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This study investigates how a region's labour productivity could be influenced by intangible factors such as social capital, government quality, cultural dimensions andreligion – factors that have not received much attention in the previous literature. As another novelty, regional-level data (78 regions of 22 European countries) were analysed. In order to take into account the relationships between various factors of productivity, the structural equation modelling approach is used enabling to find out both direct and indirect effects. The results showed institutional trust and civic participation to be the most important for productivity. Individualism appeared to have a positive and masculinity and power distance a negative total effect on labourproductivity.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible relationship of religion and culture with the social capital in a particular region.Design/methodology/approach– The data of 85 regions from 26 European countries are analysed. Regression analysis is used for analysing cultural dimensions, religion-related aspects and the communist past as possible factors of social capital components. In addition, graphic analysis is used for the generalisation of the results.Findings– The results from both the regression and graphic analyses indicate that cultural dimensions capture the possible reasons for different levels of social capital better than religion-related aspects or the division according to the communist background.Research limitations/implications– Conclusions can be drawn only for the European regions analysed. Data were not available for regions in all European countries and including control variables was limited by the data availability.Practical implications– When intending to develop policies for increasing social capital, the culture of a particular region should be assessed in order to predict the success of the policies.Originality/value– The novelty of this study lies in including cultural dimensions based on Hofstede's concept to the set of possible factors determining the level of social capital in a region.

When analyzing the factors of income inequality, first as many factors as possible have to be included in order to obtain valid results. The present article systematizes the factors of income inequality discussed in the pertinent empirical literature into six groups and summarizes the hypotheses about the signs of the influences of the discussed factors on income inequality. Additionally the influences between the factors themselves that form indirect effects on income inequality have to be included. In this article, these influences are discussed and arranged in a system to give an idea about the possible indirect effects on income inequality of the factors discussed in the article.

Recent studies have shown that the validated dimensions in the best-known models of national culture converge into a two-dimensional default model, yielding a cultural map of the world reminiscent of the geographic one. The revised Minkov-Hofstede model is very similar to that default, whereas Inglehart-Welzel's model is a rotated and flipped variant of it. However, another popular model - Schwartz's - differs from the default: it does not have a dimension capturing the cultural contrast between East Asia and Latin America plus Africa. Consequently, it cannot explain national differences in educational achievement and a number of other important national indicators, relevant in international business. This omission in Schwartz's model is puzzling as its author claims to have analyzed all values with invariant meanings across the world. On the other hand, Schwartz's model has an idiosyncratic "mastery-harmony" dimension that is not consistent with any geo-economic pattern and has poor predictive properties, constituting another weakness. We show that these idiosyncrasies of Schwartz's model stem from Schwartz's controversial decision to ipsatize his items and use multidimensional scaling: a method which, even without ipsatization, can create spatial opposites of items that are not negatively correlated. A principal component analysis of raw (non-ipsatized) Schwartz value domains does yield a variant of the default model of culture. We argue that although ipsatizing Schwartz value measures is not wrong in an absolute sense, it yields an impoverished and somewhat puzzling image of cultural differences across the globe, whereas raw measures reproduce the Minkov-Hofstede variant of the default model relatively well, although a different selection of values might perform even better.

PurposeIt is often believed that the type of religion that a group of people follow (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) can account for significant and important cultural differences, with implications for business ethics, corporate and social responsibility, and other business-related variables. The alternative view is that the cultural differences between religions are either trivial or are actually misinterpreted ethnic or national differences. The purpose of this paper is to compare and evaluate these two views.Design/methodology/approachThe authors focus on Africa, the most religious region of the world, whose cultures should therefore be especially susceptible to the effect of religion. We used latest data from 100 religious groups, following 19 religions, and living in 27 countries, from the nationally representative Afrobarometer. The items in the authors' analysis reveal cultural ideologies concerning key cultural domains, such as inclusive–exclusive society (gender equality, homophobia and xenophobia), the role of government and the role of religion in politics. These domains are related to cultural conservatism versus modernization and have clear implications for management. The authors compare the group-level effect of belonging to a certain nation to the effect of belonging to a certain religion.FindingsA hierarchical cluster analysis produced crystal-clear national clusters, with only one of the 100 religious groups systematically clustering outside its respective national cluster. The authors did not obtain a single cross-national cluster of coreligionists. Variation between nations was far greater than between religious groups and the latter was most often statistically insignificant. A comparison of Muslims with other religions revealed that Muslims are not generally more conservative, although they do have a marginally greater tendency to be less gender egalitarian. The authors conclude that the African national environments have a much stronger impact on cultural differences than do religions. The effect of the latter, compared to the former, is negligibly small and often insignificant. Thus, they find no evidence that religions can produce a powerful discriminant effect on some of the most important elements of culture.Research limitations/implicationsNon-Abrahamic religions are poorly represented in Africa. Therefore, we could not assess their effect on culture. Nevertheless, it seems that attempts to explain cultural differences in values and ideologies in terms of religious differences are misguided, even in a cultural environment where religion is very strong.Practical implicationsThe findings could help improve executive training in cross-cultural awareness, purging it from erroneous views on the origins of cultural differences. Managers should avoid simplistic explanations of the values and ideologies of their employees in terms of their religious affiliation.Social implicationsSimplistic (yet very popular) explanations of culture as a function of type of religion should be avoided in society at large, too. The idea that different religions generate different cultures is not only dubious from a scientific perspective but also socially dangerous as it may lead to religious intolerance.Originality/valueThis is only the second study in the history of the whole cross-cultural field that provides a multinational and multidenominational comparison of the effect of nations versus religious denominations on culture.Highlights:Religions are often portrayed as sources of important cultural differences.We compared differences in cultural modernization between religions and between nations in Africa.Variation between 27 African countries dwarfed that between 100 religious groups.Practically all religious groups yielded perfectly homogeneous national clusters.We did not observe a single cluster of coreligionists from different countries.We conclude that nations have a strong effect on cultural differences whereas religions have a minimal effect at best.

There is a need for a simple and graspable model of culture covering the main cultural differences across modern nations. A two-dimensional model might be a reasonable choice. We analyzed data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study to test whether different two-dimensional models are factor rotations of each other. We took into account criticisms regarding the choice of items in Inglehart's analysis of the same data source. Nevertheless, we replicated his dimensions. By means of factor rotation by various angles we aligned our dimensions and those of Inglehart with other previously published sets of dimensions. Thus, although different studies seem to have produced different two-dimensional solutions depending on the study design, those solutions are actually related to each other. There is no right or wrong placement of axes - they describe the same relationships between cultural elements. By showing the positions of various sets of cultural dimensions relative to each other, this study adds another viewpoint that can help researchers make sense of the huge variety of cultural dimensions in the literature.

AbstractWe examine the cultural context for individual's trust in public institutions. To shed some light on possible cultural explanations from a more comparative perspective and cover a wider set of cultural aspects, we use indicators of cultural dimensions by Kaasa et al. (2014) based on Hofstede's (1980) approach. Multilevel regression analysis is conducted with individual-level data from two waves of the European Social Survey (2008, 2010) and regional-level data from multiple sources. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to construct the indicators of social and institutional trust and corruption. Our results suggest that individuals tend to trust institutions less in regions with large power distance. Hence, an important key for governments being more successful in achieving their aims seems to be related to improving the sense of participation and civic responsibility.

AbstractWe posit that societal cultural values of creativity and security are associated with the likelihood that a person will engage in a business start-up. Creativity supports the opportunity identification and security the opportunity exploitation aspects of entrepreneurship. In contrast, both emphasis on performance and acceptance of risk-taking may not play the role that is typically assumed. To verify our hypotheses we construct a multilevel dataset, combining Global Entrepreneurship Monitor individual-level data with country-level data from the World Values Survey. We use a multilevel logit model to address the hierarchical structure of our data. We found that odds of start-up engagement are higher if people in a society value security, yet also appreciate thinking up new ideas and being creative. Our results support McCloskey's distinction between aristocratic and bourgeois values, and John and Storr's proposition that different cultural traits support different aspects of entrepreneurship.

PurposeRecent studies exposed serious issues with Hofstede's popular model of culture, especially his uncertainty avoidance (UA) and masculinity-femininity (MAS–FEM) dimensions. However those studies did not focus on work-related issues as in Hofstede's research.Design/methodology/approachWe followed Hofstede's approach to his dimensions more closely than anyone before in a large cross-cultural study. We used data from the nationally representative International Social Survey Program (over 50,000 respondents from 47 countries), measuring work goals and work-related stress in a way similar to Hofstede's.FindingsUA and MAS–FEM, as measured and described by Hofstede, did not replicate. They lack internal consistency and the items that target them are not associated with Hofstede's UA and MAS–FEM indices. Instead, some of those items follow a very different and sound logic, invalidating Hofstede's UA and MAS–FEM theories. Our study provides additional evidence that UA and MAS–FEM are misleading artifacts of Hofstede's IBM database, with no analogues outside IBM. An improved, recently reported version of individualism-collectivism (IDV-COLL) replicated nearly perfectly, solidifying the validity of that dimension of national culture. A revised version of long-term orientation, called flexibility–monumentalism (FLX–MON) also replicated well.Research limitations/implicationsWe discuss lessons for the cross-cultural field, including cross-cultural management, as well as policy-making by national governments, to be drawn from the controversial story of Hofstede's model. We advise a stronger focus on empirical confirmation and replication rather than excessive faith in fascinating, yet unproven theory.Practical implicationsTo avoid further confusion, we advise researchers, consultants and managers to reconsider the use of Hofstede's UA and MAS–FEM and focus on the valid dimensions in the revised Minkov-Hofstede model.Social implicationsA number of national governments recently launched large-scale studies of their national cultures, based on Hofstede's model. The goal of those studies was to involve culture in the design of social and economic development policies. Studies of this kind should be founded on empirically sound models or else they can result in the formulation of flawed policies.Originality/valueThis is the first study of large samples from many nations showing that even when Hofstede's method is followed closely by focusing on work-related issues, UA and MAS–FEM do not emerge from the data, and this is not because of data deficiencies but because the logic of UA and MAS–FEM is demonstrably flawed. Our study also demonstrates new methods for the replication of IDV-COLL and FLX–MON, though without claiming that they are superior to existing ones.