Toward a Theory-Based Measurement of Culture

TLDR

The authors note that existing definitions of culture are contradictory and overly simplistic, especially in IS research where individuals are assumed to belong to a single culture, and propose a theory‑based view grounded in social identity theory that recognizes multiple cultural influences per person. They argue that grounding cultural research in social identity theory requires identifying each individual’s salient cultures and treating them as independent variables in positivist studies, while qualitative work must rigorously assess individual cultural identifiers. The resulting lack of clear concepts and measures explains why cross‑cultural research is difficult, theories are hard to refine, predictive models show low variance, and studies risk committing ecological fallacies.

Abstract

In reviewing the history of the conceptualization and measurement of “culture,” one quickly realizes that there is wide-ranging and contradictory scholarly opinion about which values, norms, and beliefs should be measured to represent the concept of “culture.” We explore an alternate theory-based view of culture via social identity theory (SIT), which suggests that each individual is influenced by plethora of cultures and sub-cultures–some ethnic, some national, and some organizational. In IS research, the culture of subjects and respondents is problematic because it is typically an overly simplistic categorization. IS research nearly always assumes that an individual living in a particular place and time belongs to a single “culture,” e.g., someone living in Egypt is automatically classified as being a member of the Egyptian culture, or, more broadly, the Arab culture. This dearth of clear concepts and measures for “culture” may explain why cross-cultural research has been so exceedingly difficult to conduct. It may also explain why it has been hard to develop and refine theories. Moreover, it may give insight into why reasonable explained variance in predictive models has not been higher. Finally, it is very possible that much cross-cultural business research could be rightly accused of advancing an “ecological fallacy” by not recognizing the individual makeup of persons with respect to culture. Using SIT (or other theory bases) as grounding for cultural research programs implies the use of certain methodological approaches. Each study would have to establish the salient “cultures” in each individual’s background and include these different “cultures” as independent variables in positivist research. In qualitative research, there would need to be an equally rigorous assessment of the cultural identifiers of each individual.