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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Burgess, S. M. Article Social axioms: A new culture measure for South African business research South African Journal of Business Management Provided in Cooperation with: University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB), Bellville, South Africa Suggested Citation: Burgess, S. M. (2011) : Social axioms: A new culture measure for South African business research, South African Journal of Business Management, ISSN 2078-5976, African Online Scientific Information Systems (AOSIS), Cape Town, Vol. 42, Iss. 4, pp. 1-22, http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/sajbm.v42i4.501 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/218467 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.econstor.eu S.Afr.J.Bus.Manage.2011,42(4) 1 Social axioms: A new culture measure for South African business research S.M. Burgess Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7700, Republic of South Africa [email protected]* Received June 2009 This study is intended to introduce social axiom theory to South African business researchers and, in this process, to provide new empirical evidence pertinent to the South African context. We examine social axioms in the largest and most representative national metropolitan population ever studied, providing scores for social axiom dimensions at the individual-level and nation-level, as well as assessments of relations with sociodemographics, values, personality and life satisfaction. The results support the convergent validity, discriminant validity and composite reliability of the 25-item brief version of the Social Axioms Scale. We extend prior research on social axioms and personality by examining relations with optimum stimulation level (OSL), an important personality construct studied in marketing and human resource management. A hierarchical regression model illustrates the power of social axioms in predicting life satisfaction, over and above the effects of sociodemographics, values and optimum stimulation level. Several points of departure for fruitful business research are identified. * Now Director, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Business School, 14 Bird Street, Port Elizabeth, 6001 Introduction Research Methods among others (see Chen, Leung, & Chen, 2009: 218-219). In business practice, South African “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides senior managers are calling for more cultural research too and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of (e.g., Horwitz, Ferguson, Rivett & Lee, 2004). It is in this all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as vein that Usunier and Lee (2009) claim that culture remains possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by the single most enduring factor to influence the success of any.” marketing strategies. Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi, 1869-1948 Attempts to interpret cultural differences in business South African companies face many new challenges in the research traditionally focus on values. There are several changing globalised business environment. Barriers to approaches to mapping values, the most comprehensive and international trade, investment, migration and travel fall at theory-driven being that of the psychologist Shalom every turn. Advances in information and Schwartz. According to Schwartz (1992), values are telecommunications technologies continually change the desirable, trans-situational goals that vary in importance accessibility, content, and use of information by and serve as guiding principles in life. In the form of individuals, social networks and organisations. Stakeholder conscious goals, values represent responses to three demands for social and environmental sustainability are universal requirements with which all individuals and accelerating. In this increasingly interconnected, societies must cope: needs of individuals as biological interdependent and rapidly-changing business environment, organisms, requisites of coordinated social interaction, and culture is an enduring and often invisible influence. requirements for the smooth functioning and survival of groups. Values underlie most aspects of daily life, reflect The rapid pace of change is matched by the rapidity with the importance of fundamental motivational goals in life which culture has moved front and centre in scholarly and provide a basis for reliable comparisons of individuals, research and business practice. In scholarly research, the groups and cultures (Schwartz, Melech, Lehmann, Burgess, proportion of cross-cultural research articles in top business Harris, & Owens, 2001). Values research has enriched our and psychology journals has grown three-fold in twenty understanding in domains such as accounting (Jansen, years—so much so that at least ten reviews of cross- Merchant & Van der Stede, 2009), human resource cultural organisational and business research have appeared management (Budhwar & Sparrow, 2002; Gerhart & Fang, since 2003 in leading journals, such as Journal of 2005; Smith, Peterson & Schwartz, 2002), marketing International Business Studies, Academy of Management (Burgess, 1992; Steenkamp, 2000) and strategy (Peng, Journal, Journal of Management and Organisational Wang & Jiang, 2008). 2 S.Afr.J.Bus.Manage.2011,42(4) Convergence in cultural value mappings and extensive The primary contributions of the study are empirical. First, enquiry devoted to the construct are prompting calls to we examine social axioms in representative South African “broaden the net” to include new culture constructs in metropolitan populations that are studied often in business cross-cultural business research (Leung, Bhagat, Buchan, research, providing scores for social axiom dimensions at Erez & Gibson, 2005; Smith, 2004; Steenkamp, 2005). the individual-level and nation-level, as well as assessments New constructs should help explain cultural variations that of relations with sociodemographics, values, personality are not detected by the value perspective or provide needed and life satisfaction. This is important because South Africa triangulation for well-known results based on values social axiom scores are not available and it is not clear that (Leung, Bond, De Carrasquel, Munoz, Hernandez, previously observed nomological relations with other Murakami et al., 2002). In response to these calls, Leung psychological constructs will apply in a large, and Bond are orchestrating the most recent large-scale representative emerging market sample. We examine programmatic attempt to broaden the dimensional map of relations with optimum stimulation level (OSL), an culture (Bond, Leung, Au, Tong, De Carrasquel, Murakami important personality construct studied in marketing and et al., 2004; Leung et al., 2002). human resource management. OSL has positive relations with satisfaction with life, a focus of substantial inquiry in Drawing on Rotter’s (1966) characterisation of locus of domains such as marketing, human resource management, control, Leung and Bond conceptualise social axioms as economics and environmental and social sustainability. We generalised expectancies about the world and how it works, illustrate the power of social axioms in predicting life typically taking the form A B and may be causal or satisfaction over and above that provided by correlational. Beginning with qualitative research in Hong sociodemographics, values and optimum stimulation level, Kong and Venezuela and using some items culled from the using hierarchical regression. Second, we rigorously assess literature, their collaborative team developed a the measurement properties of the 25-item brief version of measurement scale, collected data in over 40 cultures and the Social Axioms Scale (SAS) using the confirmatory identified social axiom dimensions at the levels of factor analysis approach. This is an important contribution individuals and nations, which include South Africa in its own right. The sample includes respondents with low (university students, Bond & Leung, 2009; Bond, Leung, formal education, presenting a difficult test for the SAS in a Au, Tong, De Carrasquel et al., 2004) and (police recruits, typical emerging markets business research application. Barnard, Rothmann & Meiring, 2008). The article is organised in the following way. Social axiom Although in its infancy, social axioms research has theory is reviewed briefly in the next section.