Culture and regional innovation performance: an exploration in China

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between culture and regional innovation performance in China where innovation is deemed as a key for sustainable economic development. The diversity of China’s regional culture and its rising economic and innovative capability enhancement provides an opportunity for such an exploration. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts the GLOBE’s nine cultural dimensions to empirically examine the relationship between culture and Chinese regional innovation performance through multiple regression analysis. Findings The study results find that performance orientation and gender egalitarianism have positive and significant influences on regional innovation performance, while institutional collectivism has a negative and significant influence. The remaining six GLOBE cultural dimensions show no significant effect on regional innovation performance. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research exploring the relationship between culture and regional innovation performance in a Chinese context by using GLOBE’s cultural dimensions that are deemed as a valuable empirical alternative to Hofstede’s cultural measures. The results of this study help further the understanding of the cultural influence in China’s regional innovation performance.

Culture values and entrepreneurial innovativeness: A comparative study of Malaysian ethnic entrepreneurs

“…Fourth, a major unprecedented finding is that the coefficients on the index of low uncertainty avoidance indicate an increasing relationship between uncertainty avoidance and EI among Malaysian Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs, which negatively support H6a and H6b in that they are less uncertainty averse than their Malay counterparts. This finding runs counter to the normal findings for the variable (Cakar & Erturk, 2010;Hofstede, 2001;Song et al, 2019;Sun, 2009;Watts et al, 2020). In line with the theory advanced in this article, subcultural perception and minority sociopolitical status may have induced a perverse attitude to uncertainty avoidance among Malaysian Chinese and Indian ethnic groups so that their EI activities are attracted, rather than deterred, by high uncertainty avoidance (as measured conventionally).…”

“…People in societies with high uncertainty avoidance are more likely to use formal interactions with others, keep meticulous records, depend on formalized procedures and policies, take only calculated risks, and show strong resistance toward change. This is in contrast to people in low uncertainty avoidance societies; they are more likely to use informal interactions with others, depend on informal norms, are less calculating while taking risks, and show moderate resistance toward change (Hofstede, 2001;Song et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2020). Accordingly, high uncertainty avoidance tends to have a negative impact on innovation (Rujirawanich et al, 2011).…”

Seeking and explaining culturally meaningful within-country regions: A functional, institutional and critical event analysis

“…It recognizes (1) that each way of theorizing has strengths and limitations, (2) that different WCCR scholars will continue to prefer different ways of theorizing, (3) and that all three ways of theorizing usefully address the practical problems of identifying and explaining WCCRs. These advantages of Song et al (2019) The authors examine the link between culture and regional innovation performance across 31 Chinese provinces. Historical development (I), geography (F), political (I), ethnic, linguistic (I), and economic factors (I) are mentioned as possible reasons for regional cultural differences across China 39.…”

Does (un)-related variety promote regional innovation in China? Industry versus services sector

“…The dependent variable in this study is regional innovation (INN); it is defined as the number of patent applications, which is one of the commonly accepted innovation performance measures (Song et al, 2019). Note that to reduce the heterogeneity of territorial units, regional differences in size are accounted for by dividing patent applications by total employment population according to the work of Ning et al (2016), Song and Zhang (2017) and Miguelez and Moreno (2018).…”