Abstract
Cultural psychology has great potential to expand its research frameworks to more applied research fields in business such as marketing and organizational studies while going beyond basic psychological processes to more complex social practices. In fact, the number of cross-cultural business studies has grown constantly over the past 20 years. Nonetheless, the theoretical and methodological closeness between cultural psychology and these business-oriented studies has not been fully recognized by scholars in cultural psychology. In this paper, we briefly introduce six representative cultural constructs commonly applied in business research, which include (1) individualism vs. collectivism, (2) independence vs. interdependence, (3) analytic vs. holistic cognition, (4) vertical vs. horizontal orientation, (5) tightness vs. looseness, and (6) strong vs. weak uncertainty avoidance. We plot the constructs on a chart to conceptually represent a common ground between cultural psychology and business research. We then review some representative empirical studies from the research fields of marketing and organizational studies which utilize at least one of these six constructs in their research frameworks. At the end of the paper, we recommend some future directions for further advancing collaboration with scholars in the field of marketing and organizational studies, while referring to theoretical and methodological issues.
Highlights
For the past 30 years, the field of cultural psychology has succeeded in addressing the diversity of human psychological processes such as cognition, emotion, and motivation, aiming to demonstrate the substantial effects of culture on basic psychological processes and advocating the need to include cultural theories in mainstream psychological academics
While the results indicated a high degree of fit for her model, Lee (2000) reported cultural variations in what were considered critical factors for the subjects’ purchase decisions: people in collectivist cultures emphasize significant others’ responses to their purchases whereas people in individualistic cultures emphasized their own attitudes for their purchase decisions, suggesting that the key component of attitude may depend on the subject’s culture
Many cross-cultural marketing studies have demonstrated diversity in perception of advertisement and brand images, while addressing the fact that those high in horizontal orientation were more likely than their vertical counterparts to be attentive to personal qualities rather than hierarchy
Summary
For the past 30 years, the field of cultural psychology has succeeded in addressing the diversity of human psychological processes such as cognition, emotion, and motivation, aiming to demonstrate the substantial effects of culture on basic psychological processes and advocating the need to include cultural theories in mainstream psychological academics. To answer this question, this conceptual paper reviews six representative, measurable cultural constructs as tools from social and cultural psychology which either have already gained traction in or that we believe could be extremely useful to fields of business research: (1) individualism vs collectivism, (2) independence vs interdependence, (3) analytic vs holistic cognition, (4) vertical vs horizontal orientation, (5) tightness vs looseness, and (6) strong vs weak uncertainty avoidance. Hofstede and Bond (1988), Hofstede et al (2010), and Hofstede (2011) added two more dimensions to the theory: (5) short- vs long-term orientation (flexible vs fixed view toward the world) and (6) indulgence vs restraint (valuing freedom vs valuing duty) Of these six dimensions, individualism vs collectivism has caught business scholars’ interest and has gained popularity in cross-cultural business research, partly because it explains the divisions that are popular across the social sciences and because it is extremely useful for analyses of group behaviors in any setting.
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