scholarly journals Beyond the façade of generosity—Regional stereotypes within the same national culture influence prosocial behaviors

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. e0250125
Author(s):  
Alin Gavreliuc ◽  
Dana Gavreliuc ◽  
Alin Semenescu

We analyzed prosocial behaviors in a field experiment (N = 307) conducted in an urban context (Timisoara, Banat region, Romania), starting from a classical Cross-Cultural Psychology research organized in UK and Iran by Collet & O’Shea in 1976. If the evoked study is focused on comparing prosocial behaviors in two very different national cultures (UK vs. Iran), we compared helping strangers strategies within the same national culture in relation to the regional identities of the help-seeking subjects. A behavioral scenario was created by asking naïve participants to offer support and give directions to a place even if they did not know its whereabouts. Drawing on social identity theory, it was tested whether regional belonging of the help-seeker (in-group vs. out-group) predicts the availability of help-givers for offering help, their availability for giving wrong directions, as well as their emotional expressiveness. Results are interpreted within the perspective of social distance between groups and show that the more distant regional identities are perceived to be, the less generous help-givers are, both in terms of their decision to help and to give wrong directions, as well as in their expressed emotions.

2021 ◽  
pp. 104515952110373
Author(s):  
Corinne Brion

Teaching and learning are social and cultural activities. Across cultures, people have different ways of communicating, interacting, and learning. Consequently, learning may not occur without understanding the role national cultures play on organizing and facilitating training events. This study is part of a larger study that took place over a period of 6 years, from 2013 to 2019, in West Africa. Using Hofstede et al.’s Six Cultural Dimensions model as a conceptual framework, the researcher sought to examine the extent to which factors of national culture influence the facilitation of professional learning among school principals in two West African countries. Findings indicated that facilitators adapted to national culture in the dimensions of Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long-Term Orientation. This study is significant because teaching does not always equate to learning, and understanding the role of cultural factors can improve learning transfer. If facilitators and practitioners understood how national cultures influence teaching, they would adapt and adjust their practices to the national cultures they serve to improve learning outcomes. Based on the study findings, the researcher offers recommendations for those practitioners who work with adults in international contexts and/or who attend to learners from various cultural backgrounds.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert van Pinxteren

Africa is a continent of considerable cultural diversity. This diversity does not necessarily run in parallel to the national boundaries that were created in Africa in the colonial period. However, decades of nation building in Africa must have made their mark. Is it possible nowadays to distinguish national cultures in Africa, or are the traditional ethnolinguistic distinctions more important? This article uses an approach developed in cross-cultural psychology to examine these questions. In 2012, Minkov and Hofstede published an article in this journal analyzing World Values Survey data from seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa at the level of subnational administrative regions. They argued that national culture is also a meaningful concept in this region. This study reexamines the matter. It uses an innovative approach, looking at ethnolinguistic groups instead of at administrative regions and using the much more extensive Afrobarometer survey data set. It finds that although the Minkov/Hofstede study still has merit, the picture is more nuanced in several important ways. There is not one pattern that adequately describes the situation in the whole of Africa.1


2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-102
Author(s):  
Zdenko Cerović ◽  
Amelia Tomašević

The national culture is a system of assumptions, values, norms and traditions shared by one national group; the corporate culture is a system of rituals, behavior patters, norms and values shared by majority of employees in a company. Both cultures influence the style of management and communication with employees. The national culture influences the corporate culture, but in a long term, a corporate culture can also influence the national culture. Strong corporate cultures can suppress the national culture through the system of standardization of business operations, which in international companies is an element of brand identification and a competitive advantage. Global hotel companies which manage the hotels all over the world, face problems which derive from differences between their own corporate culture and national cultures of local staff. The efficiency of operations will depend on the way and skills in handling those problems. The influence of national and sometimes local cultures might have positive impact on creation of very successful hotel system of hotel service which often is well accepted on tourist market, but might also result with potential misunderstandings and even opposite effects. The paper surveys the elements of national cultures which might have impact on corporate cultures. The paper assumes that global hotel companies often face big cultural and social differences in certain destinations of their business interest. The model of survey are hotel corporate cultures in Croatian, European and world hotels and their corporations.


Kultura ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 323-345
Author(s):  
Gordana Đuretić ◽  
Nevena Krasulja

The main goal of this paper is to point out that the dimensions of national cultures have a huge impact on different aspects of organisational behaviour. The main support in the work is Hofstede's five-dimensional cultural model. The authors pay special attention to the dimensions of power distance and uncertainty avoidance. When both of indexes are high at the level of national culture, organizational climate will have some special features such as high hierarchical pyramids, centralised decision making, and autocratic behaviour of managers, negative attitudes towards work, stress and lack of entrepreneurial behaviour. Also, special interest in this topic results from the fact that both of these dimensions in Serbia are very high.


2018 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 318-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lamia Chourou ◽  
Samir Saadi ◽  
Hui Zhu

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-220
Author(s):  
Nils Holtug

Chapter 7, on nationalism, addresses the so-called ‘national identity argument’, according to which a shared national identity fosters social cohesion and is required for, or at least facilitates, egalitarian redistribution. First, it is argued that the prospect for nation-building policies, built on the idea of a shared national culture, is severely restricted by the liberal egalitarian requirements of justice defended in Chapter 4. Then the causal mechanism through which a national culture is supposed to promote trust and solidarity is scrutinized, and it is argued that it is not really supported by, for example, social identity theory and evidence from social psychology. Finally, empirical studies of the effect of national identity on trust and solidarity are considered, and it is argued that these do not support the national identity argument either.


Author(s):  
David Gefen ◽  
Tsipi Heart

Trust and trust beliefs (trustworthiness) are key to e-commerce success but depend, to a large extent, on culture. With e-commerce being an international phenomenon, understanding the cross-cultural aspects of trust creation is therefore arguably required although mostly ignored by current research which deals almost exclusively with the U.S. This exploratory study examines whether definitions of trust beliefs as conceptualized and verified in the U.S. apply in Israel which differs markedly in individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance. The data, crossvalidating the scale of trust and its antecedents in both cultures, generally support the proposition that trust beliefs apply across cultures, and may be a relatively unvarying aspect of e-commerce. However, as expected, the effects of predictability and familiarity on trust beliefs may differ across national cultures. Implications about the need to include national culture in the research on trust, in general, and in e-commerce in particular, are discussed.


Author(s):  
Akbar Akbar ◽  
Michelle Picard

AbstractThe literature suggests that a whole-institution culture of academic integrity is needed in order to prevent academic integrity breaches. It is also suggested that the national cultures and individual backgrounds of academic staff and students can impact on their propensity to breach academic integrity policies and on their uptake of initiatives aimed at enhancing academic culture. Much research has been conducted on academic integrity related to culture in the western world including the behaviours of international students, and some work has been conducted in various Asian contexts. However, little is known about how national culture and religion affect academic integrity in eastern countries with a Muslim majority. This paper presents a synthesis of the literature related to academic integrity and culture in regions where Muslims are the majority. An integrative literature review was carried out. Keywords were used to search and to collect academic integrity related research published from 2010 to 2020. The literature reviewed revealed that academics in countries with a Muslim majority faced challenges related to their local cultures, which included social and religious perceptions and practices. However, they were also able to draw upon some national and religious practices that supported and enhanced academic integrity. This paper concludes with recommendations for incorporating these positive cultural factors into an academic integrity framework for policy and practice appropriate for Muslim contexts.


2003 ◽  
Vol 92 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1199-1202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Basu Sharma

Using measures of national cultures published by Hofstede in 1991, this study examined their effects on the weighted index of social progress of 50 countries around the world. Empirical findings indicated that individualism was negatively associated, while power distance was positively associated with the social progress of nations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (01) ◽  
pp. 1730001 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRE LUIS PRIM ◽  
LUIZ STEPHANY FILHO ◽  
GUILHERME AUGUSTO CAVALLARO ZAMUR ◽  
LUIZ CARLOS DI SERIO

The objective of this research is to analyse the relationship between cultural dimensions and the degree of innovation at the national level. For such, secondary data were collected relating to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the Global Innovation Index (GII). They were analysed using multiple linear technical regressions based on a sample of 72 countries. The results reveal the existence of three cultural dimensions associated with innovation outputs (technology and creativity): individualism, long-term orientation and indulgence, while a partially supported relationship was encountered for the power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity dimensions. National cultures were also classified as being competitive, planning, hierarchical or benevolent, to distinguish the most innovation-driven cultures. This evidence contributes to the innovation and competitiveness perspective, in which the intrinsic values of a national culture can favour the development of innovation and raise the competitiveness level of both nations and organisations.


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