The Role of Cultural Dynamics in the Digital Age

This chapter introduces the role of cultural dynamics in the digital age, thus explaining the theoretical and practical concepts of organizational culture, cultural values and belief systems, material culture and artifacts, language and communication systems, cultural interpenetration, deterritorialization, cultural pluralism, and hybridization; the categorization of cultural dimensions; and the application of cultural dynamics in the modern business world. Cultural influences are changing dramatically as cultures are no longer dependent on local resources to formulate their characteristic tastes, preferences, and behavior and are increasingly linked across vast geographic distances by modern communication media. Membership in a culture adapts to new cultural contexts while transporting elements of one culture to another. As membership in a culture becomes increasingly transitional, unique elements are less clearly demarcated or distinctive. Understanding the role of cultural dynamics in the digital age will significantly enhance organizational performance and achieve business goals in global business environments.

Japanese Cultural Traditions and International Business

Although people from several countries may share some universal values, they also have different cultural values. The differences in cultural values generally produce different ways of thinking and acting that can cause misunderstandings and disappointments in business communication. Therefore, the willingness to understand in depth others' cultures is necessary for doing international business. Japan is an important country and thus the author explains in-depth the specific cultural values that are important in the international business between Japanese and non-Japanese people. This chapter is based on a broader research conducted in Japan and focused on the unique characteristics of Japan's cultural values, social norms, and business customs. Thus, it presents the specific cultural values coming from the Japanese philosophical and cultural traditions, examines their influence in the Japanese international business, and emphasizes the importance of understanding them in depth for doing business successfully in Japan.

Culture of Development and Developmental Capacity of States

The main premise of this chapter is that state actions are crucial for economic development and those actions are partly shaped by the culture. Because some cultures are more conducive to development, it is engaged with the question: “Would it be possible to direct cultural change to serve economic development?” Since culture is a subject-object relationship, it might be possible to direct cultural change and consequently build up a developmental state. This chapter particularly focuses on the defining characteristics of a developmental state. In addition to the three characteristics recognized in the literature (relative autonomy, capacity, and embeddedness), four others are identified which are essential for a state to become developmental and remain so. These are: legitimacy of the state, integration of the society, socio-political stability, and motivation for economic development. The Korean developmental state is taken as a case study and investigated under this new light.

Religious Social Movements and Economic Welfare in Modern Turkey

In all societies, there have been some movements that point out social, political, economic, ideological, or moral problems or aim at partial or complete change. This chapter discusses the new meanings attributed to the concept of social movements in the postmodern era. A theoretical framework is proposed to understand the nature of social movements since the 1960s and to demonstrate their differences from classical movements. Turkey provides a particularly rich context with high potential for social movements, both with secular and religious aspirations. Religious social movements have shown quite a tense relationship with the state throughout the history of the republic; yet, they have gained power and prosperity through evolving liberal economic policies since the 1980s. Therefore, resource mobilization and new social movement paradigms are used in this chapter to explain Turkey's religious social movements today.

Creativity with Institutionalization

Typically, creativity and institutionalism are not closely related. However, when talking about cooperatives (or co-ops), the authors introduce, in addition to the paradoxical tension between institutionalism and creativity, perspectives and cases in which institutionalism is a channel for creative production. People often associate cooperatives with institutional characteristics because of their collective manifestations in history, such as agricultural or financial cooperatives. Furthermore, co-ops typically consist of several entrepreneurs working under the same “umbrella” organization. However, according to the outcomes of the chapter, cooperatives could also be a source of, or at least a channel for, contemporary creativity. In this chapter, the authors introduce Finnish cases in which the planners and designers of creative industries have established cooperatives successfully. These cooperatives have already created sustainable paths in their business activities to provide younger and youthful entrepreneurs with business possibilities and at least modest profitability. They also consider neo-cooperatives and light cooperatives, which provide services to cooperatives and allow them to focus on their main area of creating and innovating new business. Creativity cannot flow if there is no time or will to secure large investments and financing, or if the marketing and brand-building are problematic and the decision-making slow. Cooperatives could provide a suitable arena for innovative and creative business if there is a will to change and renew the idea of cooperative institutions, law, and practice.

Culture-Based Creativity in the Regional Strategy of Development

In the knowledge-based society, economic growth depends on the implementation of new ideas. Creative people, creative industries, and creative economies are considered as the crucial drivers of the economic prosperity and change management. This chapter analyzes regional specificity of Russia in creation and support of creativity within social and economic development, using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Impact Report, and the G20 Entrepreneurship Barometer. Using data from Inglehardt's World Values Survey, the analysis of cultural assignments in the decision-making in Russia will continue compared to diverse European practices. It will be a valuable basis for further exploration of collision between global economic systems, demands for creativity and innovation, internal Russian institutional and societal resources for support/rejection of innovation, and culturally indoctrinated behavioral patterns of young researchers and intellectual entrepreneurs, articulated as drivers of the new economy.

Extended Assistive Technology

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the history of technology and its founding purposes. The evolution of technology resulted in the creation and development of assistive technology. The impact of interactivity of human-computer interfaces on independence, employment, and organizations is analyzed and addressed in relations to disabilities. The utilization of assistive technology, in the disabled community, as well as in relations to the independence of the disabled are covered via the paradigms of assistive technology trainer and job developer for the disabled in the United States of America—capital of technology—Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco Systems—and capital of assistive technology.

Impact of Cultural Intelligence on Global Business

In today's globalized business world, intercultural effectiveness is crucial to a firm's survival. Cultural intelligence, CQ, is a four-dimensional construct that helps one to understand how the individual cultural beliefs and values influence motivations and behaviors (Ang & Van Dyne, 2009). CQ is related to the three aspects of intercultural effectiveness that include cultural judgment and decision making, cultural adaptation, and task performance (Ang et al., 2007). CQ plays an important role in the areas of global leadership (Van Dyne & Ang, 2006), achievement of managers (Rahimi et al., 2011), global strategic alliances, cross-cultural communications, negotiations, multinational teams (Early & Gibson, 2002), culturally diverse domestic teams, overseas work assignments (Bhaskar-Shrinivas, 2005; Lee & Sukco, 2010; Ramalu et al., 2012), global business competencies, and organizational effectiveness in the global marketplace (Creque, 2011). CQ is also relevant in establishing global identity in culturally diverse virtual teams (Adair et al., 2013).

The Globalisation of the Media

This chapter explores the claim that the continuous globalisation of the media industry is leading unrelentingly towards a hegemony of global cultural homogeneity. Through a discussion of the phenomenon that is globalisation, and the theoretical background against which the cultural effects of the global media might be studied, the chapter critically examines the role of global commercial broadcasting in the creation of a so-called global culture and in the engendering of global cultural convergence. The past three decades have witnessed an explosion in the size and number of Transnational Corporations (TNCs), while advances in science and technology have revolutionised the way in which people around the world think, work, collaborate, and share information. The expansive growth in the size and number of TNCs and the rapid proliferation of the Internet and its associated technologies has led in recent times to profound changes in the global mass media industry.

Gender and Water

This chapter examines the welfare implication of wage revisions for two Indian unorganized sector female workers with opposite preference patterns for income and leisure in drought-prone zone. The female workers here face a gender-based wage gap and the inconveniences caused by water shortage adversely affect their effective incomes since females are the major users of water in the family. This chapter also makes a couple of recommendations for policymakers and legislators. It experiments with alternative utility functions in neoclassical microeconomic behavioural model framework.