The general theory of culture, entrepreneurship, innovation, and quality-of-life: Comparing nurturing versus thwarting enterprise start-ups in BRIC, Denmark, Germany, and the United States

Abstract This study examines influences on quality-of-life of national cultures as complex wholes and entrepreneurship activities in Brazil, Russia, India, China, Germany, and the United States (the six focal nations) plus Denmark (a small-size, economically-developed, nation). The study tests McClelland's (1961) and more recent scholars' proposition that some cultural configurations nurture entrepreneur startups while other cultures are biased toward thwarting startups. The study applies complexity theory to develop and empirically test a general theory of cultures', entrepreneurship's, and innovation's impact on quality-of-life across nations. Because culture represents a complex whole of attitudes, beliefs, values, and behavior, the study applies a set-theoretic approach to theory development and testing of alternative cultural configurations. Each of 28 economical developed and developing nations is scored for the level of the national cultures for each of six focal countries. The study selected for the study enables multi-way comparisons of culture-entrepreneurship-innovation-QOL among large- and small-size developing and developed nations. The findings graphically present the complex national cultural configuration (x-axis) with entrepreneur nurture/thwart (y-axis) of the 28 nations compared to the six focal nations. The findings also include recognizing national cultures (e.g., Switzerland, USA) nurturing entrepreneurial behavior versus other national cultures (e.g., Brazil and India) thwarting entrepreneurial behavior. The study concludes with a call to recognize the implicit shift in culturally implicit thinking and behavior necessary for advancing national platforms designed to successfully nurture entrepreneurship. Entrepreneur strategy implications include the observation that actions nurturing firm start-ups by nations low in entrepreneurship will unlikely to be successful without reducing such nations' high levels of corruption.

[1]  Robert C. Davis,et al.  The Achieving Society , 1962 .

[2]  J. Schumpeter.  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy , 1943 .

[3]  Thomas Schrettle,et al.  The use of global entrepreneurship monitor data in academic research: a critical inventory and future potentials , 2014 .

[4]  Ronald Inglehart,et al.  Mapping Global Values , 2006 .

[5]  David C. McClelland,et al.  8 – THAT URGE TO ACHIEVE , 1985 .

[6]  Robert A. Burgelman.  Corporate Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management: Insights from a Process Study , 1983 .

[7]  D. Mcclelland.  Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs , 1987 .

[8]  A. T. J. Montemiranda,et al.  Poor economics. A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty , 2011 .

[9]  G. Hofstede,et al.  Culture′s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values , 1980 .

[10]  A. Woodside,et al.  Critical Tests of Multiple Theories of Cultures’ Consequences , 2013 .

[11]  G. Gigerenzer.  From Tools to Theories: A Heuristic of Discovery in Cognitive Psychology. , 1991 .

[12]  László Szerb,et al.  The Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEINDEX) , 2010 .

[13]  Gerd Gigerenzer,et al.  Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences , 2009, Top. Cogn. Sci..

[14]  D. C. Shin,et al.  Avowed happiness as an overall assessment of the quality of life , 1978 .

[15]  J. Steenkamp.  The role of national culture in international marketing research , 2001 .

[16]  R. Inglehart,et al.  Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values , 2000, American Sociological Review.

[17]  Aviv Shoham,et al.  Hofstede's dimensions of culture in international marketing studies , 2007 .

[18]  A. Parasuraman,et al.  When the Recipe Is More Important Than the Ingredients , 2014 .

[19]  F. Mavondo,et al.  Entrepreneurship: Its relationship with market orientation and learning orientation and as antecedents to innovation and customer value , 2011 .

[20]  Stephen L. Mueller,et al.  A Case for Comparative Entrepreneurship: Assessing the Relevance of Culture , 2000 .

[21]  S. Schwartz.  A Theory Of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication And Applications , 2006 .

[22]  G. Hofstede.  Culture′s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations , 2001 .

[23]  A. Woodside.  Moving beyond multiple regression analysis to algorithms: Calling for adoption of a paradigm shift from symmetric to asymmetric thinking in data analysis and crafting theory , 2013 .

[24]  Ali M. Quazi,et al.  Conceptualising the link between national cultural dimensions and B2B relationships , 2006 .

[25]  Sankaran Venkataraman,et al.  Regional transformation through technological entrepreneurship , 2004 .

[26]  James Po-Hsun Hsiao,et al.  Applying complexity theory to solve hospitality contrarian case conundrums: illuminating happy-low and unhappy-high performing frontline service employees. , 2015 .

[27]  Arch G. Woodside,et al.  Applying complexity theory to deepen service dominant logic: Configural analysis of customer experience-and-outcome assessments of professional services for personal transformations , 2014 .

[28]  James H. Tiessen.  Individualism, collectivism, and entrepreneurship: A framework for international comparative research , 1997 .

[29]  Sang M. Lee,et al.  Culture, entrepreneurial orientation, and global competitiveness , 2000 .

[30]  David C. McClelland,et al.  Identifying Competencies with Behavioral-Event Interviews , 1998 .

[31]  J. Armstrong,et al.  Replications and Extensions in Marketing - Rarely Published But Quite Contrary , 1994 .

[32]  F. J. Anscombe,et al.  Graphs in Statistical Analysis , 1973 .

[33]  A. Scott.  Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Industrial Development: Geography and the Creative Field Revisited , 2006 .

[34]  Geert Hofstede,et al.  National Cultures in Four Dimensions: A Research-Based Theory of Cultural Differences among Nations , 1983 .

[35]  J. Scott Armstrong,et al.  Replication research's disturbing trend , 2007 .

[36]  Merrill Carlsmith.  Methods of research in social psychology , 1976 .

[37]  Kent E. Neupert,et al.  Culture and National Conditions Facilitating Entrepreneurial Start-ups , 2003 .

[38]  Magnus Henrekson,et al.  Small business activity does not measure entrepreneurship , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[39]  Bradley L. Kirkman,et al.  A quarter century of Culture's Consequences: a review of empirical research incorporating Hofstede's cultural values framework , 2006 .

[40]  Diana M. Hechavarria,et al.  Cultural norms & business start-ups: the impact of national values on opportunity and necessity entrepreneurs , 2009 .

[41]  S. Shane,et al.  The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research , 2000 .

[42]  S. Schwartz.  Beyond individualism/collectivism: New cultural dimensions of values. , 1994 .

[43]  S. Dutta,et al.  The Global Innovation Index 2015: Effective Innovation Policies for Development , 2015 .

[44]  Arch G. Woodside,et al.  Embrace•perform•model: Complexity theory, contrarian case analysis, and multiple realities , 2014 .

[45]  K. Mark Weaver,et al.  Cultural Influences on Entrepreneurial Orientation: The Impact of National Culture on Risk Taking and Proactiveness in SMEs , 2010 .

[46]  Clayton M. Christensen.  The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business , 2011 .

[47]  Israel M. Kirzner.  The Alert and Creative Entrepreneur: A Clarification , 2008 .

[48]  Peer C. Fiss.  A set-theoretic approach to organizational configurations , 2007 .

[49]  P. Brewer,et al.  Avoiding uncertainty in Hofstede and GLOBE , 2010 .

[50]  Culture as a Predictor of Entrepreneurial Activity , 2003 .

[51]  Charles C. Ragin,et al.  Redesigning social inquiry , 2008 .

[52]  C. Gilleard.  The achieving society revisited: A further analysis of the relation between national economic growth and need achievement , 1989 .

[53]  Michael H. Morris,et al.  Entrepreneurship as a significant factor in societal quality of life , 1991 .

[54]  John Urry,et al.  The Complexity Turn , 2005 .

[55]  Roy Thurik,et al.  An Eclectic Theory of Entrepreneurship: Policies, Institutions and Culture , 2002 .

[56]  Peer C. Fiss.  Building Better Causal Theories: A Fuzzy Set Approach to Typologies in Organization Research , 2011 .