Impact of COVID-19 Vaccines on Tourism Demand and Culture

The low supply of vaccines for COVID-19 has disrupted tourism development in Asia. The question is if the vaccine may change cultural divergence into cultural convergence at the tourist destination. The purpose of this study is to examine the culture and price elasticity of hotel demand to find the cultural convergence. The study has conducted autoregressive distributed lag model to test whether the vaccine would change the price and income elasticities of hotel demand to find the cultural transformation from divergence to convergence through tourism. Findings indicate that the impact of the vaccine on transferring culture from divergence to convergence was confirmed. Tourists from the divergent cultures specified by less levels of Hofstede's cultural dimensions will visit the country destination with high levels of Hofstede's cultural dimensions after COVID vaccination. Japan and the US that possess divergent levels of power will visit Vietnam for power convergence. China, Korea, and Russia that possess divergent levels of indulgence will visit Vietnam for indulgence convergence.

CULTURAL AND CIVILIZATIONAL INTERACTIONS IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: HOFSTEDE’S CULTURAL DIMENSIONS THEORY

An essential feature of the contemporary globalized world is the emergence and active development of a network of interactions between the representatives of the different cultural and civilizational communities that was not typical during the previous historical epochs. Under these conditions, there is a process of restructuring of every culture, every civilization system. If earlier the processes of civilizational and cultural renewal had lasted for centuries and millennia, today they have been taking place over years and decades. Nowadays, there is a conglomeration of cultural-civilizational communities that are different in history, traditions, languages, and religions. They develop, interact and mutually influence each other through cultural and civilizational dialogue. These relatively independent societies have to coexist within common information space, in which intercultural and intercivilizational communication is an important factor in regulating both internal life and relations between countries. G. Hofstede made a great contribution to the development of cultural dimensions theory. The works of G. Hofstede gave rise to an influential research tradition in the field of intercultural interactions. They are actively used by the researchers and consultants in the field of international business and communication. They continue to be a major resource in intercultural research and inspire the study of both cultural values and other aspects of culture. The article aims to highlight Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory. The author used an anthropological integrative approach, comparative analysis and interpretive research paradigm.

How cultural dimensions are shaping social expectations: the case of European state-owned enterprises' nonfinancial reporting

PurposeThe purpose of the research is to shed light on how the mandatory regulation on nonfinancial information has changed European state-owned enterprises' (SOEs) disclosure levels. In addition, the present research aims to demonstrate, under the lens of legitimacy theory, how Hofstede's cultural dimensions shape social expectations that may have suffered changes after the introduction of a mandatory regulation on nonfinancial reporting.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts a mixed approach. First, it employees the content analysis to investigate the disclosure level on 22 of the 24 European SOEs. Second, the authors demonstrate how cultural dimensions take a different role when a change in regulation is introduced using the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).FindingsThe results reveal a slight increase in disclosure from the year before introducing the directive. Additionally, the results demonstrate how none of Hofstede's cultural dimensions is responsible for high disclosure levels. Although, the sufficiency analysis outlines several combinations of different cultural dimensions that lead to high disclosure levels. In particular, results demonstrate how the core dimensions leading to the outcome changed once the European Union Directive (EUD) has entered into force.Research limitations/implicationsDespite the contributions, the present study is not free of limitations. As the investigated sample is limited to a small number of SOEs, the content analysis adopts a dichotomous approach. The analysis is conducted on integrated reporting, and the fuzzy set QCA results cannot be used for generalization but refer only to the investigated sample. Consequently, further studies should investigate a broader sample of SOEs and organizations that adopt other nonfinancial reporting frameworks. Additionally, a qualitative approach to the reports' analysis is recommended.Practical implicationsIt demonstrates how the EUD on nonfinancial information has impacted the disclosure levels of European SOEs. It adopts a fresh methodology rarely used in accounting. It demonstrates how cultural conditions influence social expectations that determine corporations to disclose more information after the introduction of a regulatory framework.Originality/valueThe paper's theoretical contribution refers to its focus on the public sector, and it adopts a methodology rarely used by accounting scholars.

An Analysis on Cultural Values of The Love Eterne and Titanic: Based on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory

The Love Eterne in China and Titanic in the United States are both very classic love movies in history. The background of the two love stories do have something in common, but due to the characters’ different choices, the end is entirely different. This paper attempts to make a comparison between Chinese value orientation and American ones based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, so as to find out the cultural differences between the two countries.

Long-term orientation and the passage of time: Is it time to revisit Hofstede’s cultural dimensions?

Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are one of the most commonly referenced cultural models in the literature, but it has also been criticized for its inflexibility in terms of allowing for cultural changes over time. In this study, we focus on one salient dimension of national culture, long-term orientation (LTO), to investigate cultural change over time. Using the LTO scale developed by Bearden et al. ((2006) A measure of long-term orientation: development and validation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 34(3): 456–67), we conducted a survey in Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Turkey, and collected 1,452 valid responses. Our study provided new evidence on LTO national ranking and cultural change. We found the countries surveyed no longer appear to be in the same relative positions as when Hofstede first published his results in the 1980s, or his more recent results based on data from the World Value Survey (WVS). Implications for practitioners, academics, and students in the cross-cultural management field are discussed.

Beyond monetary motivation: the moderation of Hofstede's cultural dimensions

PurposeThis study explicitly examines how Hofstede's cultural dimensions moderate the relationship between nonmonetary motivation factors and performance.Design/methodology/approachThrough the simple random sampling technique, the hypotheses were tested with a sample of 604 employees from a mobile telecommunication company operating in both China and Ghana, two countries that represent two same and opposite cultural poles on Hofstede's cultural dimensions.FindingsThe results point that employee motives such as relationship, supervision, challenging work and achievement are moderated by cultural values. Whilst employees with high power distance cultural values are highly motivated by high supervision, those with low individualistic cultural values are highly motivated by high relationship. The results also depict that whilst the interaction effects between supervision and power distance and relationship and individualism on performance were marginal for both China and Ghana samples, the interaction effect of achievement and masculinity as well as challenging work and uncertainty avoidance on performance had great differences due to the different cultural values for the two countries.Practical implicationsThis study implies that, as organizations are devising strategies to lower personnel costs in a recessionary period, there is the need to redesign motivation factors that go beyond monetary means and based on the cultural background of an employee in order to improve performance.Originality/valueThis is one of the few studies that focused on nonmonetary motives from a cultural management perspective with samples from emerging economies.

Anti-Asian Sentiments During the COVID-19 Pandemic Across 20 Countries: Analysis of a 12-Billion-Word News Media Database (Preprint)

BACKGROUND US president Joe Biden signed an executive action directing federal agencies to combat hate crimes and racism against Asians, which have percolated during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is one of the first known empirical studies to dynamically test whether global societal sentiments toward Asians have become more negative during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate whether global societal sentiments toward Asians across 20 countries have become more negative, month by month, from before the pandemic (October 2019) to May 2020, along with the pandemic (incidence and mortality rates) and cultural (Hofstede’s cultural dimensions) predictors of this trend. METHODS We leveraged a 12-billion-word web-based media database, with over 30 million newspaper and magazine articles taken from over 7000 sites across 20 countries, and identified 6 synonyms of “Asian” that are related to the coronavirus. We compiled their most frequently used descriptors (collocates) from October 2019 to May 2020 across 20 countries, culminating in 85,827 collocates that were rated by 2 independent researchers to provide a Cumulative Asian Sentiment Score (CASS) per month. This allowed us to track significant shifts in societal sentiments toward Asians from a baseline period (October to December 2019) to the onset of the pandemic (January to May 2020). We tested the competing predictors of this trend: pandemic variables of incidence and mortality rates measured monthly for all 20 countries taken from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions of Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Masculinity for the 20 countries. RESULTS Before the pandemic in December 2019, Jamaica and New Zealand evidenced the most negative societal sentiments toward Asians; when news about the coronavirus was released in January 2020, the United States and Nigeria evidenced the most negative sentiments toward Asians among 20 countries. Globally, sentiments of Asians became more negative—a significant linear decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. CASS trended neutral before the pandemic during the baseline period of October to November 2019 and then plummeted in February 2020. CASS were, ironically, not predicted by COVID-19’s incidence and mortality rates, but rather by Hofstede’s cultural dimensions: individualism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance—as shown by mixed models (N=28,494). Specifically, higher power distance, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance were associated with negative societal sentiments toward Asians. CONCLUSIONS Racism, in the form of Anti-Asian sentiments, are deep-seated, and predicated on structural undercurrents of culture. The COVID-19 pandemic may have indirectly and inadvertently exacerbated societal tendencies for racism. Our study lays the important groundwork to design interventions and policy communications to ameliorate Anti-Asian racism, which are culturally nuanced and contextually appropriate.

CONTRACTUAL NEGOTIATION BETWEEN PETROVIETNAM GAS AND SOLAR TURBINES INTERNATIONAL COMPANY

Cultural dimensions constitute the broadest influence on the international business. The international business representatives from different countries when preparing for a business Partnership or the transactions often are analyzing traditions, differences, and properties of other countries. Businesses in order to facilitate business process are trying to adjust to the peculiarities of the other party. In order to achieve this can be analyzed cultural dimensions which can convey the essential incompatibilities between the parties. Analyzing incompatibilities between different cultures there can be used the analysis of Hofstede's cultural dimensions. This can be very useful in the design of international business negotiation processes because it can convey the differences between the different cultural dimensions among the negotiating parties.