The implications of national and regional long-term orientation on entrepreneurial activity

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between culture and entrepreneurial activity at both the national and regional levels of analyses. While there has been significant progress in investigating the effects of culture on entrepreneurial activity, most work overlooks the effects that time-orientation may have on national or regional entrepreneurial activity. Specifically, this study argues for the connection between long-term orientation (LTO) and subsequent levels of entrepreneurship such that the more a nation or region is long-term oriented, the higher the subsequent entrepreneurial activity will be. Design/methodology/approach Data from the World Value Survey (WVS), which is a global project that measures individuals’ values across 62 countries (World Value Survey, 2011), were used for this project. The final sample consisted of 36,652 individual observations across 29 nations and 262 regions and was analyzed using ecological factor analyses and multilevel modeling. Findings The findings suggest that LTO as a cultural dimension does influence entrepreneurship activity levels. The findings also suggest that the effects of LTO at the regional and national levels vary widely. Specifically, the authors find LTO to be positively related to entrepreneurship at the regional, but not national, level of analysis. Originality/value The findings reveal important nuances about the implications that the understudied cultural factor of LTO has on entrepreneurial activity across multiple levels of analysis.

Seeking and explaining culturally meaningful within-country regions: A functional, institutional and critical event analysis

“…Regional cultural differences were tied to geographical conditions (F), historical imprints (I), religious beliefs (I), economic development (I), and degree of exposure to foreign influences 40. Lortie et al (2019) The authors examine the link between Long-Term Orientation and entrepreneurship at both regional and national levels. Regional cultural differences are explained by functional explanation (such as climate and presence of natural resources) (F) and social learning (socialization) (I) 41.…”

“…Climate, including temperature, rainfall, and seasonality, provides some of the earliest (including classical and Renaissance) functional explanations for cultural regions (Vidal, 2003) and continues to be used to explain country culture (House, et al, 2004;Van de Vliert, 2009). Withincountry climate differences have been evoked to explain regions of Brazil (Alfinito, et al, 2019;Hofstede, et al, 2010;Lenartowicz and Roth, 2001), China (Kwon, 2012;Kwon and Shan, 2012;Xu, et al, 2019), Turkey (Marcus et al, 2019), the United States and Canada (Dheer, et al, 2014), India (Dheer, et al, 2015) and other large world areas (Lortie et al, 2019). Scholars evoke climate to explain why and how societies raise crops and livestock and how current cultural qualities emerged and persisted from such early choices.…”

“…Some discussions of WCCR wealth use functional theorizing by attributing economic development to natural resources like mining, fishing, and fertile soil (Dheer, et al, 2015;Peterson and Van Iterson, 2015;Ralston, et al, 1996). Other natural resource explanations for WCCRs propose that cities attract citizens by having raw materials (Lortie et al, 2019;MacNab, et al, 2007).…”

“…Of these 24 studies, all compared regions of a single country. Because of the Hofstede's (1980) dimensions (Hofstede et al, 2010;Kaasa and Vadi, 2010;Kaasa, et al, 2013;Kaasa, et al, 2014;Lortie et al, 2019;Van Hoorn, 2015). Others (Minkov and Hofstede, 2012;Minkov and Hofstede, 2012;Hirschle and Kleiner, 2014;Waehning, et al, 2018) use Schwartz Human Values Scale items that differ from Schwartz's original SVS items (Schwartz, 2006).…”

Teaching entrepreneurship in China: culture matters

“…A substantial body of empirical research demonstrates how culture impacts the rate and type of national entrepreneurial activity (Fleck et al , 2020; Oo et al , 2018; Shirokova et al , 2018). For example, Lortie et al (2019) examine the link between long-term orientation (LTO) and entrepreneurial activity in 62 countries and find that countries with LTO have a high rate of entrepreneurial activity. Pinillos and Reyes (2011) conclude that individualism has traditionally favoured entrepreneurial activity after analysing GEM data from 52 countries.…”