Search results for "cultural diversity"

Consumer perceptions of grocery retail formats and brands

2001

Grocery retailers are operating in a slow‐growth market. The pursuit of market share is one of the main concerns for retail managers. The retail structure is becoming increasingly standardized and homogenous because of concentration of the ownership of stores. Cultural differences remain, however, between different European countries. Cultural factors influence the success of a positioning strategy. This study examined how consumers perceive grocery retail formats and brands in Finland. Data from personal interviews were used in highlighting the consumer perspective. Consumers perceive meaningful differences in various store formats, meanwhile store brands are seen as quite similar. Consume…

Cultural diversity: how can it increases the complexity of teaching mathematics in multicultural class? The case of Chinese students

2015

The paper, examining the increasing presence of different culture students in Italy, discusses the didactical problematic of multiculturalism at School. In particular a possible “comparison” between East (China, Korea and Japan) and West mathematical epistemology is presented through a historical and linguistic cultural approaches. Some evidences of analogies and differences between the cognitive styles of Chinese and Italian learners in mathematics are presented as examples to show the complexity of teaching/learning mathematics in multicultural classroom

Culture at work: how culture affects workplace behaviors

2014

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give structure to the argument that “culture matters.” Further, the aim is to show how cultural differences shape the use of incentives within firms and point toward culturally affected degrees of efficiency. Design/methodology/approach – The paper incorporates differences in the evaluation of the stimuli money, order, and monitoring into a simple efficiency wage model. Profit maximizing firms are assumed. Findings – It is found that the use of incentives should respect the cultural surrounding. Data from a real-world analysis can partly be explained with this model, which was not done before. Research limitations/implications – The major limitation…

2019

The link between colour and emotion and its possible similarity across cultures are questions that have not been fully resolved. Online, 711 participants from China, Germany, Greece and the UK associated 12 colour terms with 20 discrete emotion terms in their native languages. We propose a machine learning approach to quantify (a) the consistency and specificity of colour–emotion associations and (b) the degree to which they are country-specific, on the basis of the accuracy of a statistical classifier in (a) decoding the colour term evaluated on a given trial from the 20 ratings of colour–emotion associations and (b) predicting the country of origin from the 240 individual colour–emotion a…

The 2010 independence jubilees: the politics and aesthetics of national commemoration in Africa

2013

In 2010, as many as seventeen African states celebrated their independence jubilees. The debates surrounding the organisation of these celebrations, and the imagery and performances they employed, reflect the fault lines with which African nation-building has to contend, such as competing political orientations as well as religious, regional and ethnic diversity. The celebrations represented constitutive and cathartic moments of nation-building, aiming to enhance citizens' emotional attachments to the country and inviting to remember, re-enact and re-redefine national history. They became a forum of debate about what should constitute the norms and values that make-up national identity and,…

Food labels: Do consumers perceive what semiotics want to convey?

2011

In this research work, a multidisciplinary approach was applied to answer the question: do consumers perceive what semiotics want to convey? The idea behind was to determine if consumers' expectations and associations raised by simulated yogurt labels, designed with different sign combinations frequently applied in commercial products, were in agreement with results from a semiotic analysis, and to check for cultural differences, comparing results from two Spanish-speaking countries (Spain and Uruguay).A survey of the plain yogurt market was performed, followed by a semiotic analysis of the gathered labels performed by a team of semiotics experts. Only the non-verbal elements such as images…

An empirical study about the effect of cultural problematic on organizational learning in alliances

2003

In an environment where favoring organizational learning is imperative, the option of business cooperation is considered an optimal means to transmit knowledge between companies and to encourage the generation of new ones. But differences in organizational cultures of the cooperation partners can make this process difficult. Through an empirical study of small and medium‐sized companies that had established international cooperation agreements during 1997 and 1998 in the Valencian community (Spain), the influence of the differences in size and in national culture of the partners in organizational learning is observed.

Harmonization and differences in CSR reporting of US and German companies

2016

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to extend the theoretical discussion and empirical evidence on harmonization as well as differences in CSR reporting, and to dismantle inconsistencies owing to the idiosyncratic methods applied in previous studies. While institutional and cultural differences suggest country-of-origin effects, the proliferation of global standards for CSR reporting is expected to promote harmonization.Design/methodology/approach– Based on a literature review hypotheses concerning harmonization and country-of-origin effects were derived. Reports were content analyzed using the software Leximancer. Harmonization effects were examined by comparing reports of companies that…

Cultural Identity in Everyday Interactions at Work: Highly Skilled Female Russian Professionals in Finland

2013

The dominant research strands into social interaction in culturally diverse workplaces have focused on issues of organizational efficiency and discrimination, and they have treated cultural identity as static, monolithic, and universally shared. This study aims to problematize this view. It is argued that our understanding of cultural workplace diversity could be extended through the integration of interpretive and critical interpersonal communication theorizing on cultural identity as dynamic and processual, constructed between and among people in everyday workplace interactions and in relation to larger social, political, and historical forces. This argument is illustrated by an analysis …

Cultural variation of leadership prototypes across 22 European countries

2000

This study sets out to test the assumption that concepts of leadership differ as a function of cultural differences in Europe and to identify dimensions which describe differences in leadership concepts across European countries. Middle‐level managers (N = 6052) from 22 European countries rated 112 questionnaire items containing descriptions of leadership traits and behaviours. For each attribute respondents rated how well it fits their concept of an outstanding business leader. The findings support the assumption that leadership concepts are culturally endorsed. Specifically, clusters of European countries which share similar cultural values according to prior cross‐cultural research (Rone…