Purpose
Cultural studies in business and economics research are still limited to particular cultures. Knowledge on cultural differences may help international corporations to adapt management practices according to the markets they are operating in. The purpose of this paper is to study the issue of escalation of commitment and framing in a new cultural setting involving Germany and Vietnam. This setting is unique and particularly interesting, for Germany being the biggest European market and Vietnam being one of the fastest growing emerging markets in Asia.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a lab experiment with student participants from Germany and Vietnam.
Findings
In a 2×2 in between-experiment, the authors find strong support that Vietnamese participants have a stronger tendency to invest additional resources and evidence that negatively framed information leads to the higher escalation of commitment. Implications are discussed.
Originality/value
The unique empirical comparison is important because differences between other western and eastern countries do not necessarily generalize to the setting.
With the ever-increasing importance of information quality (IQ), research focuses mainly on two approaches, criteria and assessment. Researchers developed a number of frameworks, criteria lists, and approaches for assessing and measuring IQ. Several studies confirm that IQ is a multi-criteria concept, and its evaluation should consider different aspects. However, research and discussions with practitioners indicate that assessing and managing IQ in organizations remains challenging. Despite the subjective character of quality, foremost frameworks and assessment methodologies do not often consider the context in which the assessment is performed. Trade-offs between criteria are often not considered in most frameworks despite strong evidence in the literature that suggests trade-off relations exist. Underlying a user-centric view, this study analyses the importance of selected contextual factors and their impact on IQ criteria. Empirical data are gathered using a questionnaire approach. Results suggest significant context impacts and show that the perceived importance of information quality criteria changed over the last decade. Information and communication technology, available resources, the user role, the department, and the type of information systems influence respondents' perception of IQ. These factors are incorporated in a contextoriented IQ research framework.
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