Culture and international business: recent advances and their implications for future research

The paper provides a state-of-the-art review of several innovative advances in culture and international business (IB) to stimulate new avenues for future research. We first review the issues surrounding cultural convergence and divergence, and the processes underlying cultural changes. We then examine novel constructs for characterizing cultures, and how to enhance the precision of cultural models by pinpointing when cultural effects are important. Finally, we examine the usefulness of experimental methods, which are rarely used by IB researchers. Implications of these path-breaking approaches for future research on culture and IB are discussed.

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Notes

Evidence from three databases supports this argument. A search of the methodologies as they are described in the full citation of JIBS articles (1987–present) as listed in ABI/INFORM results in the ratio of 13.62:1. A search of JIBS abstracts (1970–2000) appearing in JSTORE provides the ratio of 11.5:1. Finally, a search within the JIBS website gives the ratio of 12.66:1.

See Leung and Su (2004) and Buchan (2003) for comprehensive discussions comparing cross-cultural experimentation with other research methodologies, and concerning the specific controls employed in experimental research to strengthen causal inferences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong Kwok Leung
  2. University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA Rabi S Bhagat
  3. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA Nancy R Buchan
  4. Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel Miriam Erez
  5. University of California, Irvine, CA, USA Cristina B Gibson
  1. Kwok Leung