Linking regional autonomy\u2013embeddedness value orientation and innovation

Vladyslav Soloviov

doi:10.1186/s13731-022-00218-3

Abstract

Culture, as a key driver of innovative activity, has been largely analysed at the national and organisational levels by interdisciplinary studies. This article investigates the relationship between Schwartz’s cultural dimensions and innovation, proxied by the number of patent applications to the European Patent Office, at the regional level. Using European Social Survey questionnaire, Eurostat and European Patent Office data and employing factor analysis and multilevel models, the link between culture and innovation is examined for regions of 26 European countries. The results of the analysis show that cultural differences are significantly related to differences in patenting even between regions of the same country. In particular, a higher autonomy–embeddedness score is significantly positively linked to patent applications at the regional level. The study highlights the usefulness of region-level cultural dimensions, providing evidence of more precise results obtained when these dimensions are used in the analysis.

Highlights

Variance in the innovative activities of different countries cannot be fully explained by economic factors, as variation in innovation exists even between countries with similar levels of economic development and entrepreneurial activity
The correlations between value orientations and innovative activity are consistent with prior research for the latter two variables (Moonen, 2017; Taylor & Wilson, 2012), with egalitarianism–hierarchy suggested to have a nonlinear relationship with innovative activity (Dickson et al, 2003)
The obtained results confirm a strong link between autonomy–embeddedness and patent applications at a regional level, providing evidence that the difference in cultural manifestations cannot be reduced to those defined by national borders

Summary

Introduction

Variance in the innovative activities of different countries cannot be fully explained by economic factors, as variation in innovation exists even between countries with similar levels of economic development and entrepreneurial activity. Numerous studies confirm the link between culture and innovation (Kirkman et al, 2006, 2017) Such studies, mostly measure culture at the country level, which does not always reflect differences in the norms and beliefs of people living in different regions of a given country. Several papers outline both the possibility and importance of using regional-level cultural indicators (Hofstede et al, 2010a; Kaasa et al, 2013, 2014) Such papers generally focus on Hofstede’s theory, the first large-scale quantitative study that produced cultural data for future empirical studies. There has been severe criticism of Hofstede’s cultural theory based

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