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The purpose of this study is to explore the current state of corporate governance in various aspects of business settings and to empirically examine the impact of national culture on corporate governance performance, with a view of supporting business corporations in further enhancing the effectiveness of their corporate governance system.

A pooled sample of 9,003 companies drawn from 50 countries across ten different regions is collected. A variety of statistical methods, including the paired sample t-test, the ordinary least squares regression and the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient are implemented to analyze the current state of corporate governance. To empirically investigate the causal relationship between national culture and corporate governance, the multivariate regression analysis is also applied.

This study proposes a broad set of the empirical findings regarding the current state of corporate governance. Despite being accepted as a prerequisite building block for sustainable corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate governance is still receiving far less attention among business corporations. The governance framework is widely adopted by business corporations, yet the intensity of implementing corporate governance is significantly different across regions. The variation of the intensity observed across regions can be explained by the national cultural characteristics that are all likely to impact the degree to which corporations act in corporate governance manners. Corporate governance performance is strongly related to three other aspects of socially responsible corporate performance – community, employee and environment.

This study provides both the motivation and a starting point for further investigation in the milieu of corporate governance. It would be interesting for future research to further explore the extent to which corporate governance has a positive indirect impact on a firm’s financial performance. There is potential to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the interaction effect of national culture and geographic region on corporate governance performance of the corporations embedded in that region through a statistical interaction method. In addition, it may be interesting to integrate corporate financial performance (CFP) into the analysis to identify a specific type/practice of the corporate governance that could provide the highest return on the investment. Last, another interesting avenue for future research would be to explore the ethical mechanisms that have been institutionalized to promote corporate governance practices.

The present study is beneficial to both business corporations and policy makers. In essence, the study can potentially draw managers’ attention to applying modified corporate governance strategies according to their national culture. Furthermore, the study can alter business corporations to promote a strong corporate governance regime in chorus to CSR strategies so as to promote CSR development, which ultimately results in higher levels of competitiveness and CFP. In addition, policy makers who are responsible for inward foreign investment can use the findings of this study to evaluate the investors’ potential governance adoption.

The findings of this study are useful in encouraging the business corporations to further strengthen their corporate governance system. This study helps to fill the theoretical void regarding the cultural impact on corporate governance by exploring a broad set of national cultural characteristics under which good corporate governance is more or less likely to occur.

In today’s business world, trust is an essential ingredient for business success, as it serves as a foundation for enhancing a network of positive relationships among businesses, clients, employees and stakeholders. This study aims to shed light on a deeper and more substantial understanding of trust by examining the casual association between national culture and trust.

The study empirically investigates the extent to which cultural factors promote and constrain the level of trust using a mixed sample of 46 developed and developing countries observed over the period of 1990-2014.

The study provides new empirical evidence that trusting behavior is explained systematically by national culture. Countries with high individualistic and high long-term oriented cultures are the most favorable environment that fosters trust among people in society. In contrast, individuals from countries with the expression of high power distance and high uncertainty avoidance cultures appear to exhibit less trust in others.

The study provides managerial implications, especially for managers and management consultants in a global context, regarding the cultural relevance of trust in the new and foreign environment, and the effective management of trust among culturally diverse workforces and business relationships. In addition, the study should serve as a supplemental learning material in the business and management disciplines to demonstrate the essential role of trust in the global business environment.

The study adds to the existing body of knowledge on trust by offering new empirical insights into how culture plays an influential role in the creation of trust. This serves as a good starting point for academic scholars and practicing professionals to further develop appropriate management strategies and execution plans for managing trust across different cultural settings.

The purpose of this study is to address the call for empirical research on trust and culture highlighted in the existing literature. This study empirically investigates the underlying cultural values of trust across multiple countries – the term used to describe specific cultural environments that have the potential to influence the way in which people demonstrate trust toward others – and then documents their subsequent influences on the success of organization development (OD) efforts in international contexts.

Using data from multiple sources, this study conducts a series of empirical tests to investigate the underlying cultural values of trust in a large sample of 42 countries over the past 20 years (2000–2020). Then, the study further extends the findings to propose an empirically developed framework, namely, a country classification, which can be used to assess whether cultural environments in a specific country appear to support or impede trust behavior and the likelihood of success in implementing OD initiatives and interventions in international contexts.

Trust is robustly related to cultural values. Specifically, people from countries with high power distance and uncertainty avoidance cultures tend to exhibit less trust in others, whereas those from countries with high individualistic and long-term oriented cultures are more likely to trust others. The country classification further demonstrates that Estonia, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands are the group of countries whose cultural values appear strongly consistent with the underlying cultural values of trust, implying a greater likelihood of success for OD efforts and interventions. On the other hand, Colombia, Egypt, Iraq, Libya and Mexico are the group of countries whose cultural values appear to differ significantly from the underlying cultural values of trust, suggesting potential obstacles for successful OD efforts and thus appropriate modifications of OD interventions are essentially needed. The results for other countries are also discussed.

The findings offer several practical implications for the community of OD consulting, especially those who work internationally in cross-national consulting projects or deal with culturally diverse organizations. These include a more sophisticated understanding of the cultural environments that support or impede the willingness to trust in a specific foreign country, an evidence-informed strategy to design or adopt appropriate OD interventions that align with the cultural environments of a foreign country and a framework to assess and improve the likelihood of successful OD interventions in international contexts.

To the author’s best knowledge, this is the first study to conduct an empirical examination of the influence of culture on trust in a comprehensive manner, subsequently providing a transitional bridge between two major strands of trust research in the current OD literature: trust serves as a necessary foundation for successful OD efforts and the willingness to trust can potentially be explained through cultural spheres. Second, this study explores trust behavior in international contexts and develops a country classification concerning the influence of culture on trust, both of which have never been accomplished in prior research.

This study aims to empirically examine the underlying cultures of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities contributing toward employee: compensation and benefits (CB); diversity and labor rights (DLR); and training, safety and health (TSH), with a view of supporting both business corporations and policymakers in effectively designing and implementing employee-related CSR strategies in the global market.

The proposed empirical model, namely, pooled ordinary least square (OLS) regression, is tested against a novel proprietary data set of 8,940 corporations from 48 countries across nine different regions. The prototypical models of cultural configurations are benchmarked against Hofstede’s country cultural scores on six dimensions to categorize the lists of countries in which the three specific employee-related CSR activities would appear to be culturally appropriate, as well as difficult to implement.

The study offers the cultural configuration models to identify the potential nature and range of cultural values that seem to support CSR activities contributing toward employee: CB – high power distance, high individualism, low masculinity, low uncertainty avoidance, medium long-term orientation and either relatively medium or low indulgence; DLR – medium power distance, medium individualism, low masculinity, high uncertainty avoidance, either relatively medium or low long-term orientation and medium indulgence; TSH – medium power distance, medium individualism, low masculinity, high uncertainty avoidance, medium long-term orientation and medium indulgence. The study further categorizes countries (cultural areas) in which these three specific employee-related CSR activities would appear to be culturally appropriate, as well as difficult to implement.

The findings provide both the motivation and a starting point for further academic inquiries. First, future research should further explore how specific industry and firm size have an impact on firms’ employee-related CSR activities. Second, the dynamic relationship of national culture and employee-related CSR activities over time should also be examined. Finally, appropriate management techniques or interventions to overcome the cultural constraints that prevent business corporations from promoting employee physical and mental fineness should also be fruitful area for further investigation.

The study offers meaningful strategic implications of employee-related CSR activities for business corporations and policymakers. Specifically, the cultural configuration models, together with the practical framework, should serve as a benchmark for evaluating a likelihood of successful implementation on a particular employee-related CSR activity in a given context and for customizing business corporations’ CSR strategies and activities to fit within a cultural environment of the host country in which they operate. For policymakers dealing with employee rights and labor standards, the findings can be applied to assess foreign investor’s preferences regarding employee-related CSR engagement and activities.

This is the first study to develop the cultural configuration models that provide business corporations culturally meaningful insights into how to effectively design and implement their employee-related CSR strategies in the global market. The study also offers a practical framework – a set of countries in the global marketplace where employee-related CSR activities are likely to be implemented successfully, or encounter challenges and difficulties.