IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbvent/v27y2012i2p234-247.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does culture still matter?: The effects of individualism on national innovation rates

Author

Listed:
  • Taylor, Mark Zachary
  • Wilson, Sean

Abstract

Does a society's culture affect its rate of inventive activity? This article analyzes several independent datasets of culture and innovation from 62 countries spanning more than two decades. It finds that most measures of individualism have a strong, significant, and positive effect on innovation, even when controlling for major policy variables. However, the data also suggest that a certain type of collectivism (i.e. patriotism and nationalism) can also foster innovation at the national level. Meanwhile, other types of collectivism (i.e. familism and localism) not only harm innovation rates, but may hurt progress in science worse than technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Taylor, Mark Zachary & Wilson, Sean, 2012. "Does culture still matter?: The effects of individualism on national innovation rates," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 234-247.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:27:y:2012:i:2:p:234-247
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2010.10.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088390261000087X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2010.10.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manuel Trajtenberg, 1990. "A Penny for Your Quotes: Patent Citations and the Value of Innovations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(1), pages 172-187, Spring.
    2. Daniels, Peter L., 1997. "National technology gaps and trade -- an empirical study of the influence of globalisation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(8), pages 1189-1207, January.
    3. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Andrew M. Warner, 1995. "Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 5398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Guido Tabellini, 2010. "Culture and Institutions: Economic Development in the Regions of Europe," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 677-716, June.
    5. Grossman, Gene M. & Helpman, Elhanan, 1995. "Technology and trade," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1279-1337, Elsevier.
    6. Hall, Bronwyn H. & Jaffee, Adam & Trajtenberg, Manuel, 2000. "Market Value and Patent Citations: A First Look," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt1rh8k6z2, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    7. Ruttan, Vernon W., 2006. "Is War Necessary for Economic Growth?: Military Procurement and Technology Development," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195188042, Decembrie.
    8. McGrath, Rita Gunther & MacMillan, Ian C. & Scheinberg, Sari, 1992. "Elitists, risk-takers, and rugged individualists? An exploratory analysis of cultural differences between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 115-135, March.
    9. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2006. "Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 23-48, Spring.
    10. Tiessen, James H., 1997. "Individualism, collectivism, and entrepreneurship: A framework for international comparative research," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 12(5), pages 367-384, September.
    11. Adam B. Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg & Michael S. Fogarty, 2000. "The Meaning of Patent Citations: Report on the NBER/Case-Western Reserve Survey of Patentees," NBER Working Papers 7631, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. World Bank, 2002. "World Development Indicators 2002," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 13921, December.
    13. Akkermans, Dirk & Castaldi, Carolina & Los, Bart, 2009. "Do 'liberal market economies' really innovate more radically than 'coordinated market economies'?: Hall and Soskice reconsidered," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 181-191, February.
    14. Shane, Scott A., 1992. "Why do some societies invent more than others?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 29-46, January.
    15. Furman, Jeffrey L. & Porter, Michael E. & Stern, Scott, 2002. "The determinants of national innovative capacity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 899-933, August.
    16. Greif, Avner, 1994. "Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(5), pages 912-950, October.
    17. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64, pages 416-416.
    18. Mueller, Stephen L. & Thomas, Anisya S., 2001. "Culture and entrepreneurial potential: A nine country study of locus of control and innovativeness," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 51-75, January.
    19. Jean O. Lanjouw & Mark Schankerman, 1999. "The Quality of Ideas: Measuring Innovation with Multiple Indicators," NBER Working Papers 7345, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. David S. Landes, 2006. "Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 3-22, Spring.
    21. Sharif, Naubahar, 2006. "Emergence and development of the National Innovation Systems concept," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 745-766, June.
    22. Taylor, Mark Zachary, 2004. "Empirical Evidence Against Varieties of Capitalism's Theory of Technological Innovation," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 601-631, July.
    23. Shane, Scott, 1993. "Cultural influences on national rates of innovation," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 59-73, January.
    24. Temin, Peter, 1997. "Is it Kosher to Talk about Culture?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 57(2), pages 267-287, June.
    25. Markus Balzat, 2006. "An Economic Analysis of Innovation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 4011.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mark Zachary Taylor, 2007. "Political Decentralization and Technological Innovation: Testing the Innovative Advantages of Decentralized States," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 24(3), pages 231-257, May.
    2. James B. Ang, 2015. "Agricultural Legacy, Individualistic Culture, and Techology Adoption," Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series 1506, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre.
    3. Castellani, Marco, 2019. "Does culture matter for the economic performance of countries? An overview of the literature," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 700-717.
    4. Jayasekara, Dinithi N. & Fredriksson, Per G., 2021. "Culture, intellectual property rights, and technology adoption," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 317-330.
    5. Klasing, Mariko J., 2013. "Cultural dimensions, collective values and their importance for institutions," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 447-467.
    6. Di Pietro, Francesca & Butticè, Vincenzo, 2020. "Institutional characteristics and the development of crowdfunding across countries," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    7. Assmann, Daisy & Ehrl, Philipp, 2021. "Individualistic culture and entrepreneurial opportunities," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 1248-1268.
    8. María-José Pinillos & Luisa Reyes, 2011. "Relationship between individualist–collectivist culture and entrepreneurial activity: evidence from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 23-37, July.
    9. David Urbano & Sebastian Aparicio & Victor Querol, 2016. "Social progress orientation and innovative entrepreneurship: an international analysis," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(5), pages 1033-1066, December.
    10. Kilponen, Juha & Santavirta, Torsten, 2004. "Competition and Innovation - Microeconometric Evidence using Finnish Data," Research Reports 113, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    11. Ufuk Akcigit, 2009. "Firm Size, Innovation Dynamics and Growth," 2009 Meeting Papers 1267, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Emmanuel Duguet & Megan MacGarvie, 2005. "How well do patent citations measure flows of technology? Evidence from French innovation surveys," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(5), pages 375-393.
    13. Laura E. Grube & Virgil Henry Storr, 2015. "The Role of Culture in Economic Action," Advances in Austrian Economics, in: New Thinking in Austrian Political Economy, volume 19, pages 21-46, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    14. Laura Magazzini & Fabio Pammolli & Massimo Riccaboni, 2008. "Patent Value and R&D Competition," Working Papers 51/2008, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    15. Takanori Ida & Naomi Fukuzawa, 2013. "Effects of large-scale research funding programs: a Japanese case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(3), pages 1253-1273, March.
    16. Per Botolf Maurseth, 2005. "Lovely but dangerous: The impact of patent citations on patent renewal," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(5), pages 351-374.
    17. Stavins, Robert & Jaffe, Adam & Newell, Richard, 2000. "Technological Change and the Environment," Working Paper Series rwp00-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    18. Lorraine Uhlaner & Roy Thurik, 2010. "Postmaterialism Influencing Total Entrepreneurial Activity Across Nations," Springer Books, in: Andreas Freytag & Roy Thurik (ed.), Entrepreneurship and Culture, chapter 0, pages 301-328, Springer.
    19. Erkko Autio & Saurav Pathak & Karl Wennberg, 2013. "Consequences of cultural practices for entrepreneurial behaviors," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 44(4), pages 334-362, May.
    20. Yutao Sun & Seamus Grimes, 2016. "The emerging dynamic structure of national innovation studies: a bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(1), pages 17-40, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:27:y:2012:i:2:p:234-247. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusvent .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.