Abstract
How countries differ in their fundamental cultural traits and how these differences impact firms and businesses has been a recurring topic in international business research. Geert Hofstede’s (1980) work on culture and the cultural dimensions has had high impact on research carried out in international business studies and has been used in a wider array of business/management disciplines to delve into a large variety of phenomena. In this study, we conduct a bibliometric analysis of the articles published in eight top ranked business journals that quoted Hofstede’s work, over a period of thirty years. Hofstede’s work is used as a key marker for culture. In a sample of 655 articles, we conducted citation and co-citation analyses to better understand the ties binding scholars, theories and ideas. Moreover, a longitudinal analysis of both cocitation and research topics allow us to observe and better understand how much does Hofstede – and culture – matter in international business studies and how research emphasis has changed over time. For instance, we noted how the emphasis of research has shifted from methodological concerns to help explaining, contextualizing why firms made the choices they did, and how operations ought to be managed. We discuss broadly the results, pointing some implications, especially for theory and scholars.
Highlights
Competition and firms’ operations are increasingly international in nature, and, being aware of the opportunities and threats emerging in foreign countries, managers can hardly fail
We often refer to this growing interdependence as globalization, but despite the terminology used, these changes have spurred International Business (IB) research to delve into new domains, or dig deeper into reasonably known phenomena
National culture and how countries differ in their cultural traits, norms, values, beliefs, behaviors and ways of doing things (KOGUT; SINGH, 1988; MOROSINI; SHANE; SINGH, 1998; BROUTHERS, K.; BROUTHERS, L., 2001; SHENKAR, 2001), has captured substantial research attention
Summary
Competition and firms’ operations are increasingly international in nature, and, being aware of the opportunities and threats emerging in foreign countries, managers can hardly fail. Many executives monitor what their foreign competitors are doing, how the industry is evolving and how the economy in foreign countries is progressing as they do in their own country. Be it launching a new product, setting a new subsidiary, engaging in an additional cross-border acquisition or broadening their business network taking one more partner, executives are required to understand the challenges of operating in foreign locations. Over the past three decades, culture has been an important facet when researching such IB decisions as the selection of entry modes (KOGUT; SINGH, 1988; BARKEMA; VERMEULEN, 1997, 1998; MOROSINI et al, 1998) and location (ERRAMILLI; AGARWAL; KIM, 1997). Its influence extends to research on such phenomena as expatriation and human resource management (AYCAN et al, 2000), management and performance of multinationals (GOMEZMEJIA; PALICH, 1997), to point only a few
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