Education and competitive economy: how do cultural dimensions fit in?

Abstract

Globalization has changed the way people behave in different aspects of life. One of the significant differences is that people are now competing with everyone around the world, not just people within or near their own regions. A good way of remaining competitive is to provide quality education that can help students meet the needs of the competitive economy. However, not all nations are responding in the same way. Using a quantitative approach, this explorative study seeks to discover if, and how, cultural dimensions fit into the process of meeting the demands of the competitive economy by means of education across regions. Forty-three regions with different ratings on the Power Distance Index (PDI), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), and the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) are included in this study. The results show that UAI, PDI and IDV are significant factors relating to this issue.

Sustainable internationalization in South Korean higher education: Languages and cultures in a foreign professor’s course

“…Internationalizing higher education (HE) is one way that countries or institutions can proactively respond to globalization 1 (Altbach and Knight 2007;Ilieva et al 2014;Cheung and Chan 2010), which is defined as the intensified worldwide flow and exchange of capital, goods, people, information, and knowledge resulting from innovations and growth in technology and transportation (Knight 2008;Kreber 2009). Given that globalization means that competition occurs not only locally but also globally (Larrinaga and Amurrio 2015), HEIs have become critical as cultivators of competent individuals who can meet the demands of the competitive global economy (Byun et al 2013;Cheung and Chan 2010).…”

“…Given that globalization means that competition occurs not only locally but also globally (Larrinaga and Amurrio 2015), HEIs have become critical as cultivators of competent individuals who can meet the demands of the competitive global economy (Byun et al 2013;Cheung and Chan 2010). HEI internationalization, which refers to ''any systematic effort aimed at making HE (more) responsive to the requirements and challenges related to the globalization of societies, economy and labour markets'' (Van der Wende 1997, 18, cited in Knight 2008, is thus considered necessary and vital for a country or university to remain competitive worldwide.…”

“…Given that there were only 424 FPs in 1990, there has been a 15-fold increase in the number of FPs hired in SK over the previous 25 years (Korean Educational Statistics Service 2014). At present, hiring FPs is an important component of internationalization, which is a basic strategy for universities seeking worldwide recognition and an economically competitive edge (Cheung and Chan 2010;Jang and Kim 2013;Ljosland 2011).…”

A Longitudinal Study of the Dimensions of Disciplinary Culture to Enhance Innovation and Retention among Engineering Students

“…Different studies have also addressed validity issues with positive results [34,36]. Finally, several studies in the past three decades [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49], even when not reporting instrument reliability or methodological validity, have successfully used Hofstede's theory to study cultural differences, arguing for the validity and reliability of the model overall.…”

Comparative Dimensions of Disciplinary Culture

“…Different studies have also addressed validity issues with positive results [27,28]. Finally, several studies in the past three decades [29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42], even when not reporting instrument reliability or methodological validity, have successfully used Hofstede's theory to study cultural differences, arguing for the validity and reliability of the model overall.…”