To αντικείμενο της παρούσας διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι η μελέτη της συμπεριφοράς των χρηστών της Wikipedia, όταν πραγματοποιούν μια τροποποίηση περιεχομένου ενός άρθρου, σε σχέση με την χώρα καταγωγής τους. Η μελέτη ξεκινάει με μια γενική παρουσίαση των ιστοσελίδων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης με έμφαση στις Wikipedia αλλά και της έρευνας του ολλανδού κοινωνιολόγου Geert Hofstede και τις θεωρίας του περί την ύπαρξη πέντε κοινωνικών διαστάσεων που μπορούν να περιγράψουν αρκετά ικανοποιητικά κάθε κράτος και τους κατοίκους του. Στην συνέχεια, κατασκευάζουμε μια εφαρμογή η οποία αντλεί και συλλέγει δεδομένα σχετικά με τις τροποποιήσεις από πέντε διαφορετικές εκδόσεις – γλώσσες της Wikipedia για 8 διαφορετικά άρθρα και τα κατηγοριοποιεί ανάλογα με το είδος της τροποποίησης. Τέλος, γίνεται η προσπάθεια εξαγωγής κάποιων συμπερασμάτων σχετικά με τον τρόπο συμπεριφοράς των χρηστών που προέρχονται από το ίδιο κράτος συγκρίνοντας τα δεδομένα που συλλέξαμε για κάθε διαφορετική γλώσσα με τις διαστάσεις που έχει μετρήσει ο Geert Hofstede για το αντίστοιχο κράτος. / The subject of this thesis is to study the behaviour of the users of Wikipedia when editing the content of an article, with respect to the country of origin of the user. The study begins with an overview of social networking websites with a focus on Wikipedia and a presentation of the research of the Dutch sociologist Geert Hofstede and his theory of the existence of five social dimensions that can describe quite well each country and its residents. Afterwards, we develop an application that draws and collects data from the article history about the edits of eight Wikipedia articles from five different editions – languages of Wikipedia and classifies them according to the type of the edit. Finally, we attempt to export some conclusions about the behaviour of users from the same country by relating the data we exported for each language to the dimensions measured by Geert Hofstede for the corresponding country.

This dissertation consists of two self-contained chapters that empirically examine bidder firm returns of U.S. companies in cross-border mergers and acquisitions. In chapter one I examine how cultural distance between bidder and target country impacts internalization benefits. The results suggest that shareholders are initially concerned about the acquisition in culturally distant countries, which outweighs any potential benefits from internalization. However, in the long-run we observe a significant reversal of these findings. In the second and third year following the announcement, greater cultural distance positively impacts the bidder firm's operating performance and the bidder experiences significant internalization benefits from technological know-how when cultural distance is great. Long-run calendar-time returns further support this finding. These results add to the existing literature by highlighting the importance of cultural distance when examining internalization benefits. In chapter two I attempt to explain abnormal bidder firms' returns in cross-border mergers and acquisitions by comparing the first-mover hypothesis to the late-mover hypothesis. I also study the reactions of rival firms to bidder firm announcements as a further test of the first-mover hypothesis. The findings suggest that cross-border acquisitions are generally value-destroying for strategic pioneers unless cultural distance between the U.S. and the target country is great. Further, I find positive announcement effects for followers as long as cultural distance is small.

This study seeks to explore an understudied population, Middle Eastern students, in the area of instructional communication. Of particular interest, the study seeks to understand how Middle Eastern students’ view their Western instructors’ verbal and nonverbal immediacy. The literature review establishes a conceptualization for verbal and nonverbal immediacy and the relationship between immediacy and gender, and immediacy and culture. Expectancy violations theory is used to understand the phenomena from an expectancy violations perspective and Hofstede’s dimensions will be used in an instructional context to understand how Middle Eastern students’ culture may influence students’ expectations. This study uses a mixed method approach to create a holistic views of Middle Eastern students’ expectations and expectancy violations. The survey method seeks to understand Middle Eastern students’ expectation for instructor verbal and nonverbal immediacy, and email responses seeks to understand expectancy violations and cultural influence on student expectancies. The results of the study show that Middle Eastern students view verbal and nonverbal immediacy as important factors in the student-teacher relationship and cultural factors play a role in students’ expectations.

Probation officers are departing their employment before retirement at a high rate depending on the agency, location, and type of position, which impacts society. The cost associated with training a new officer could consume a large portion of an agency's yearly budget, leaving many inexperienced officers to supervise dangerous offenders and defendants. Thus, it is important to examine factors influencing retention such as whether individualistic and collectivist values predict a relationship between retention intent of probation officers. The purpose of this quantitative research study, guided by Hofstede's cultural theory, was to determine whether family embeddedness influences retention intent of probation officers. Linear regression was used to examine the relationship between the variables. The Sobel test was used to determine if family embeddedness mediated retention-intent. Federal probation and pretrial services officers (n=85) from 5 regions completed online survey questionnaires (Individualistic values scale, Employee Retention scale, Global Measure of Job Embeddedness, and Auckland Individualism and Collectivistic Scale). The results showed that family embeddedness is not a mediator for probation officers that possessed individualistic or collectivistic values. The social change implication of this study includes a recommendation for the development of an employee screening instrument that identifies employees' values to increase retention of probation officers, which can be used to select and train staff.

This study has investigated whether cultural differences affect how one perceives sexual advertising. The study has focused on Sweden and South Korea, which showed great differences in Hofstede's cultural framework. Sweden, according to Hofstede, is considered to be a feminine country and has low uncertainty avoidance. In contrast to South Korea, which is considered masculine and is one of the most uncertainty avoiding countries in the world. The study examined whether these cultural aspects affect how the consumer perceives sexual advertising. To answer this, data was collected through a questionnaire, with Swedish and South Korean university students as respondents. The results showed that there were differences in how Swedish and South Korean participants experienced sexual advertising, although not as great differences as expected. The South Koreans proved to be more easily upset by the advertising than the Swedes, however, it turned out that no one felt interested in buying the promoted product, regardless of culture.

The master thesis is focusing on Hofstede's cultural dimensions in Prague, Bratislava and Vienna. There were 174 students who filled-in the questionnaire called "Value survey 1994". The aim of this work is to verify results of Hofstede's cultural dimensions and discuss obstacles of his methodology. One of the challenges is to create a comparable sample of respondents. Their characteristics should be as similar as possible except for nationality. The sample of 160 students was tested by Kruskal-Wallis test and groups were not significantly different. The interesting finding was the age of students. Although students in Austria enter university when they are 18, it is one year earlier than in Czechia and Slovakia, the student were same age. The results were litle bit different from Hofstedeho values because of university surrounding/enviroment. As this model is obsolete, today's cross-cultural researches are using cluster analysis which compares countries from made up graph of vaules which tend to group based on cross-national differencies. Hofstede's model was used because of his availability and simplicity. In addition, this work is trying to utilize Hofstede's model in Social Geography. However, this work found cross-cultural research very usefull for characterizing countries with possible use in...

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The global economy is continually evolving, with new market trends constantly emerging. There appears to be one exception, globalization remains a dominant and consistent trend, even among SMEs. Numerous SMEs enter international markets, encountering diverse business standards and cultures, and must align their local strategies with global responsibilities. They need to consider their position in the global economy and their impact on all stakeholders, from actors in the supply chain to citizens in the countries where they operate. Corporate Social Responsibility has become an increasingly important approach for businesses to understand and improve their global impact and competitiveness by adapting both internal and external strategies. Therefore, this thesis investigates how internationalization impacts CSR initiatives for SMEs when expanding across European borders and how these practices contribute to companies' long-term success. Moreover, the emphasis on culture is investigated through Hofstede's cultural dimensions and the CAGE distance framework, to understand the challenges and opportunities related to cultural differences, along with other distances between countries encountered while internationalizing. Furthermore, CSR is investigated based on popular cluster definitions and approaches suggested by the EU and the UN. For the simplicity of this thesis, SMEs originating from Sweden and Germany have been the focal point of this research.  For this thesis, primary and secondary data have been collected and will be analyzed using a qualitative research approach. Secondary data comprising theoretical literature was collected and analyzed from numerous databases. Primary data was gathered through Semi-structured interviews with four specialists employed at SMEs and one expert working with local and global SMEs regularly. This data collection will be analyzed to suggest successful CSR approaches related to the internationalization within Europe.  This research concludes that SMEs must understand their global responsibilities to stay competitive in the international market as CSR will become an inevitable part of a company's business strategy. Companies prioritize different aspects of CSR based on their size and industry and adjust these strategies in line with market trends and the conditions of their respective industries. The extent to which companies can integrate CSR into their core values and business plans depends on the resources available to them.

The modern world is more and more dependent on information. As grows its importance, so does its quantity. That is why the good communication, especially the visual one, is indispensable for the proper disclosure and addressing of potential recipients of information. Graphic design provides the form of visual communication. The interconnection of different cultures is linked with the quick pace of globalization - thus the communication with different cultures is important. Each culture is based on specific values that can vary and very often do to a great extent. These values are then reflected in all areas of human activity, graphic design included. At first, we define the term culture and have a look at the process by which we acquire it - to find out its influence on us. We use as a means the interdisciplinary approach which draws knowledge on cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology and anthropology. Next, we focus on the principles of visual perception and studies concerning the difference in behavior and visual perception in different cultures. We divide the world on the basis of culture-shape events into different cultural units and we analyze graphic design in different cultures by using the knowledge from the previous chapters. We point out the principles and potential pitfalls of symbols and colors in the communication with other cultures. We describe the way how the paradigm of cultural values is reflected in the graphic design and we try to capture the features of visual communication typical for each culture.

This master thesis aims to compare consumer behavior of generation Y (people born in the period 1982-2002) in the Czech Republic and Hong Kong, based on questionnaire data. Special attention is paid to corporate social responsibility and protection of the environment, which begin to play an important role in consumer behavior. The differences between nations are examined through the questionnaire survey, which was filled out by 155 respondents. For a deeper understanding and identification of individual motifs, consumers were conducted semi-structured interviews that focused on environmental problems and corporate social responsibility. Hong Kong and the Czech Republic have different level of individualism and uncertainty avoidance, except these two cultural dissimilarities, there were no significant differences between these two nations. Environmental protection plays a larger role in the consumer behavior of Generation Y than corporate social responsibility for both nations. Corporate social responsibility is more important for young women than for young men.