The Impact of National Culture and Social Presence on Trust and Communication Quality within Collaborative Groups

AbstractThis current study investigates the use of online role-playing, in an online discussion forum, in learning the community of inquiry framework – an area of learning covered in the Computer-Aided Instruction (CAI) course, an elective course for Computer Science undergraduate students at Universitas Indonesia. The participants were divided into different roles. Each group was triggered to discuss the implementation of online collaborative learning. A mixed-methods approach was utilised to analyse the qualitative and quantitative data. The result of content analysis exhibited students implementing all the components of the CoI framework. Teaching presence was the rarest, as students were focused on delivering their ideas. Social presence appeared in almost all messages since it is the easiest, and students can feel the impact immediately. The discussion moved to the integration phase but did not proceed to resolution. This study suggested some recommendations and future research topics.

Download Full-text

THE IMPACT OF NATIONAL CULTURE ON THE CORPORATE CULTURE IN GLOBAL HOTEL COMPANIES

Tourism and hospitality management ◽

10.20867/thm.12.2.8 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 93-102

Author(s):

Zdenko Cerović ◽

Amelia Tomašević

Keyword(s):

National Culture ◽

Corporate Culture ◽

Positive Impact ◽

Social Differences ◽

National Cultures ◽

Local Staff ◽

Business Operations ◽

Norms And Values ◽

Hotel Service ◽

The Impact

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.

Download Full-text

“THE ROOM WAS QUITE SMALL BY AMERICAN STANDARDS” – ARE ONLINE HOTEL REVIEWS CULTURE-SPECIFIC?

Tourism Culture & Communication ◽

10.3727/109830421x16345418234001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Martin Nielsen ◽

Karen K. Zethsen

Keyword(s):

Problem Solving ◽

National Culture ◽

Mixed Methods Research ◽

Tourism Industry ◽

Personal Service ◽

Great Relevance ◽

Potential Impact ◽

Physical Comfort ◽

Hotel Managers ◽

The Impact

Hotel bookings are increasingly made online, and many travellers rely on eWOM in the form of peer hotel reviews. These reviews potentially contain information of great relevance to the tourism industry and offer a unique and ever-expanding corpus of unsolicited data. If this data is investigated systematically, it may provide insights that would enable hotel managers to be proactive in their marketing. The present study focuses on the under-researched area of the potential impact of nationality on the reviews. Using a corpus of authentic American and German hotel reviews and the qualitative, phenomenologically-inspired method of Systematic Text Condensation, this study investigates the impact of national culture on review comments in order to establish whether nationality makes a difference for the themes and attitudes expressed. The data indicate that Americans are more likely to focus on old-world charm, romance, physical comfort, personal service/relations and problem-solving than Germans are. The overall results of this qualitative study allow us to conclude that there are indeed differences between the German and the American reviews to a degree that is worth pursuing in future mixed-methods research and that may have practice implications for hotel managers.

Download Full-text

The impact of Danmu technological features on consumer loyalty intention toward recommendation vlogs: a perspective from social presence and immersion

Information Technology and People ◽

10.1108/itp-01-2021-0008 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Tiantian Yang ◽

Feng Yang ◽

Jinqi Men

Keyword(s):

Social Presence ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Product Information ◽

Marketing Channel ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Consumer Loyalty ◽

Content Type ◽

Consumer Experiences ◽

Loyalty Intentions ◽

The Impact

PurposeThis study investigates how Danmu (danmaku) technological features (DTFs) of recommendation vlogs (rec-vlogs) impact consumer experiences and decisions.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique with a sample of 422 viewers of Danmu-enabled rec-vlogs to examine the proposed model.FindingsThe DTFs positively affect consumer loyalty intentions through the mediation of social presence and immersion. Also, vlogger-product congruency significantly moderates the relationship between social presence and immersion.Originality/valueWith the increasing popularity of vlogs, retailers have adopted the vlog as a new marketing channel to connect with consumers. Although a growing body of studies focuses on this phenomenon, little is known about how DTFs help to increase consumer loyalty toward using rec-vlogs as product information sources. Anchored on the stimulus–organism–response framework, this study investigates how pseudo-synchronicity, Danmu-content congruency and parallelism, three DTFs used in rec-vlogs, impact consumer experiences of social presence and immersion, eventually influence the consumers' loyalty intentions toward rec-vlogs. The authors also examine whether the effect of social presence on immersion is contingent on vlogger-product congruency. These findings have implications for both researchers and practitioners to understand the effect of DTFs in the context of rec-vlogs.

Download Full-text

Effect of Marketing Information on Purchase Intention for Proenvironmental Products in China

Social Behavior and Personality An International Journal ◽

10.2224/sbp.7491 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 46 (7) ◽

pp. 1215-1232 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Yang Li

Keyword(s):

Corporate Social Responsibility ◽

Social Responsibility ◽

Social Presence ◽

Purchase Intention ◽

Product Information ◽

Environmental Knowledge ◽

Intention To Purchase ◽

Marketing Information ◽

Corporate Social ◽

The Impact

The focus in this study is on the effect on Chinese consumers’ intention to purchase proenvironmental products of 3 types of marketing information: environmental knowledge relating to a product, information about corporate social responsibility, and descriptive norms about environmental protection. I also examined the impact of social presence on the consumers’ intention to purchase. I conducted 2 laboratory experiments with 723 participants and findings indicate that each of the 3 kinds of marketing information and social presence had a significantly positive effect on participants’ purchase intention, and the effect of marketing information on corporate social responsibility and environmental knowledge was weakened when consumers made the decision with social presence. The findings expand research on marketing information of proenvironmental products and provide insight into the effect of social presence. Suggestions are made for the government and manufacturing managers that may increase Chinese consumer purchase of proenvironmental products.

Download Full-text

Impact of National Culture on International Human Resource Management

Economic Themes ◽

10.1515/ethemes-2016-0014 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 54 (2) ◽

pp. 281-300 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Biljana Đorđević

Keyword(s):

Resource Management ◽

Human Resources ◽

Human Resource Management ◽

Human Resource ◽

National Culture ◽

Human Resources Management ◽

Resources Management ◽

Policies And Procedures ◽

Business Conditions ◽

The Impact

Abstract In today’s business conditions, the internationalisation of business becomes an almost inevitable precondition for future growth and development of organisations. However, internationalisation of business usually requires organisations to implement some changes in the way they operated in the previous period. One of the areas that require some changes is the area of human resource management, too. Factors which require modifications in this system are related primarily to the legal regulations of other countries, but also to the characteristics of their national culture. The former influence comes from the fact that national culture exerts a powerful influence on the system of values, attitudes and behaviour of people in a particular country and, among the other things, on the preferences for policies and procedures in the field of human resources management. Starting from the above, this paper analyses the impact of certain dimensions of national culture on the preferred content of human resources management in organisations in certain countries. The aim of the paper is to provide the theoretical basis for organisations that internationalised their business, or intend to do so, to create system of human resource management in the entities abroad which, at least, will represent the balance between the system that is applied at headquarter and one that is preferred in entities abroad, in order to be effective.

Download Full-text