-national survey research a 26-country study. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 6, 243–266.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herder, J. G. (1968). Reflections on the philosophy of the history of mankind (1784–91). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herder, J. G. (1969). Social and political culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hermans, H. J., & Kempen, H. J. (1998). Moving cultures: The perilous problems of cultural dichotomies in a globalizing society. American Psychologist, 53, 1111–1120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herrmann, B., Thöni, C., & Gächter, S. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319, 1362–1367.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hitlin, S., & Piliavin, J. A. (2004). Values: Reviving a dormant concept. Annual Review of Sociology, 30, 359–393.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software of mind. London: McGraw Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hofstede, G. (2006). What did GLOBE really measure? Researchers’ minds versus respondents’ minds. Journal of International Business Studies, 37, 882–896.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.-J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (Third ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hofstede, G., & Minkov, M. (2013). Values survey module 2013 manual. Version: August 25 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V. (Eds.). (2004). Culture, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution: Changing values and political styles among western publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and postmodernization: Cultural, economic, and political change in 43 societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Inglehart, R., & Baker, W. E. (2000). Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence of traditional values. American Sociological Review, 65, 19–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change and democracy: The human development sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Katz, D., & Braly, K. (1933). Racial stereotypes of one hundred college students. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 28, 280–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kogut, B., & Singh, H. (1988). The effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode. Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 413–431.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kohn, M. L. (1969). Class and conformity: A study in values. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamont, M., & Molnár, V. (2002). The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 167–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, T. L., & Fiske, S. T. (2006). Not an outgroup, not yet an ingroup: Immigrants in the stereotype content model. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 30, 751–768.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Madon, S., Guyll, M., Aboufadel, K., Montiel, E., Smith, A., Palumbo, P., & Jussim, L. (2001). Ethnic and national stereotypes: The Princeton trilogy revisited and revised. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 996–1010.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martindale, D. (1967). National character in the perspective of the social sciences. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 370, 30–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maseland, R., & van Hoorn, A. (2009). Explaining the negative correlation between values and practices: A note on the Hofstede-GLOBE debate. Journal of International Business Studies, 40, 527–532.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maseland, R., & van Hoorn, A. (2010). Values and marginal preferences in international business. Journal of International Business Studies, 41, 1325–1329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maseland, R., & van Hoorn, A. (2011). Why Muslims like democracy yet have so little of it. Public Choice, 147, 481–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCallum, J. (1995). National borders matter: Canada-U.S. regional trade patterns. American Economic Review, 85, 615–623.

    Google Scholar 

  • McClelland, D. C. (1961). The achieving society. Oxford, England: Van Nostrand.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McSweeney, B. (2002). Hofstede’s model of national cultural differences and their consequences: A triumph of faith—A failure of analysis. Human Relations, 55(1), 89–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michel, J. B., Shen, Y. K., Aiden, A. P., Veres, A., Gray, M. K., Pickett, J. P., … Pinker, S. (2011). Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books. Science, 331, 176–182.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Minkov, M. (2007). What makes us different and similar: A new interpretation of the world values survey and other cross-cultural data. Sofia: Klasiki I Stil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neiburg, F. (2001). National character. In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (Vol. 11, pp. 10296–10299). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change, and economic performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pinn, V. W. (2005). Research on women’s health: Progress and opportunities. Journal of the American Medical Association, 294(11), 1407–1410.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ralston, D. A. (2008). The crossvergence perspective: Reflections and projections. Journal of International Business Studies, 39, 27–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ritzer, G. (2004). Americanization, McDonaldization, and globalisation. In N. Campbell, J. Davies, & G. McKay (Eds.), Issues in Americanization and culture (pp. 41–60). Edinburg, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, W. S. (1950). Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review, 15, 351–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roscher, W. (1918 [1854]). Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie. Stuttgart and Berlin: Gotta’fche Buchhandlung Nachfolger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rousseau, J.-J. (1964). Projet de constitution pour la Corse in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Robert Derathé (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, 1964), III, 899–950; Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sa réformation projettée, Oeuvres, III, 951–1041; Emile, Oeuvres, IV, 826–833, 850–853.

    Google Scholar 

  • Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the context and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Beyond individualism/collectivism: New cultural dimensions of values. In U. Kim, H. C. Triandis, C. Kagitcibasi, S. C. Choi, & G. Yoon (Eds.), Individualism and collectivism: Theory, methods and applications (pp. 85–119). London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H. (1999). A theory of cultural values and some implications for work. Applied Psychology, 48(1), 23–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H. (2006). A theory of cultural value orientations: Explication and applications. Comparative Sociology, 5, 137–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H. (2014). Rethinking the concept and measurement of societal culture in light of empirical findings. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45, 5–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H., & Rubel, T. (2005). Sex differences in value priorities: Cross-cultural and multimethod studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 1010–1028.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Shenkar, O. (2001). Cultural distance revisited: Towards a more rigorous conceptualization and measurements of cultural differences. Journal of International Business Studies, 32, 519–535.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skrebyte, A., Garnett, P., & Kendal, J. R. (2016). Temporal relationships between individualism-collectivism and the economy in Soviet Russia: A word frequency analysis using the Google Ngram Corpus. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47, 1217–1235.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A. D. (1991). National identity. Reno/Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, P. B. (2004). Nations, cultures and individuals: New perspectives and old dilemmas. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35, 6–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taras, V., Rowney, J., & Steel, P. (2009). Half a century of measuring culture: Approaches, challenges, limitations, and suggestions based on the analysis of 121 instruments for quantifying culture. Journal of International Management, 5, 357–373.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taras, V., Steel, P., & Kirkman, B. L. (2010). Negative practice-value correlations in the GLOBE data: Unexpected findings, questionnaire limitations and research directions. Journal of International Business Studies, 41, 1330–1338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • The Chinese Culture Connection. (1987). Chinese values and the search for culture-free dimensions of culture. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 18, 143–164.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thorndike, E. (1939). On the fallacy of imputing the correlations found for groups to the individuals or smaller groups composing them. American Journal of Psychology, 52, 122–124.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Twenge, J. M., Campbell, S. M., Hoffman, B. R., & Lance, C. E. (2010). Generational differences in work values: Leisure and extrinsic values increasing, social and intrinsic values decreasing. Journal of Management, 36, 1117–1142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Hoorn, A. (2015a). Differences in work values: Understanding the role of intra- versus inter-country variation. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26, 1002–1020.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Hoorn, A. (2015b). The global financial crisis and the values of professionals in finance: An empirical analysis. Journal of Business Ethics, 130(2), 253–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Hoorn, A. (2016). Trust and signals in workplace organization: Evidence from job autonomy differentials between immigrant groups (SOM Research Report No. 16006-GEM). University of Groningen.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Hoorn, A. (2017). Generational shifts in managerial values and the coming of a unified business culture: A cross-national analysis using European social survey data. Journal of Business Ethics. doi:10.1007/s10551-017-3488-4.

  • van Hoorn, A., & Maseland, R. (2013). Does a protestant work ethic exist? Evidence from the well-being effect of unemployment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 91, 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Hoorn, A., & Maseland, R. (2014). Is distance the same across cultures? A measurement equivalence perspective on the cultural distance paradox. In R. Van Tulder, S. Lundan, & A. Verbeke (Eds.), Multinational enterprises, markets and institutional diversity, Progress in international business research (Vol. 9). Howard House: Emerald.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, I. M. (1991). Geopolitics and geoculture: Essays on the changing world-system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Webber, R. A. (1969). Convergence or divergence? Columbia Journal of World Business, 4, 75–84.

    Google Scholar 

  • Welzel, C., & Inglehart, R. F. (2016). Misconceptions of measurement equivalence: Time for a paradigm shift. Comparative Political Studies, 49, 1068–1094.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, O. (2000). The new institutional economics: Taking stock, looking ahead. Journal of Economic Literature, 38, 595–613.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Witt, M. A. (2008). Crossvergence 10 years on: Impact and further potential. Journal of International Business Studies, 39, 47–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolf, E. R. (1999). Envisioning power: Ideologies of dominance in crisis. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, 9700 AV, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Robbert Maseland

  2. Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, PO Box 9108, 6500 HK, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    André van Hoorn

Authors
  1. Robbert Maseland
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. André van Hoorn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robbert Maseland .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business and Economics, Department of Marketing, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Hester van Herk

  2. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA

    Carlos J. Torelli

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Maseland, R., van Hoorn, A. (2017). Culture at the Country Level. In: van Herk, H., Torelli, C. (eds) Cross Cultural Issues in Consumer Science and Consumer Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65091-3_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation