27 Jul 2016

Decision-making behaviour, gender differences, and cultural context variables


An innovative new article to look out for in the December 2016 issue of International Journal of Cross Cultural Management.


Author, Sven Horak describes his work:

Following the recent call for a deeper contextualization of cross-cultural research in international management studies, this study explores differences in the decision-making behavior of men and women in Korea and Germany exposed to cultural context variables specific to the Korean cultural context. I’ve designed a two-stage research approach. The first stage I have used semi-structured interviews to identify cultural variables that have an important influence on decision making in Korea. In the second stage I have used these contextual variables in a series of behavioral experiments . My findings indicate that Korean men responded strongly to the contextual variables, showing either egoistic offer behaviour and even rejecting advantageous offers. Surprisingly, Korean women, like German men and women, altered their decision-making behaviour very little when exposed to the contextual variables. The results reveal significant gender differences in response to culture-specific contextual factors that have not previously been reported, and open up new avenues for future research based on the identification and testing of specific high-impact cultural context variables.

We are excited to be publishing Sven’s work, and look forward to your comments when you have read the article. Do please contact Sven. And look out online prior to publication for this important article.