Search Results (153)

While it is widely accepted that parents play an important role in facilitating the academic achievement of their offspring through school involvement and homework assistance, less is known about how exactly parents, in general, contribute to adolescents’ academic achievement within and across non-Western cultures through their everyday parenting behaviors and parent–adolescent relationships. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between several Western constructs of maternal parenting behavior (e.g., support, involvement, reasoning, punitiveness, and parental knowledge), and aspects of the mother–adolescent relationship (e.g., autonomy, conformity, and familism) and adolescent academic achievement among families living in China, India, and South Korea. Self-reported data were collected from adolescents living in urban areas within Mainland China (n = 589), India (n = 463), and South Korea (274). Examination of the results from the reduced linear regression model indicated that maternal knowledge, familism, punitiveness, age of adolescent, and region were statistically significant predictors. Full article

Parents provide most of the support needed for children with cerebral palsy (CP) to increase the child’s participation and independence. Understanding the experiences of parents caring for children with CP is essential for developing effective family programs and services. The current knowledge about parents’ experiences in CP is based on studies in Western countries, with little known about this phenomenon in Arab countries like Saudi Arabia. This study aimed to understand the unique experiences and support needs of Saudi parents caring for children with CP from a social-ecological perspective. We conducted a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive study involving 12 semi-structured interviews with mothers and fathers of children with different types of CP. We analyzed the data using a reflexive thematic approach, following six distinct phases. Participants’ narratives revealed a complex caregiving journey marked by both challenges and rewards. Support from Saudi nuclear and extended family members was considered important; however, many parents expressed a need for additional physical and financial assistance from their families. Parents reported feeling stressed and experiencing challenges in accessing and navigating educational and healthcare services. Our findings highlight that Islamic values play a crucial role in the experiences of Saudi parents. These values foster a sense of collectivism, highlighting the importance of family support and community involvement, which can affect the Saudi caregiving environment. Parents remain an essential yet often invisible part of the Saudi caregiving system. Without adequate support, parents are at risk of experiencing social, financial, academic, physical, and mental health challenges, which may affect their overall family well-being. Future work may need to consider spiritual and gender roles when developing programs or services to support Saudi parents of children with CP. Full article

Background: Charitable crowdfunding platforms have become widely used tools for raising funds to support social and humanitarian causes. As participation in these platforms is voluntary, understanding the influence of individual motivations and cultural values is essential, particularly when engaging donors across culturally diverse regions. Within the framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this study explores whether consumers’ cultural orientations influence their motivations and levels of engagement in charitable crowdfunding. Methods: Data were collected through an online survey using the Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI) method from 680 participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the effects of three cultural dimensions—collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance—on charitable giving behavior, including their interactions with intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Results: Collectivism was found to positively predict charitable giving, while uncertainty avoidance had a negative effect. Power distance showed a mixed influence, depending on the underlying motivational factors. Comparative analysis revealed significant regional differences, particularly between respondents from the Americas and Europe, in the strength and nature of these relationships. Conclusions: The findings underscore the importance of integrating cultural factors into digital fundraising strategies and offer new insights into how individual cultural values shape prosocial behavior in online crowdfunding environments. Full article

Workplace integration in hierarchical collectivist societies is shaped by structured social mechanisms rather than collectivist values alone. While collectivism is often assumed to foster inclusiveness, its structural manifestations regulate workplace inclusion through feedback loops of hierarchical loyalty, trust building, and kinship-based exclusivity. This study employs causal loop diagrams (CLDs) to conceptually map how cultural structures regulate workplace inclusion—not to assert empirical causality, but to illustrate the culturally grounded feedback loops in Indonesia and the Philippines. The findings identify the reinforcing loops that sustain hierarchical exclusivity in Indonesia and a counterbalancing loop that facilitates immediate kinship-based trust in the Philippines. By conceptualizing workplace inclusion as an emergent property of interdependent social mechanisms, this study highlights how structured exclusivity stabilizes hierarchical workplaces while limiting adaptability. Unlike frameworks that treat collectivism as a static cultural trait, CLDs provide a dynamic lens to analyze how workplace inclusion evolves through structured feedback loops—revealing how structured exclusivity in collectivist systems governs trust, inclusion, and legitimacy not through ideology alone, but through relational sponsorship, time-dependent trust, and group-based gatekeeping. These insights contribute to cross-cultural management and organizational studies by demonstrating how structured exclusion functions as a self-reinforcing mechanism. The findings have implications for multinational corporations, policymakers, and organizational leaders seeking to design adaptive strategies for workplace integration in hierarchical collectivist environments. While both countries are analyzed, Indonesia serves as the primary site of investigation, with the Philippines providing a contrast to illuminate structured exclusivity mechanisms in hierarchical collectivist contexts. Full article

With the rise of virtual idols in marketing, especially in collectivist cultures, their impact on consumer behavior warrants further exploration. This study applies social identity theory, flow theory, and the SOR model to examine how collectivism and virtual idol characteristics (external characteristics, content features, and homophily) influence Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions through parasocial interaction (PSI) and flow experience. A survey of 496 respondents, analyzed via structural equation modeling (SEM), shows that collectivism and virtual idol characteristics positively affect PSI, with homophily having the strongest impact. PSI enhances flow experience, and both PSI and flow experience drive purchase intention. PSI and flow experience serve as dual mediators in the model. This study advances research by empirically validating collectivism’s role in PSI, differentiating virtual idol characteristics, and modeling dual mediation. The key contributions of this study are as follows: (1) treating culture as an independent variable to empirically examine its impact on psychological mechanisms, and (2) deconstructing virtual idol characteristics into three dimensions—external, content, and homophily—to reveal their distinct influence on consumer psychology. Findings offer strategic insights for brands, recommending a dual-track approach integrating cultural adaptation and feature design to enhance consumer engagement and purchasing behavior. Full article

This article proposes a conversation on the limits and possibilities of collectivizing the way in which we generate and inscribe knowledge within the terms of a political economy of knowledge production and circulation regulated by hierarchies of academic and non-academic classifications, as well as those that demarcate centres and peripheries domestically and internationally through racial–gendered distributions of authority. To this end, it explores a series of collective projects elaborated within the GlobalGRACE network in Brazil (Global Gender and Cultures of Equality), which experiment with residency methodologies designed to create the necessary infrastructure for a redistribution of power, knowledge, and authority in investigations on racial–gendered violence in the peripheries of Rio de Janeiro. As collaborators in this research–action project initiated in 2018 with the Observatory of Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, here, we mobilize two of these collective projects as case studies—the dance residency of Cia Passinho Carioca and the Free School of Arts ELÃ residency—so as to reflect on our ways of knowing and experiencing racial–gendered inequalities in context. In this way, it becomes possible to propose not only questions around the production, erasure, and appropriation of knowledge but also possibilities for the broad-based circulation of dissident knowledge practices and the subsequent displacement of established authorities in the field, notably by means of a disobjectification of subjects of knowledge and exercises in authoring in the first-person plural. This entry point into the conversation on who has the power to know and control the meanings of intersectional inequalities enables a focus on practice, pedagogy, and methods to unpack the ethical and epistemological questions at hand. By centring the problem of authorship, we argue that feminist and decolonial approaches to knowing, teaching, and learning need to effectuate redistributions of power and the construction of politico-epistemic infrastructure if we have any chance of cultivating the conditions needed for liberatory knowledge practices. Full article

Organizational culture, human capital, and innovative capabilities are essential resources for any business, particularly during challenging times. Companies can leverage these resources to gain a competitive advantage. Based on social exchange theory, this study explores the impact of corporate culture on employee commitment and innovative behavior at the individual level, emphasizing the importance of innovation within employee roles. Using 9512 valid data points from the Human Capital Corporate Panel (HCCP), this study validates the research model and hypotheses. The results indicate that an innovation-oriented organizational culture significantly enhances employees’ organizational commitment, which in turn promotes innovative behavior. Organizational commitment is a positive mediating factor in this process. Furthermore, a relationship-oriented culture positively moderates the influence of innovation culture on employees’ organizational commitment. Situated in the Korean context, where Confucian values and collectivism strongly influence workplace dynamics, this study highlights the importance of aligning innovation efforts with cultural expectations. The results suggest that fostering innovative and relational cultural values can be a powerful method in encouraging commitment and creativity, especially in the Korean context companies. Full article

Understanding the role of collectivism in shaping prosocial behavior is critical for advancing theories of social cooperation and group dynamics. This study provides the first empirical examination of collectivistic orientation within the Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) community using the Horizontal and Vertical Individualism-Collectivism (HVIC) framework. Data from 702 participants revealed a predominant collectivist orientation, with a particularly strong emphasis on balanced collectivism. The study further explored how collectivist and individualist tendencies predict helping behaviors toward in-group and out-group members. Results indicate that conservatism positively predicts in-group prosocial behavior but negatively predicts out-group assistance, whereas balanced collectivism and individualism are associated with increased out-group helping. The strongest predictor of out-group assistance was an individual’s inherent disposition to help, suggesting that prosocial behavior extends beyond purely communal expectations and positions these individuals as natural agents of community change. This insight offers a perspective on how personal characteristics may contribute to community renewal. Our study contributes to cross-cultural research on collectivism and prosocial behavior by emphasizing the role of power orientation and resource allocation in shaping altruistic tendencies, while demonstrating that vertical orientations tend to reinforce in-group preferences. Full article

While leadership influence has been linked to organizational performance, the mechanism through which leadership development can foster sustainable innovation in SMEs with distinctive cultural contexts, including individualism/collectivism, is still not well understood. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role that democratic leadership plays in increasing employee innovative behavior (EIB) when organizations are working in situations that are characterized by high levels of hierarchical and collectivist cultures. This study fills a gap in the literature by investigating the ways in which leadership influences innovation in small- and medium-sized textile enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan, including psychological safety and creative potential. This study discloses that participative leadership practices effectively drive sustained innovation especially in countries that embrace hierarchy and collectivism. The participants in this study comprised 389 employees from the textile industry, who completed validated self-report surveys of democratic leadership, psychological safety, creative potential, and EIB. This study used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine the direct and indirect effects of the variables using Smart PLS 4.1.0.8 software. The findings reveal that democratic leadership positively and significantly impacts EIB. Psychological safety mediates this relationship by creating a supportive environment for idea sharing, while creative potential acts as a stronger mediator, enabling employees to generate and implement novel ideas. These results highlight the critical role of democratic leadership in driving innovation through safe and creative organizational climates. This study extends leadership and innovation research by demonstrating the mechanisms through which democratic leadership fosters EIB. This study contributes to the understanding of leadership effectiveness in non-Western hierarchical cultures, providing actionable insights for managers and policymakers to promote sustainable innovation in SMEs. Full article

Purpose: This study examines the entrepreneurial transformation within kibbutzim (organizations historically rooted in collectivist ideals) as they adapt to economic and cultural shifts. Positioned as unique socioeconomic models, kibbutzim provide a compelling context for understanding social intrapreneurship, defined as entrepreneurial behaviors emerging within structured communal settings. The study explores how tensions between different community values impact the motivation to establish a new business. Methods: A paper-based survey was distributed to 256 entrepreneurs. Motivation is assessed using the push/pull theory. Self-efficacy is proposed as a mediator between the type of kibbutz (collective or privatized) and motivational factors, with proactive personality acting as a moderator of the relationship between kibbutz type and self-efficacy. Findings: The results indicate that although entrepreneurs from both types of kibbutzim exhibit lower pull motivators compared to non-kibbutz members, privatized kibbutz entrepreneurs display a higher level of push motivation than the other groups. Additionally, self-efficacy mediates the relationship between collective kibbutz members and pull motivation and between privatized kibbutz members and push motivation, but only for entrepreneurs with low levels of proactive personality traits. Conclusions: The findings underscore the influence of cultural tensions and values on entrepreneurial behaviors, offering insights into the interplay between community context and individual agency. Full article

Delivering superior value in sustainable accommodation is critical for gaining a competitive advantage in the tourism market. However, till now, little is known about how individual cultural orientations impact tourists’ perceived value of sustainable accommodations. This study investigates the role of cultural orientations, based on Hofstede’s dimensions, in shaping perceptions of functional, social, and emotional value among 1402 tourists in Spain and Lithuania. Data were collected using a comprehensive survey and analyzed through descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation, and multiple regression. The findings reveal that cultural dimensions such as collectivism and uncertainty avoidance significantly influence perceptions of sustainable accommodation value. This study is unique in examining all five of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions at an individual level, offering novel insights for cross-cultural tourism research. Practical implications include designing culturally sensitive value propositions to attract diverse tourist segments and contributing to global sustainability initiatives in tourism. Full article

In the context of globalization, cross-cultural research is essential for understanding behaviors and values across different cultural backgrounds. The way audiences from diverse cultures interpret and accept film content significantly impacts the international dissemination and market performance of films. This study, grounded in Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions—power distance index (PDI), individualism vs. collectivism (IDV), uncertainty avoidance (UAI), masculinity vs. femininity (MAS), long-term vs. short-term orientation (LTO), and indulgence vs. restraint (IVR)—incorporates additional variables such as visual aesthetic appeal (VAA), narrative complexity (NCI), viewing motivation (VM), behavioral intentions (BIs), and brand loyalty (BL) to construct a multidimensional research framework. This framework aims to comprehensively examine the acceptance of American animated films among Chinese audiences and the cultural differences influencing such acceptance. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), this study analyzed the interrelationships between variables based on a sample of 507 participants with prior viewing experience. The findings reveal that different cultural dimensions significantly impact VM. PDI, UAI, and IDV exert significant negative influences on VM, with PDI being the most influential. Conversely, LTO and IVR do not demonstrate significant negative effects. In contrast, MAS, VAA, and NCI exhibit significant positive impacts on VM. Additionally, VM strongly influences audience acceptance, which, in turn, promotes the formation of BIs and repeated VM. This study extends the application of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to the domain of cross-cultural media consumption, enriching the theoretical framework with additional dimensions and offering a novel perspective for cross-cultural research. Furthermore, the study uncovers the intricate interactions between cultural context and film content, proposing strategies to enhance the acceptance of cross-cultural films. These findings not only provide valuable insights for the production and marketing of animated films but also offer strategic guidance for filmmakers in diverse markets. Full article

Background/Objectives: The mechanisms linking eating attitudes to well-being and physical activity objectives have increasingly attracted the attention of researchers in recent years. This research is particularly significant in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has profoundly disrupted eating habits, exercise routines, and psychosocial well-being across the globe. Additionally, these variables are influenced by cultural dimensions, such as individualism in Poland and collectivism in China. These two countries represent distinct approaches to social health and well-being during the pandemic, offering valuable comparative insights into how cultural contexts shape mental and physical health behaviors; Methods: The study included 644 Polish and 690 Chinese participants. It utilized the Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS), the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS), the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), and the Inventory of Physical Activity Objectives (IPAO); Results: The results indicate that both COVID-19 anxiety and eating attitudes fully mediate the relationship between well-being and physical activity objectives. Full mediation implies that the observed relationship between well-being and physical activity objectives operates entirely through the mediators. Notably, the mediating effect of COVID-19 anxiety was observed only in the Chinese sample, highlighting cultural differences in coping mechanisms and societal responses to anxiety. Cultural differences significantly influenced well-being and physical activity objectives, while eating disorders remained unaffected by cultural and social differences. Additionally, a significant positive correlation was found between COVID-19 anxiety, eating attitudes, and health-related physical activity objectives, underscoring the interplay between mental health and physical activity; Conclusions: These findings underscore the importance of addressing anxiety and eating attitudes to enhance well-being and physical activity behaviors. The study provides a strong theoretical basis for targeted interventions tailored to cultural contexts. Potential limitations include the reliance on self-reported data and differences in demographic characteristics between the Polish and Chinese samples, which may affect generalizability. Full article

Fresh-water food production/agriculture for both plants and animals utilizes some 70% of the planets’ fresh water, produces some 26% of greenhouse gas emissions and has a longish list of other societal-related issues. Given the developing and extant shortages of arable land, fresh water and food, along with climate/ecosystem issues, there is a need to greatly reduce these adverse effects of fresh-water agriculture. There are, especially since the advent of the 4th Agricultural Revolution, a number of major frontier technologies and functionality changes along with prospective alternatives which could, when combined and collectivized in various ways, massively improve the practices, adverse impacts and outlook of food production. These include cellular/factory agriculture; photosynthesis alternatives; a shift to off-grids and roads/back-to-the-future, do-it-yourself living (aka de-urbanization); cultivation of halophytes on wastelands using saline water; insects; frontier energetics; health-related market changes; and vertical farms/hydroponics/aeroponics. Shifting to these and other prospective alternatives would utilize far less arable land and fresh water, produce far less greenhouse gases and reduce food costs and pollution while increasing food production. Full article

Building on the theoretical perspectives of mindset theory and cultural orientation framework, this study explores the moderating role of cultural orientation in the relationship between individuals’ growth mindset and learning self-efficacy, addressing the contextual dependency of mindset theory. A total of 307 Chinese undergraduates (61% female; age range = 18–22 years) from a university in Hong Kong were recruited for this cross-sectional study. Cultural orientation, growth mindset, and learning self-efficacy were assessed via the Chinese version of the Cultural Values Scale (CVScale), Growth Mindset Inventory (GMI), and Learning Self-Efficacy Scale (LSES), respectively. Linear multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the hypothesized moderation effects. The results revealed an interesting dimension-specific pattern among the five dimensions of cultural orientation. While one dimension (i.e., long-term orientation) had a positive moderating effect on the relationship between growth mindset and learning self-efficacy, two dimensions (i.e., power distance and uncertainty avoidance) had negative moderating effects on that relationship. The two remaining cultural dimensions (i.e., individualism/collectivism and motivation towards achievement and success) did not exhibit any significant moderating effects. These findings underscore the interplay between a growth mindset, cultural orientation, and learning self-efficacy, emphasizing the influence of cultural factors on the outcomes of mindset interventions. This study highlights the need for culturally tailored educational practices and interventions to maximize the effectiveness of growth mindset theories in diverse contexts. Full article