Long-term orientation represents one of six dimensions of national culture. In general, scholars find the highest levels of long-term orientation in Asian economies, while the U.S. holds a reputation for the most short-sighted culture. Yet, the emphasis on national differences can obscure significant variation in long-term orientation across industries and firms within countries. This paper shows how a measure of firm-level investment horizon developed in the strategic management literature (aggregated to the country level) can capture the construct underlying Hofstede’s cultural score for long-term orientation in a more flexible way. We then use this measure to show that variation in investment horizon across firms exceeds the variation at the industry or country level of analysis. In addition, we demonstrate that the influence of relative performance on investment horizon, seen previously in U.S.-based studies, can be confirmed and extended in a study of over 2,700 manufacturing firms worldwide. We conclude by highlighting other research questions that can be explored in more detail by exploiting the flexibility offered by the investment horizon measure.