Title of the Paper: “National culture and international business: A path forward”

Module Title: Evaluating the Global Context

Module Code: UMSDPM-15-M

Student ID:

Word Count: 1241

 Table of Contents
Summary of the paper...................................................................................................................3

CRAAP analysis............................................................................................................................3

Theoretical approach of the paper.................................................................................................4

Methodology of the paper..............................................................................................................5

Findings and Recommendations...................................................................................................5

References....................................................................................................................................7
Summary of the paper
Shankar et al. (2022) offered their study with two broad aims which included evaluating the
diverse remedies which have been offered by the studies on national and cross-cultural
functions concerning cultural distance theory. Besides, it aimed to offer an alternative concept of
contact theory which underpinned the theoretical framework of how the remedies can be
channelled to mediate the frictions in international business (Golesorkhi et al., 2019). Thus, only
the identification of the factors did not solve the friction among the business negotiations when
the entrepreneurs and corporations were motivated to the conduction of cross-cultural business
and agreements as this theory lacks in the remedies. Finally, the paper proposed the contact-
based paradigm as a better alternative to cultural distance theory.

CRAAP analysis
According to Crowther & Lancaster (2012), CRAAP analysis denotes Currency, Relevance,
Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose which determines the credibility of a particular paper or
source.

Regarding the currency of this paper, this paper was published in 2022 which is very recent with
the contemporary market cases with relevance to the cultural attributes and technological
changes. Besides, 39% of the papers and citations of the study have been accounted for from
2019 with good relevance. Thus, the demerit of this paper is that more than 52% of the citations
and papers have come from 1988-2005 which accounted for 1254 papers. Regarding the
relevance of the paper, the theoretical framework regarding the cultural distance and frictions
observed in different cultural locations over the world such as some European countries and
countries with diverse population clusters such as China and India have worked as the variety of
cultural identification (Chand & Ghorbani, 2011; Frijns et al., 2016). Thus, the major demerit of
this paper is that while the authors have preliminarily criticized for having rigorous remedies
against flaws for the variable of Cultural Distance, they find no or less strong remedies for the
previous theory as most of the studies concluded with the implications of cultural differences
and solutions to the differences by performance acceleration and investing money (argued as
Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) in persuading customers about product features for global
items such as iPhone or Windows services which were expected by Harzing & Pudelko (2016)
to be mediated by local demand prioritisation. The authority of the paper is essentially strong
and credible as the authors including Oded Shenkar, Stephen B Tallman, Hao Wang and Jie Wu
are experienced and professional bodies in their respective positions where they are professors
at The Ohio State University, University of Richmond, University of Amsterdam and University of
Macau respectively who are propounding their career in business administration sectors.

In the case of accuracy, with the use of widely accredited models of the PRISMA framework to
aid the CASP table, they have reviewed more than 189 papers in action where at least one
remedy for the flawed theory of cultural distance was present. Regarding the clearance of the
purpose of the paper, the authors have made it clear that they have acknowledged the
limitations of the paper in denoting only the systematic literature review while a strong
coherence and progressive commitment have been observed to make the findings consistent
with the two broad aims by inferring the examples from diverse business orientations such as
joint ventures, greenfield investment and franchising (Nicholson & Salaber, 2013).
Theoretical approach of the paper
In engaging the criticism and investigation of the flaws adhered in Kogut & Singh's (1988) study,
Shenkar et al. (2022) have gained help from several theories such as Hofstede’s cultural
dimensions where they have indicated that previous study has drawn the unforeseen
conclusions from the limited dimensions such as power distance between the countries,
uncertainty avoidance tendency of the consumers and entrepreneurs etc which has triggered
the limitations of the cultural distance as further investigation of GLOBE Project which spanned
its investigation on 60 countries to denote the differences and frictions such as while US
investors expect the timely presence of the foreign negotiators with viable business offers,
Indian investors delay and depends on bribery practice due to local political affiliations (Huang
et al., 2017). In this regard, the major limitation of this paper was to provide limited shed towards
Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs where authors have reported that biological and social
needs of self-esteem are rooted in the TCE concept which Karolyi (2016) argued that TCE has
little relationship or negative in some cases where the frictions or the distances among the
cultures can not be mediated by the investment towards the more benefits to the customer in
some countries. For example, Japan a country of cultural rigidity always concentrates on the
company’s legacy, commitment and privacy of customers in offering the products and services
whereas the TCE concept with the selling of personal information for more services with lower
costs is not allowed which may be possible in Chinese and Indian market (Nicholson & Salaber,
2013).
Methodology of the paper
This study employed a systematic literature review with the papers published between 1988 to
September 2019 period. Here, the PRISMA framework has been supported with Boolean
operators such as AND, OR and NOT to find the papers from the Web of Science journal. After
excluding 434 papers due to the less coherence, 613 papers were sustained for selecting the
final 189 papers that used Cultural Distance as the main or controlled variable (Shankar et al.,
2022). The thematic analysis performed with the identification of emerging codes helped to find
the remedies and review the contact theory as the final proposition. Thus, the demerit in the
case of using more than 613 due to the purpose of only observing the main or controlled
variable of Cultural Distance limited the findings as other more specific papers might produce
valid findings.

Findings and Recommendations

The proposed alternative model of Contact theory has distinguished from the previously limited
theory of Cultural Distance, as the alternative one has indicated that it inherits the advantages of
more localisation, coordination, communication and interaction with the consumers, parties,
investors, governments and other relevant stakeholders in the country of cross-cultural
difference (Kirkman et al., 2017). The most significant finding of this paper was to acknowledge
that the contact theory which is popular in other settings such as physics, chemistry, social
sciences and other fields can be channelled and successively used in the mediation of cultural
frictions if the investors interact and communicate with the consulting firms of third countries or
understand the customers with direct communication (may be surveyed, focus group discussion
and other forms of communication) to make contact and interaction (Koch et al., 2016). For
example, the paper found that it is vital to contact the customers of deprived but volume zone
areas before offering the luxury items if the company expects high volume sales because the
same global strategy of offering luxury items may not work in the Indian or Bangladeshi market
which works in United states or European countries (Chand & Ghorbani, 2011).

It is highly recommended to expand this contact-based paradigm to different countries' analysis

and cultural differences to know whether the contact-based friction mediation works in another
setting with multi-correlative case studies as well. It is also recommended to deploy the same
model to both volume zones and luxury customers to find whether the frictions or the differences
among the cultural values and norms remain the same or different concerning product choices
and economic conditions to find the relationship between them.
References
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comparison of the Indian and Chinese immigrants in the US. International Business
Review, 20(6), pp.593-606.

Crowther, D. and Lancaster, G., (2012). Research methods. Routledge.

Frijns, B., Dodd, O., & Cimerova, H., (2016). The impact of cultural diversity in corporate boards
on firm performance. Journal of Corporate Finance, 41(C): 521-541.

Golesorkhi, S., Mersland, R., Randøy, T., & Shenkar, O., (2019). The performance impact of
informal and formal institutional differences in cross-border alliances. International Business
Review, 28(1): 104-118.

Harzing, A. W., & Pudelko, M., (2016). Do we need to distance ourselves from the distance
concept? Why home and host country context might matter more than (cultural)
distance. Management International Review, 56(1): 1-34.

Huang, Z., Zhu, H. S., & Brass, D. J., (2017). Cross‐border acquisitions and the asymmetric
effect of power distance value difference on long‐term post‐acquisition performance. Strategic
Management Journal, 38(4): 972-991.

Karolyi, G. A., (2016). The gravity of culture for finance. Journal of Corporate Finance, 41(C):
610-625.
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Consequences: The 35-year journey. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(1): 12-29.

Koch, P. T., Koch, B., Menon, T., & Shenkar, O., (2016). Cultural friction in leadership beliefs and
foreign-invested enterprise survival. Journal of International Business Studies, 47(4): 453-470.

Kogut, B., & Singh, H., (1988). The effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode.
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Nicholson, R.R. and Salaber, J., (2013). The motives and performance of cross-border
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Shenkar, O., Tallman, S.B., Wang, H. and Wu, J., (2022). National culture and international
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