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In line with emerging conceptualizations of humility in organizations, the purpose of this paper is to examine how leader humility and distance-based factors (i.e. power distance orientation (PDO) and hierarchical distance) interact to predict follower psychological empowerment.

The authors tested the hypotheses using a sample of 294 employees in South Korea. Moderated regression and bootstrapping analyses were conducted to test for direct and moderated relationships.

Results indicated that leader humility positively predicted follower psychological empowerment, and followers’ PDO positively moderated this relationship. Results of a three-way interaction indicated that the impact of leader humility on follower psychological empowerment was strongest when both followers’ levels of PDO and hierarchical distance were high.

Humility can provide a new lens through which to understand the leadership process. Beyond anecdotal accounts, this study provided strong evidence for the value of humility on the list of qualities essential for successful leadership.

This is the first study to provide empirical evidence for the moderating effect of PDO and hierarchical distance on the relationship between leader humility and follower empowerment. The findings highlight the benefits of understanding the roles of followers’ cultural value orientation and hierarchical position in the effectiveness of leader humility.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new ontological content‐based filtering method for ranking the relevance of items for readers of news items, and its evaluation. The method has been implemented in ePaper, a personalised electronic newspaper prototype system. The method utilises a hierarchical ontology of news; it considers common and related concepts appearing in a user's profile on the one hand, and in a news item's profile on the other hand, and measures the “hierarchical distances” between these concepts. On that basis it computes the similarity between item and user profiles and rank‐orders the news items according to their relevance to each user.

The paper evaluates the performance of the filtering method in an experimental setting. Each participant read news items obtained from an electronic newspaper and rated their relevance. Independently, the filtering method is applied to the same items and generated, for each participant, a list of news items ranked according to relevance.

The results of the evaluations revealed that the filtering algorithm, which takes into consideration hierarchically related concepts, yielded significantly better results than a filtering method that takes only common concepts into consideration. The paper determined a best set of values (weights) of the hierarchical similarity parameters. It also found out that the quality of filtering improves as the number of items used for implicit updates of the profile increases, and that even with implicitly updated profiles, it is better to start with user‐defined profiles.

The proposed content‐based filtering method can be used for filtering not only news items but items from any domain, and not only with a three‐level hierarchical ontology but any‐level ontology, in any language.

The purpose of this paper is to address the importance of cultural values, the organizational culture and management style for innovation. It also comparatively evaluates the actual performance of European countries in innovation.

In this paper, the theoretical frameworks of the well-known scholars Hofstede, House, Schwartz, Boisot and Cameron and Quinn are critically evaluated and compared with each other. In addition, the authors compared the cultural rankings and the actual performance in innovation of selected European countries. Before addressing the impact of culture on the innovative strength of nations, different definitions of innovation are being described. The theoretical framework developed on the basis of the six Hofstede dimensions is composed; the nine House dimensions are supplemented and the Schwartz values for innovative strength of nations are also being discussed. Culture as a knowledge asset, the positioning in information space and its influence on innovation following the theories of Boisot and the different cultural types as defined by Cameron and Quinn have been studied and evaluated. The performance of European countries in innovation has been evaluated on the basis of the Global Innovation Index, the patent applications to the European Patent Office and the European Innovation Scoreboard.

Based on literature review, one can conclude that there is a strong positive relation between several cultural characteristics of countries in question and their innovative strength. The results of this paper point out the importance of cultural values for innovation.

This research has assessed the relation between national culture in general on the innovative strength of nations. Future research on which cultural characteristics and management styles have the strongest correlation with the innovative strength of nations could provide valuable insights for both scholars in this research field and for institutions and companies that wish to improve their innovative strength.

The results of this study provide us with the insight that the innovative strength of a nation or organization can be altered by changing (parts of) its culture. A practical implication of this finding is that a government can, for example, increase its nation’s innovative strength by encouraging cooperation between different institutions and by limiting rules and regulations which could cause barriers in the innovation process.

A social implication of the findings of this study is the knowledge that to improve the innovative strength of a nation, a government needs to pursue a pro-active policy of transforming national culture, for example, by changing the educational system and decreasing the power distance between teachers and students. Such an effort to influence the national culture addresses interesting issues regarding the concept of social engineering.

By critically evaluating the qualitative cultural frameworks of several well-known scholars and relating them to quantitative statistical data about the innovative strength of nations, this study has combined the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and produced non-trivial findings in an original manner.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderator role of hierarchical distance (HD) in the relationship between human resources management (HRM) practices and organizational performance (OP, perceived/financial). To date there is no empirical evidence that demonstrates whether HD affects this relationship.

These relationships are examined through an empirical study of 102 small- and medium-sized enterprises from Europe (Spain). Partial least squares structural equation modeling is used to test the moderator effect of HD.

The results show that HD is a cultural dimension which moderates the relationship between HRM practices and OP. Furthermore, when OP is studied in relation to HRM practices, the use of perceived measures are considered more appropriate as these indicate the opinion of employees and managers regarding about OP.

The non-cross-sectional character of the paper.

Organizations should consider HD when deciding the structure and application of their HR practices, since a lesser HD has positive effects on business results.

Little attention has been paid to non-linear models, with particular reference to the inclusion of cultural dimensions – such organizational culture (i.e. HD) – in HRM models.

Drawing from our current original research on cultural trends in Latin America‐based multinational firms, this paper challenges the stereotypical perception of Latin America as a homogeneous region and explores the cultural distances among groups of multinational employees. After collecting surveys from 733 employees across eight multinationals in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, we establish that, much like it happens in other lumped‐together regions of the globe, such as “East Asia” and “Africa”, Latin American countries present significant differences in the way firm employees respond to situations where cultural traits are at stake. By researching these countries, we recorded significant variation in aspects such as the treatment and place of women in the workplace, attachment or detachment to formal rules, formal organizational hierarchies, and structured business planning, in addition to varying levels of tolerance to invasion of privacy. Implications of the study include the need to develop methodologies that adequately capture cultural differences within large geographic blocs and business practices that prepare the expatriate, the international manager, and the policy maker for the different realities they are bound to encounter in different countries.

This article aims to analyze the Iranian and American national cultures and to discuss the implications of cultural differences for communication/negotiation styles.

First, the concept of culture is framed and an integrative model of cultural analysis is constructed. Then, building on the extant literature and secondary data, the various traits of American and Iranian national cultures are analyzed and the implications for communication/negotiation are discussed.

It is found that Iran and America portray dissimilar and somewhat opposed cultural orientations that might create substantial obstacles to their bilateral communications/negotiations. Recommendations for more effective communications/negotiations are provided and avenues for future research are pointed out.

Both Iran and the USA are diverse societies and obviously cannot be considered as monolithic cultures. Moreover, any generalization about the national culture is inherently approximate and does not take into account the intra‐country variations. Another major limitation of this study is that it considers culture as static and unchangeable, however, every culture is in constant transformation.

By bringing insights into the American and Iranian cultures, this study provides a better understanding of cross cultural differences and thus it may lead to effective bilateral communications/negotiations.

While this paper provides valuable insights into the Iranian‐American communication patterns, its main originality resides in offering a cross cultural approach to understanding international affairs. Moreover, the results can be extrapolated to other similar situations when Eastern/Islamic and Western cultures are involved.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent to which different patterns of cross-functional integration and the operations strategy (OS) process may be explained by national cultures differences.

Perceptual survey data from 105 manufacturing plants in four countries were used to validate the constructs and to test the hypotheses. The plants are located in two Western and two Eastern countries with different industrialization and development backgrounds (Brazil, China, Germany and South Korea). CFA validated the constructs, and ANOVA and t-tests evaluated the differences between levels of four Hofstede’s elements (i.e. power distance, individualism vs collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term vs short-term orientation) on the OS process enablers (i.e. leadership for cross-functional integration and functional integration) and elements (i.e. manufacturing strategy linkage to corporate strategy and formulation of manufacturing strategy).

Results suggest that different OS and OM processes are present in different national cultures. Leadership for cross-functional integration and manufacturing strategy linkage to corporate strategy differ between levels of power distance, individualism vs collectivism and uncertainty avoidance. Functional integration and formulation of manufacturing strategy also present differences according to the degree of individualism vs collectivism and long-term orientation.

Results indicate that national culture is a key aspect for the OS process. Prior studies usually do not consider cultural aspects. Therefore, the OS process varies in different countries and contexts. Managers need to adjust their OS process when they are developing a global OS.

This study aims at offering a comprehensive thesis about the relationship between different cultural values and innovativeness.

Building on the human emancipation perspective and using data from Hofstede’s, Schwartz’s, and Inglehart’s cultural frameworks, the authors conduct a cross-national investigation into the effects of cultural values on national innovativeness.

The analyses show that emancipatory cultural dimensions such as rationality, secularity, self-expression, individualism, low uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, mastery and autonomy have significantly positive associations with national innovativeness. The opposing cultural values, such as traditionalism, religiosity, survival, collectivism, high uncertainty avoidance, short-term orientation, harmony and conservatism, have negative associations with national innovativeness.

This study contributes to the literature by putting forward a comprehensive and theory-driven explanation of the relationship between cultural values and innovativeness, by using all of Hofstede’s, Schwartz’s and Inglehart’s dimensions, by incorporating ethnic, linguistic and religious diversities and by applying alternative measures of the national innovativeness.

The purpose of this study was to examine the organizational context that may support learning and change readiness climates that previous research has found to be conducive to implementing evidence-based interventions.

An exploratory, mixed method evaluation that included 15 rheumatology clinics throughout the United States was performed. Quantitative data were collected using a web-based survey completed by 135 clinic members. Qualitative data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 88 clinic members.

In general, clinics reported strong, positive learning and change readiness climates. More complex organizations (e.g. multispecialty, academic medical centers) with rational/hierarchical cultures and members with longer tenure were associated with less supportive learning and change readiness climates. The authors’ findings highlight opportunities for organizational leaders and evidence-based intervention sponsors to focus their attention and allocate resources to settings that may be most susceptible to implementation challenges.

First, the authors address a deficit in previous research by describing both the level and strength of the learning and change readiness climates for implementing an evidence-based shared decision-making aid (SDMA) and examine how these vary as a function of the organizational context. Second, the study examines a broader set of factors to assess the organizational context (e.g. organizational culture, organizational structure, ownership) than previous research, which may be especially salient for shaping the climate in smaller specialty clinics like those we study. Third, the authors utilize a mixed methods analysis to provide greater insights into questions of how and why organizational factors such as size and structure may influence the learning and change readiness climate.

Despite the global nature of the UN Global Compact (UNGC), a platform for the development, implementation and disclosure of responsible and sustainable corporate policies and practices, the participation of organisations is unequally distributed across societies. This paper aims to explore the relationship between national cultures, as defined by Hofstede, and organisations voluntarily affiliating with the UNGC.

This study tests the relationship between national culture and firm affiliation with the UNGC using data derived from Hofstede’s works and information available on the UNGC website and other websites and accounting databases, covering 282 firms in 30 countries on 4 continents.

The results indicate that firms in countries with high individualism or high masculinity rankings are more likely to affiliate with the UNGC. In addition, organisations in countries with less uncertainty avoidance, short-term orientation and high restraint are also more likely to affiliate with the UNGC.

The results are interesting for initiatives like the UNGC. The development strategies and democratisation tools developed by this initiative will have to take into account the specific cultural features of different countries.