Title: Different countries – different cultures Level: Thesis for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Authors: Cecilia Jensen and Changiz Saadat Behesthi Supervisor: Lars Ekstrand Date: 2011 – 12  Our study is based on two countries, Sweden and Germany, and is aiming to find out if the cultural differences between the two countries have a major impact when doing business together or not.Cross-cultural management is a modern topic and can help transnational companies deal with problems that occur due to different cultures in the organization, but is it really necessary to spend huge amount on intercultural training? We used a qualitative method and did a survey through a convenience sampling among six managers in the two countries. We analyzed the answers sorted by country and then compared them to each other. The result of the survey was that Swedish managers inform and include their staff in decisions to a bigger extend than German managers. Other than the preferences of a more democratic leadership the differences were, according to us, insignificant to perform any cultural training between the two countries. For further studies we suggest a deeper research method with a field study at every workplace, to conclude that the manager’s answers concurred to the actual outcome. We also think that interviewing more managers, and within the same branch, would increase the creditability of the study. The result indicates that the money spent on intercultural training between Sweden and Germany is quite unnecessary and that the differences are smoothing out.

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Att arbeta ombord på fartyg innebär ofta att man måste leva och samarbeta med människor från andra länder som har en annan kultur och andra värderingar. Med en besättning där flera kulturer finns närvarande kan detta påverka arbetet såväl som det sociala umgänget ombord. Svenska fartygsbefäl som jobbar med filippinskt manskap har upplevt denna interaktion. I denna studie undersöktes fartygsbefälens upplevelse om den maktdistans som finns mellan dem själva och det svenska respektive filippinska manskapet och hur denna distans påverkar livet ombord. Studien genomfördes med personliga intervjuer med sex informanter för att ge en djupare och mer ingående bild av deras åsikter och upplevelser ombord. Under arbetet framkom det att det var en stor skillnad i maktdistans mellan dem som svenskt fartygsbefäl och svenskt respektive filippinskt manskap. Det var en gemensam upplevelse av informanterna att det skedde en förändring i tankesättet hos det filippinska manskapet med ökad erfarenhet av svenska fartygsbefäl. Det upplevdes som att de hade anammat en mer svensk förhållningssätt. / Working on board ships today often means that you have to live and work with people from other countries that have different cultures and values. With a crew where several cultures are present, the work as well as the social life on board is affected, Swedish officers who work with Filipino crew have experienced this interaction. This study examined the officers' views and experience of the power distance that exists between the Swedes and Filipinos and how this affects the life on board. A semi-structured interview was used with six informants, to provide a wider and more detailed picture of the opinions and experiences on board. During the interviews the informants gave the opinion that the power distance between the Swedish officers and the Filipino deck crew was bigger than between them and the Swedish deck crew. It was a common experience that when the Filipino deck crew had worked with Swedish officers during an extensive time they often adapted themselves to Swedish approach.

One of the world’s fastest growing banking methods today is Shariah compliant banking, with the number of Islamic banking and finance institutions growing from one in 1975 to more than three hundred today in more than seventy-five countries around the world, holding assets valued around US$1 trillion. However, research and understanding regarding the management in decision-making in the Islamic banking industry is underdeveloped. This study, unlike previous research, applies Islamic Work Ethics (IWE’s) and Participatory Decision-Making (PDM) to inspect both their influence and outcomes. However, despite PDM’s maturity and validity in different contexts, very little published literature strives to extend its capability in the Islamic banking context. Both PDM and IWE’s have found to lead to greater job satisfaction and commitment; however, interrelationships have not yet been studied. As a result, it is unclear if the PDM approach to determining whether or not employees should be involved in the decision-making process is applicable with IWE’s or within Islamic banking and developing country contexts. As a result, a need arises for the addition of factors, which may potentially develop the understanding of employee involvement in decision-making, as misuse and lack of understanding of PDM may lead to low job satisfaction and commitment. The current study is sorted into multiple stages as to carry out the entire research. To start with, the introduction section of this study provides the setting of the research including the background of the study, aims, objectives and research questions. Moving on, a critical literature review is provided as to identify key points in previous studies. As a result, research hypotheses are extracted, which provides the relationships being tested, of which the theoretical framework is based. Next, the methodology, which is applied in the study, is identified and justifications for data collection methods, analysis tools and multiple tests are provided. Afterwards, questionnaires were distributed to front desk employees working within the Kuwaiti Islamic banking industry as the sample for primary data. Following, vi data analysis is carried out, from which the findings and accepting and rejecting of analysis is reliant upon. Outcome identified that employee desires to be involved in decision-making was greatly influenced by IWE’s. Also, employees desire to be involved in decision-making differentiated significantly based on whether or not decisions were based on actual work or regarding fellow co-workers. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications are provided, as well as suggestions for future research.

The modem business economy is characterized by increased collaboration among different organizations across nation al boundaries. Post-Soviet Russia is one of the regions that is witnessing rapid economic growth and development of international business relations. Because of the challenges in intercultural communication the current study focuses on the problem of power distance, specifically in the workplace (in post-Soviet Russia). A phenomenological perspective, based on qualitative methodology, guided this research into the meaning of power experiences for individuals. Symbolic interactionism was used as a research paradigm of the study to view humans as active participants of the workplace, who engage in the power relationships actively-reacting to controversies of interactions and constant change in the everyday situations. The researcher developed and conducted several sets of interviews with employees, with relatives/friends of employees, and with country experts. The data were collected from employees of four companies in one of Central Russian regions (where intercultural connections develop especially rapidly)-with two private, two public, two prereform, and two postreform companies. These four companies were selected to examine influences of two dimensions, public versus private and older traditional versus newer entrepreneurial organizations. Analysis included transcribing of the interviews, identification and categorizations of the statements of meaning, description of participants' experiences, and identification of social processes. The results were grouped into gender, age, and ethical themes depending on three major dimensions (ownership, generation, gender). The major findings included: (a) contrary to previous research older managers appear not to be more aversive to risk-taking behaviors, (b) younger superiors are better accepted in the private postreform companies, but are less often appointed to such positions as compared to the other three settings, (c) public companies hold to the Soviet egalitarian gender ideas, but attitudes and hiring practices remain traditional in preferring male leaders, (d) although recognizing that female superiors can be as good as male superiors, young employees emphasize the "natural calling" of the women (that women's primary focus should be family), (e) emphasis on the importance of ethical leaders was common to all company types.

Religion consists of humanity's beliefs, cultural systems, and worldviews of existence (Geertz, 1973). Its function is not merely a system of symbols that people act according to, but also the establishment of powerful, pervasive motivations in the society. This study intends to analyze the connection of religion and culture by using one of Hofstede's cultural dimensions, power distance (the extent of how power is accepted and expected to be distributed in the society). In this analysis, the researcher investigated the PDI (Power Distance Index) within the Utah Mormon culture. Researcher also compared the PDI scoring of Utah Mormon culture to the general US culture, as well as the PDI in Catholicism and Protestantism culture. The results showed that the unique Mormon cultural region in Utah has the lowest PDI in comparison to the US national culture and that of general Protestant and Catholic communities. This outcome is contrary to the general characterization of power in Utah Mormon culture. The result of this study raised more questions than answers. Although several factors and characteristics that contribute to the low PDI in Utah Mormon society, as well as its implications have been analyzed, the researcher found that this contradiction of the PDI scoring is related to Hofstede's original work. This study is challenging Hofstede's way in treating culture and its components as homogenous. Thus, each fragment of culture needs to be investigated as a separate entity. The study of power distance in Utah Mormon culture indicates how a society can understand its own characteristics and how it can communicate more effectively with other societies with different backgrounds or different PDI based on these characteristics. This study can educate people concerning how Mormons interact and perhaps might even, to a certain extent, at least, explain the conflicts in the society itself. Additionally, the results of this research can be a new contribution to the literature for this field and can further the research in verifying the characteristics of a given society.

In this thesis we statistically measure if normative and cultural-cognitive institutions moderate the relationship of entrepreneurship and economic growth when the entrepreneurial activity is rooted in different motivations. The types of entrepreneurship which we are measuring, in relation to economic growth, are opportunity- and necessity entrepreneurship. By reviewing the literature we found a general agreement regarding the effect of opportunity entrepreneurship on economic growth while the opinions on necessity entrepreneurship are disparate. Taking institutional theory as the basis for moderation fills in several gaps of the existing literature such as using different types of institutions at the same time or fulfilling the demand for cross-country time series study in both entrepreneurship and institutional research. Regulative institutions are taken into consideration when choosing the countries for analysing. Trust, as a proxy for social capital, is used to measure the moderating effect of normative institutions whilst Power Distance Index and individualism are the measures of cultural-cognitive institutions. Relying on secondary data we used an Ordinary Least Square regression and a repeated measures model for analysis.   In line with previous research we found that opportunity entrepreneurship does not have a significant positive correlation with economic growth, when the effect is measured through the productivity enhancement of labour and technology. Necessity entrepreneurship displayed a significantly negative effect. Furthermore, our results did not show any effect when moderating the different motivations for entrepreneurship with trust, power distance or individualism. At the end of our thesis we elaborate on the possible reasons for our findings and suggest some directions for further research.   The thesis contributes to entrepreneurship research with filling the gaps of cross-country, time series study and providing empirical evidence for the existing theories. It enables to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship of entrepreneurship and economic growth. Regarding institutional research, our thesis places some emphasis on the positive effects of institutional dimensions with relations to entrepreneurial context. It would be very interesting to see more research into the negative aspects of institutions to not only understand what fosters productivity of e.g. innovation and labour, but also burdens it.

Background: Impulse buying is increasingly grown and it creates up to 80% of all purchases in certain low involvement product categories. In Sweden, a Swede can spend 20000SEK a year for impulse shopping in average. On the other hand, impulse buying is calculated to be strongly grown in the emerging markets such as Vietnam and Turkey. Due to the steady economic growth of 7% every year in Vietnam, it leads to a higher demand in shopping of the consumers. Similarly, Turkey’s economy is considered as one of the fastest growing economies in Europe and consequently leads to the increase of impulse buying behavior among the customers. Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to expand the understanding of the impulse buying behavior by looking further into the role of culture in cross-cultural contexts Hypothesis:   H1-There is a significant relationship between individualism-collectivism and impulse buying behavior. H2- There is a significant relationship between power distance and impulse buying behavior. H3- There is a significant relationship between uncertainty-avoidance and impulse buying behavior H4- There is a significant relationship between masculinity-femininity and impulse buying behavior Methodology: Three focus groups and seven interviews are served as the pre-study and a cross-cultural questionnaire is substantially conducted across three countries: Sweden, Turkey and Vietnam. Findings: Culture generates certain effects on impulse buying behavior and the influence is diverse across these countries. However, the findings also indicate that there could be other factors that could affect impulse buying behavior.

This dissertation consists of two largely stand-alone chapters. The first chapter presents a goal-activation theory of the antecedents of advice taking. I propose that three separate categories of goals - decision quality, social standing, and emotional well-being - influence receptivity to advice. Decision quality goals increase striving toward a good outcome in the decision for which the advice was given. Social standing goals focus attention on the social effects of the act of taking or rejecting the advice. Emotional well-being goals are related to establishing or maintaining a desired affective state. Each of these goals can be activated by attributes of the situation, advice, advisee, and advisor. Because they increase striving toward different ends, the goals direct attention to disparate advice-related cues and affect the evaluation of those cues. This results in different responses to advice. At the current time, nearly all research on advice taking has addressed decision quality goals and related cues. By presenting this theory, I hope to increase interest in a wider set of antecedents of advice taking. The second chapter reports a series of studies testing hypotheses derived from the theory presented in the first chapter. Specifically, I contrast the effects of an advisor's relative expertise to effects of the advisor's relative hierarchical position on advice taking. I hypothesize that the effects of expertise are driven by decision quality goals, while the effects of relative hierarchical position relate to social standing goals. I further hypothesize that advisees' conceptions of appropriate leader-follower relations (specifically, follower co-production role orientation; Carsten & Uhl-Bien, 2012) activate social standing goals, but not decision quality goals. Lastly, I propose that outcome accountability increases attention to decision quality goals and reduces attention to social standing goals.

As a result of globalization and increase interdependence of the world economies, people from different cultures are interacting more frequently. However, most problems and misunderstandings occur when members of one culture assumes that their own unconscious values and beliefs are equally appropriate in other cultures. Typically, this is more prominent in an international business setting where companies are increasingly operating outside their usual working environment and interacting more with people belonging to other cultures. Even though, there are a huge number of studies which have focused on assessing the behaviours prevailing in different cultures and countries, we have noticed that there is a lack of literature aiming to find the leadership behaviours and styles becoming prevalent when there is a shift from one culture to another. More specifically, we have observed that there is a theoretical gap in the literature for understanding the behaviours which leaders adopt when they move from a high power distance culture to operate in a country classified as low power distance. Additionally, even on the basis of the extensive literature review conducted, it has been noticed that there are no studies which have aimed to find out the reasons behind adopting the prevailing leadership behaviours and styles. To achieve the purpose of this study, a qualitative research design and semi structured interviews were conducted with twelve managers in two different companies. Typically, a French and a Japanese company (both classified with high power distance index) operating in Sweden (classified with low power distance index) were selected. The data was analyzed using grounded theory and appropriate coding (open and selective coding) was adopted to generate sub-categories and categories which would help to explain the phenomenon being studied. As a result of the analysis undertaken, we have found out that both companies belonging to the high power distance culture have adopted distinct leadership styles. Basically, the French company has adopted a directive leadership style owing to the increasing influence which it receives from the home culture whilst the Japanese company has adopted a participative leadership style. It has also been found that the prevailing leadership behaviours are because of a number of factors like; the management cultural beliefs, labour laws, local employees, decision making process, monitoring and supervision process and influence from the host culture.