Organizational Culture and Firms’ Internationalization, Innovativeness and Networking Behaviour: Hofstede Approach

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this paper is to describe the features of firms’ organizational culture within four of Hofstede’s national culture dimensions and their potential relationships with internationalization, innovativeness and networking behaviour of firms.

Research, Design & Methods: This explorative quantitative research refers to results of an earlier study on internationalization, innovativeness and networking of firms in
Poland. Descriptive statistics are used to depict the features of the organizational culture of the firms differing in behaviour in the three fields.

Findings: The study leads to two hypotheses. First is that higher power distance is conducive for firms’ internationalization and innovativeness. The second is that the lower uncertainty avoidance supports internationalization, innovativeness and networking behaviour of firms.

Implications & Recommendations: An attempt to create more consistent measures of organizational culture dimensions should be made in future analyses. This could help to achieve more sound results on the relationships between organizational culture and firms’ behaviour in internationalization, innovativeness and networking.

Contribution & Value Added: The paper gives an insight into the organizational culture features relationships with a broad area of firms’ behaviour related with their ability to gain competitive advantage.

Keywords

organizational culture, Hofstede approach, internationalisation, innovativeness, networking

Author Biography

Maja Szymura-Tyc

Professor and head of the Department of International Managment, Faculty of Management, University of Economics in Katowice (Poland), specializing in international business and marketing

Michał‚ Kucia

Assistant professor in Department of Markets and Consumption, Faculty of Economic of the University of Economics in Katowice (Poland), specializing in marketing research, trade and e-commerce

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