WISSENSCHAFTLICHE BEITRÄGE AUS DEM TECTUM VERLAG

Reihe Wirtschaftswissenschaften

WISSENSCHAFTLICHE BEITRÄGE AUS DEM TECTUM VERLAG Reihe Wirtschaftswissenschaften Band 70

Milena Di Bucchianico Company Management Reports as Decision Support Tools in a Multinational Context

Tectum Verlag

Milena Di Bucchianico Company Management Reports as Decision Support Tools in a Multinational Context. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge aus dem Tectum Verlag Reihe: Wirtschaftswissenschaften; Band 70 Zugl. Diss., Leuphana Universität Lüneburg 2012 Umschlagabbildung: © L'Officina delle Invenzioni, offinv.com � Tectum Verlag Marburg, 2013 ISBN 978-3-8288-5954-8 (Dieser Titel ist zugleich als gedrucktes Buch unter der ISBN 978-3-8288-3108-7 im Tectum Verlag erschienen.) Besuchen Sie uns im Internet www.tectum-verlag.de www.facebook.com/tectum.verlag

Bibliografische Informationen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Angaben sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar.

A Enno, Victoria e Alexandra,

per avermi sopportato e supportato con il loro amore in questa mia avventura

e al mio Papá, per avermi insegnato il valore della curiositá,

che genera i sogni, e la forza della perseveranza, che aiuta a realizzarli

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Acknowledgments

The interpretation and application of company management reports within a mul-tinational organisation has been part of my daily work for many years. It is always challenging to be responsible for documents addressed to a huge variety of decision makers, with different background, attitudes preferences and expectations. I must therefore thank my main doctoral thesis supervisor, Professor Dr. Egbert Kahle, for allowing me the opportunity to make my work interest the topic of my re-search. He believed in my project from the beginning and he encouraged me during the whole research process with his valuable feedback and his inestimable support. Special thanks go also to my second PhD supervisor, Professor Dr. Markus Reihlen, for his helpful and constructive advice on qualitative research methods.

My exploratory research is based on a case study designed on a specific context: the tire division of Continental AG. I wish to acknowledge Mr. Burkhardt Köller, who gave me the opportunity to carry out my research within the organisation. Sincere thanks also go to Dr. Heinrich Exeler and Mrs. Anne Küllig who were always ready to support me and to answer to my questions about Continental AG any time. Thank you both very much.

I would like to express my gratitude to all those German and Italian colleagues at Continental AG who agreed to participate as respondents in this work. I will not mention their names, in order to preserve their anonymity: I really appreciated the time you dedicated to my project. Thank you for your commitment, your openness and your sincerity in answering my questions.

My deep gratitude goes to Miriam Müthel, who recognised my enthusiasm to real-ise this research. Without her initial encouragement I would have probably never started it.

______

When you start a project like a PhD research at my age, with two young daughters and a full time job, you can only push till the end with the help of very special people. Thanks, therefore, to Ruth and Hermann Kecker, who were there every time I needed a support in balancing my professional, private and academic life. Furthermore, I could even not imagine to start such a project without the precious

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support of my mother, who never though twice to take a flight from Italy to come in my aid. For that and more: grazie, mamma. Many thanks also to Dario Oggiano and my sister, Elisabetta Di Bucchianico (L´Officina delle Invenzioni), for the wonderful cover of this book. Finally I wish to thank the most important “pieces of my heart”: my husband, Enno Kecker, for his patience and readiness to accept me spending my free-time on this project; and my little, wise princesses, Victoria and Alexandra, able to give me the energy I needed, just with their smiles.

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CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations 13

List of pictures and tables 15

Chapter 1: Introduction 17

1.1 Purpose of the study and research questions 17 1.2 General and scientific interest of the research 19 1.3 The basic approach of the present study 19 1.4 Structure of the essay 20

PART I – LITERATURE REVIEW 23

Chapter 2: Framing the Context – The Three Research Dimensions 25 2.1 Introduction 25 2.2 National Culture (NCU) 28

a. Definition of National Culture 28 b. Classifications of national cultures 34

2.3 Decision Making Process (DMP) 43 a. The traditional definitions of decision making process 44 b. The social factors related to the business decision making process 51 c. The emotional factors of business decision making process 55

2.4 Company Management Reports (CMRs) 60 a. Definition of Company Management Reports 60 b. Purpose of company management reports 63 c. Classification of company management reports 64 d. Core elements of a company management report 67 e. Principles and rules for an engaging reporting communication 68

2.5 Conclusions 75

Chapter 3: Known interrelations between Decision Making Process, National Culture and Company Management Reports 79

3.1 Introduction 79 3.2 Influence of National Culture on the Decision Making Process 82

a. The impact of national culture on the cerebral process of decision making 82 b. The impact of national culture on the mental process in making decisions 85 c. The impact of national culture on business decisions 91

3.3 Processing the reported information for making decision (DMP/CMR) 93 a. Relation between CMRs and type of decisions 94

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b. Relation between CMRs and decision style 97 3.4 Impact of National Culture on the company information

management (NCU/CMR) 100

a. Impact of NCU in the individual information management 101 b. Impact of NCU on the individual preference for reporting means 104 c. Impact of NCU on the content of CMRs: the case of managerial

accounting 108 3.5 A multidimensional analysis of Italian and German cultures 112

3.5.1 Historical and sociological premises Italian national culture 113 3.5.2 German national culture 116 3.5.3 Italian culture vs. German culture 119

3.6 Conclusions 127

PART II – EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION 131

Chapter 4: Methodology 133 4.1 Introduction: general methodology and research design 133 4.2. Case Study description 137 4.3 The context: Continental AG – Tyres Division 140 4.4 The case study object: Sales Information System Markis2 142 4.5 The units of analysis: sampling procedure 143 4.6. Data Collection methods 147

4.6.1 General description 147 4.6.2 The documentary research 149 4.6.3 The cultural profile questionnaire 150 4.6.4 The semi-structured interview 152

4.7. Data analysis method 156 4.7.1 Analysis of the informants´ cultural profile 157 4.7.2 Analysis of the favourite management reports 168 4.7.3 Analysis of the overall information collected through the interviews 169

4.8. Ethics 170 4.9. Quality paradigms ensuring reliability and validity of the research 172 4.10 Conclusions 176

PART III – FINDINGS 179

Chapter 5: Findings – Introduction 181 5.1 Structure of the findings 181 5.2 Cultural profile of informants 182

5.2.1 Germans 182 5.2.2 Italians 185 5.2.3 Germans vs. Italians 188

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5.3 Structure and content of the favourite management reports submitted by the informants 192

5.3.1 Most favourite sales management reports of German informants 192 5.3.2 Most favourite sales management report of Italian informants 195 5.3.3 Sales management reports: preferences of Germans vs. preferences

of Italians 198 5.4 Conclusions 199

Chapter 6: Interpretation of Management Reports 201 6.1 Introduction 201 6.2 Degree of subjective interpretation 202

a. Gut- driven decisions 202 b. Interpretation freedom 207 c. Data-persons priority 211

6.3 Trustworthiness of data source 216 a. Importance of source trustworthiness 217 b. Subjective evaluation of the reliability of reported data 221

6.4 Goals of company management reports 224 6.5 Conclusions 229

Chapter 7: Management Reports as Decision Support Tools 233

7.1 Introduction 233 7.2 Usefulness of management reports as decision support tools 234 7.3 Contribution of management reports to problem detection and framing 242 7.4 Contribution of management reports to problem solving 254 7.5 Conclusions 262

Chapter 8: Management Reporting features 265 8.1 Introduction 265 8.2 Form of the report 266 8.3 Information layout 273 8.4 Content of the report 281 8.5 Conclusions 292

PART IV – CONCLUSIONS 295

Chapter 9: Inductive Reasoning Based on the Narrative Findings 297 9.1 Introduction 297 9.2 Impact of the national culture on the individual interpretation of

company management reports 298 9.3 Impact of the national culture on the usage of the company

management reports as decision support tools. 300

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9.4 Impact of the national culture on the individual evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of CMRs´features. 302

9.5 The role of company management reports in the decision making process of Germans and Italians 305

9.6 The ideal features of company management reports fulfilling the expectations of Germans and Italians 306

9.7 A critical analysis of the main studies clustering national cultures, in the light of our findings 308

Chapter 10: Beyond the Research Goals: Influence of Social Determin- ants of the Business Decision Making Process on the Individual Content-Context Orientation 311

10.1 Introduction 311 10.2 The social determinants impacting our model 312 10.3 The dynamics in our model 313 10.4 Conclusion 317

Chapter 11: Limits of the Present Study and Future Steps 319 11.1 Introduction 319 11.2 Limits of the present study 319 11.3 Future steps 322

BIBLIOGRAPHY 325

ATTACHMENTS 339

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List of Abbreviations

CMC Corporate Marginal Contribution

CMR Company Management Report

Conti Continental AG

CVT Commercial Vehicle Tyres

DMP Decision Making Process

IMS Information Management System

IND Industrial Tyres

IS Information System

MR Management Report

NCU National Culture

PAI Polychronic Attitude Index

PY Previous year

PLT Passenger and Light Truck Tyres

SDS Search for Dominance Structure

Std Standard

TWH Two Wheels Tyres

YTD Year-to-date

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List of pictures and tables (The number before the dot indicates the chapter where you can find the picture or the table)

Picture 1.1: Research field: the literature review focus and the research´s questions 18

Picture 2.1: The three dimensions of the research 25 Picture 2.2: Framing the literature review 26 Picture 2.3: Sources of individual´s identity 30 Picture 2.4: The three level of human "mental programming" 31 Picture 2.5: The "onion": Manifestations of culture at different levels of depth 32 Picture 2.6: Graphical representation of the Hofstede´s cultural dimensions related to some nationalities 37 Picture 2.7: Trompenaars´national clusters 39 Picture 2.8: Globe study: Cultural influence on leadership and organisation 41 Picture 2.9: Country clusters based on Globe study 42 Picture 2.10: The three levels of DMP 43 Picture 2.11: Basic representation of the DMP 50 Picture 2.12: Impact of social factors on the business DMP 54 Picture 2.13: The whole brain model of Ned Herrman 57 Picture 2.14: Basic interrelations between social and emotional factors and their influence on the basic business DMP 60 Picture 2.15: Information Technology and Information systems 63 Picture 2.16: Factors driving management information needs 64 Picture 2.17: Understandability and perception of reported information 70 Picture 2.18: The five Dimensions of Information Usability – theoretical balance 70 Picture 2.19: Audience definition system 71 Pictur 2.20: Comparison of national cultures clusters proposed by Hofstede, Trompenaars, Galtung and Globe study 76 Picture 3.1: Interrelations between the three dimensions of the research under investigation in the literature review phase 79 Picture 3.2: fMRI scanner images of American and Asian brains during judgement trials carried out by MIT´s researchers group 84 Picture 3.3: High Context – Low Context demographic ranking 89 Picture 3.4: From data to company information 93 Picture 3.5: Entrepreneurial bridging among information spheres 94 Picture 3.6: Anthony´s Pyramid 95 Picture 3.7: Past-present and future in the evaluation phase of DMP 96 Picture 3.8: Decision styles 97 Picture 3.9: Objective of Information Processing 99 Picture 3.10: Main features of low context and high context cultures 102 Picture 3.11: Classification of accounting measures in capitalistic countries 110 Picture3.12: Hofstede´s dimensions of German and Italian cultures 120 Picture 3.13: Mintzberg´s preferred configurations of organizations, projected on the Power Distance-Uncertainty avoidance matrix of Hofstede 121

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Picture 3.14: The cultural profile of Germans and Italians for Trompenaars 122 Picture 4.1: Hall´s theory and the three “dimensions” of our study 145 Picture 5.1: Cultural profile of German and Italian informants 189 Picture 5.2: German and Italian informants: average cultural profiles 191 Picture 7.1: Usage of company management reports by Germans and Italians within the decision making process 264 Picture 9.1: Interpretation of management reports: major findings from the narrative approach 299 Picture 9.2: Usage of management reports as decision support tools: major findings from the narrative approach 301 Picture 9.3: Effective and efficient features of CMRs: major findings from the narrative approach 303 Picture 10.1: Influence of the social determinants on the context/content orientation of business decision makes 316 Table 3.1: Monochronic-Polychronic Dichotomy: main features 90 Table 3.2: Verbal elements in annual reports of company belonging to automobile industry 105 Table 3.3: Extra-verbal elements in annual reports 106 Table 3.4: Non-verbal elements in annual reports 107 Table 3.5: Practice „Inventories“, Price Waterhouse 1975 – classification by Da Costa, Bourgeois and Lawson 110 Table 3.6: Globe Study: Social clusters and leader styles 124 Table 3.7: Comparison of German and Italian profiles from the perspective of Hofstede, Trompenaars, Hall, Globe Study and Galtung 126 Table 4.1: Context, object and units of analysis of our case study 140 Table 4.2: Approach of the interview to the research fields 152 Table 4.3: The cultural dimensions 158 Table 4.4: Cultural Depth Index of case study´s units of analysis 164 Table 4.5: Cultural Complexity Index of case study´s units of analysis 165 Table 4.6: Cultural Variety Index of case study´s units of analysis 165 Table 4.7: Company Culture Index of case study´s units of analysis 166 Table 4.8: Relative Intercultural Exposure of case study´s units of analysis 167 Table 4.9: PAI of case study´s units of analysis 168 Table 5.1: Basic cultural information about German Informants 182 Table 5.2: German informants: cultural indexes 184 Table 5.3: Basic cultural information about Italian Informants 185 Table 5.4: Italian informants: cultural indexes 187 Table 5.5: Correlation between Polychronicity Attitude Index (PAI) and the main cultural data 188 Table 5.6: Cultural indexes: basic statistical values 190 Table 6.1: Answers to person-data driven questions 211

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Chapter 1

Introduction

The purpose of company management reports is to support the decision makers of an organization with accurate, timely and consistent information minimizing the risk of information overload1. They can be a powerful decision support instru-

ment for the decision makers of the organisation in making operative and strategic decisions at different levels and with a different impact on the company and its performances. Those reports are only internally available to the organisation. They embody information that can have a different role in the individual decision making process (DMP) of their addressees

In a multinational and multicultural company the complexity of the organisa-tion makes difficult to develop an efficient management reporting system. One of the main reasons is the different cultural background of the reports´ receivers, as it influences their way to understand, to interpret and to use the reported infor-mation.

1.1 Purpose of the study and research questions

With our research we intended to verify if and why decision makers, with dif-

ferent national cultures, use the information available in the company man-

agement reports at their disposal in a different way. We will take into account only individual decisions, so we will not consider the way information available in management reports are processed within a collective decision making process.

The purpose of the present study is to contribute to find an answer to the follow-ing questions:

1 Gallier, R.D.and Leidner, D.E. 2003. Strategic Information Management: Challenges and Strategies in

Managing Information Systems, Third Edition, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, p. 524

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What influence has the national cultural background of the decision makers on the interpretation of the management reports?

How do management reports actually support the decision making process of business decision makers with a different national culture?

What are the efficient and effective features of company management reports for decision makers with different national cultures?

The picture above visualizes the context of our research fields: it shows the ques-tions answered by the existing literature, as well as the questions we intend to answer with our work.

Picture 1.1: Research field: the literature review focus and the research questions

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1.2 General and scientific interest of the research

The present study can contribute in extending the knowledge on the specific field of management reports as decision support tools. The impact of national culture in the social and business environments is actually of great interest in the scientific field: the number of articles falling under the cross-culture heading in the decade 1961-1970 were just 544, this number increased in the decade 1971-1980 (1899 articles), doubled in the time between 1981 and 1990 (3.892 articles), reached 7.184 in the years between 1991 and 2000 and, just between 2001 and 2006 you could count 6.500 works clustered under the heading “cross-culture”2.

A deep analysis of the existing literature has shown that there are anyway no further studies analysing the impact of the national culture on the way individuals use and interpret company management reports.

The topic is very interesting also from a practical point of view. At present there are more than 60 thousand multinational enterprises all over the world3. Multina-tional companies are typically multicultural (see Bosch, where 180 thousand em-ployees work in 32 different countries, or Continental AG, mentioned in the previ-ous paragraph and context of our case study). Nowadays multi-culture is also a peculiarity of small organizations4. Effective communication and information flow in a multicultural business context are, therefore, of a great practical relevance in both big and small organizations. The present research aims to help in understand-ing how information reported within those organizations are used by their multicul-tural management.

1.3 The basic approach of the present study

Our exploratory study is based on the empirical analysis of a case study where decision makers working on the same organization were involved. Following the

2 Search of number of publications related to cross-culture carried out by PsycINFO and

mentioned in Chen, Y.R. 2007. National cultures and groups, Emerald Group Publishing, p. xiii. 3 United Nations, World Investment Report 2007 (Geneva: United Nations Conference o

Trade and Development, 2007) 4 A great example of small multicultural organization is cited in Connerley, M.L. and Pedersen,

p. 2005: the Hotel@MIT in Massachusetts, where 150 employees are coming from 40 differ-ent countries

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theory of Edward T. Hall, the national culture of the decision makers has an influence on the way they process information and make decisions. Hall identifies two dichotomous attitudes of individuals in managing information: high content

orientation and high context orientation, depending if they mainly base their decision on objective facts or on subjective evaluations. He also recognizes that high content oriented people are monochronic (managing their tasks in a sequential way), whereas high context oriented people are polychronic (multi-tasking). In our case study we took into account two national cultures, classified by Hall and his followers in the two extremes of the mentioned dichotomous scale: the German

culture (high content oriented) and the Italian culture (high context oriented).

We collected information related to the cultural profile of our informants through a questionnaire, we analysed their favourite management reports and we interviewed them, in order to understand the way they interpret and use the reports at their disposal as well as the ideal features of reports from their point of view.

We used a narrative approach to analyse the interviews. Through a synthetic

approach we summarized the main findings of our study.

The information collected has given us also the opportunity to develop a theoreti-

cal model explaining the way national culture, corporate culture and decisional environment influence the content/context orientation of decision makers in the framework of our case study. Although our findings, as well as our model, cannot be subjected to generalizability, we believe that they can be used as a basis for the analysis of cases showing a similarity with our case study.

1.4 Structure of the essay

The present work is structured into four parts:

– Literature review: In this part you can find a synthesis of the main studies and theories related to the three dimensions of our research: the decision making process, the company management reports and the national cultures. With the help of the visualization proposed in picture 1.1, we framed the context of our research field by looking at the three dimensions separately (chapter 2) as well as by analysing the main interrelations among them that we could identify in the existing literature (chapter 3).

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– Empirical investigation: this part aims to describe the methodology we used to carry out our exploratory study. It includes just one chapter (chapter 4), where we describe our case study, the sampling procedure, the applied data collection methods as well as the methods we used to analyse the collected data and infor-mation. We also dedicated particular attention to describe the ethical aspects considered in our research and the qualitative paradigms ensuring the reliability and the validity of our study.

– Findings: in chapter 5 you will find a description of the cultural profile of both Italian and German informants involved in our research, together with a deep analysis of the content and the structure of their favourite management reports. We clustered our narrative findings into three chapters, each of them is focused on one of the three research questions; chapter 6 reports the results of our anal-ysis on the interpretation of management reports by the interviewed Italians and Germans; chapter 7 explains how company management reports are involved in the decision making process of our informants, whereas in chapter 8 we identify the ideal features of company management reports from the perspective of the asked decision makers. The narrative exploration is based on the analysis of the answers given by

the informants during their semi-structured interview. Their quotations are expression of their thoughts. For that reason we decided to keep their state-ments as they were formulated. Synthax errors as well as wrong wordings must be seen as a consequence of that choice, as none of the informants is English native speakers5.

– Conclusions: on the basis of the narrative findings described in the previous part, chapter 9 summarizes our inductive reasoning through a synthetic ap-proach. The structure of the chapter aims to enable an easy reading of the an-swers we could find to the three research questions our study focused on.

Through our research we could verify a strong influence of national culture, corpo-rate culture and decisional environment on the content-context orientation of the interviewed decision makers. We developed a model describing the interrelation among the mentioned determinants. The dynamics of that model are described in chapter 10. In chapter 11 we finally list the main limits of our work and we suggest

5 This consideration refers in particular to the quotations of Germans: the interview with them

were carried out in English and the words reported as quotations are the original ones of the cited participants. For the Italians, on the contrary, the interviews were carried out in Italian. The sentences reported in this work as quotations of Italian informants are actually the result of a translation, as much faithful as possible, from Italian into English.

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some proposals for further analyses and studies to be carried out on the same research domain, with the purpose to widen the horizons of the knowledge in the contribution of company management reports to the decision making process in a multinational context.

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PART I

LITERATURE REVIEW

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Chapter 2

Framing the Context: The Three Research Dimensions

2.1 Introduction

The aim of the present research consists of verifying if and how the national cul-ture of the decision maker influences his/her way to use the company management reports. We can, therefore, identify three main subjects involved in the research: the national culture, the decision making process and the company management reports. They represent the three dimensions of our study.

A prolific literature refers to each of those dimensions: numerous scientists, work-ing in social and natural fields, carried out studies and developed theories, giving an explanation or an interpretation to most of the features and phenomena related to each of the three mentioned themes. Some studies also gave answers to questions

Picture 2.1: the three dimensions of the research

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which involve two of the three dimensions, such as the theories related to the influence of the national culture of the decision maker on his/her individual deci-sion making process.

In this chapter we are going to analyse the main theories related to each of the single three dimensions, while we defer to the next chapter the analysis of the existing literature on the interrelations among the three subjects.

The extent of each dimension calls for narrowing the field of inquiry, for each of them, from the perspective of the research goals. In the present chapter we will therefore summarize the result of a literature review carried out on each of the three subjects, limited to the main questions we needed to answer before starting our exploratory study.

– National Culture (NCU):

NCU

What is meant by NCU?

How can they be classified?

Picture 2.2: Framing the literature review

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The purposes of the paragraph dedicated to national culture are two. We will pri-marily define a unique meaning for the expression “national culture” as intended in the present study. The second purpose will be to analyse the classification of na-tional cultures proposed by the most relevant researches on this topic. We examine the main criteria they propose for profiling national cultures, moreover we linger over common aspects and differences noted by analysing the main theories focused on this subject. The knowledge of possible classification criteria and rules is essen-tial in two phases of our case study. The first phase in which national cultures play a role is the sampling procedure: the profiles of national cultures proposed by recognized theories contribute in the identification of the nationalities to be repre-sented within our sample. Furthermore, it is essential to know the existing literature related to national cultures in order to carry out a proper analysis of the data we collect through our case study.

– Decision Making Process (DMP): a basic knowledge of the decision making process is essential to pursue the purpose of the present work, since it allows to identify the information needed by decision makers as well as the way they use it to support their decisions.

In the next pages the main theories related to DMP are therefore summarized, with the purpose to give briefly an answer to the questions:

Both with the purpose of the present work and with the intention to use a multi-disciplinary approach to the decision making process, the present chapter gives essential information about:

– the traditional description of the DMP

– the social factors impacting the DMP

– the emotional factors influencing the individual DMP

– Company Management Reports (CMRs): there is no univocal definition of “company management report”. In order to avoid misunderstandings and to frame

DMP How do people decide?

How do business decision makers decide?

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What is meant by “National Cultures”?

How can they be classified?

unequivocally the subject of our interest, in the present chapter we primarily give a definition of what is meant by CMRs for the purposes of the present study. The literature review on company management reports focuses on the following ques-tions:

The theoretical description of management reports, based on the aspects resumed in the three questions above, enables to carry out an aware analysis of the favourite management reports of the informants involved in the case study representing the core part of the research (see paragraph 5.3). The paragraph dedicated to the litera-ture review on CMRs ends with some principles and rules to maximize the inci-siveness of company management reports as information tools for their addressees. This theoretical investigation supports the analysis of the effective and efficient features of company management reports in the perspective of the national cul-tures, which represent one of the goals of the present study.

2.2 National Culture (NCU)

a. Definition of National Culture

In “Keywords: Vocabulary of Culture and Society”, Raymond Williams defines the word culture as “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language”6. This term

6 Williams, R. 1976. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Fontana Paperbacks, Great

Britain, p. 87

CMR What is the purpose of CMRs?

How can they be classified?

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has actually several meanings, depending in which context it is set and by which discipline (linguistic, psychology, arts, anthropology, etc.)7, 8

The individual and collective dimensions enrich further the number of facets of such a many-sided word.

Hoecklin proposes a definition of culture based on “what it is” and “what it is not”9:

– Culture is a shared system of meanings, it is relative (belonging to one group and no identifiable as valid for all human beings), it is learned from the social envi-ronment, and it is a collective phenomenon.

– Culture is not right or wrong, it is not inherited, it is not about individual behav-iour.

For the purpose of our research, we need to frame the concept of national culture to the “pattern of responses discovered, developed, or invented during the group's history of han-dling problems which arise from interactions among its members, and between them and their environment”10. The national culture is the set of common values, beliefs, customs and habits of people belonging to the same nation. The concept of nation does not have to be confused with its political acceptation of “sovereign state”. A national group is a community of people with a common history, with a common descent, having its origins from the same country or territory and usually speaking the same language11. Kloskowska defines the national group as a natural phenomenon “which ensues from a natural bond based on common origin, common land and territory”12. The subtle distinction within nationality and ethnicity is due to the strong impact of the geo-graphical and political factors on the first concept, whereas ethnicity is more fo-

7 Kroeber and Kluckhohn identified 164 different definitions for Culture in Kroeber, A.,

Kluckhohn, C. 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, vintage Books, NY 8 The etymology of the term “culture” helps in identifying the common roots of all its several

usages. The word derives from the Latin cultus, past principle of colere (to care, to cultivate), with the meanings of “cultivation through education” as well as of “intellectual side of civiliza-tion” (from the “Online Etymological Dictionary”, http://www.etymonline.com

9 Hoecklin, L. 1995. Managing Cultural Differencies. Strategies for Competitive Advantage, Addison-Wesley Publishers Co. Inc., pp. 24-25

10 So in the on-line business dictionary, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/ cul-ture.html

11 The word nation comes from the Latin Nationem, deriving from natus, past participle of nascere (to be borned).

12 Kloskowska, A. 2001. National Cultures at the Grass-Root Level, Central European University Press, NY, p. 5