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Culture in international business research: A bibliometric study in four top IB journals

Manuel Portugal Ferreira (UNINOVE-Universidade Nove de Julho, São Paulo, Brazil)
Dan Li (Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA)
Nuno Rosa Reis (School of Technology and Management globADVANTAGE – Center of Research in International Business and Strategy Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal)
Fernando Ribeiro Serra (UNINOVE-Universidade Nove de Julho, São Paulo, Brazil)

Management Research

ISSN: 1536-5433

Article publication date: 10 June 2014

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a study on the articles published in the four top international business (IB) journals to examine how four cultural models and concepts – Hofstede’s (1980), Hall’s (1976), Trompenaars’s (1993) and Project GLOBE’s (House et al., 2004) – have been used in the extant published IB research. National cultures and cultural differences provide a crucial component of the context of IB research.

Design/methodology

This is a bibliometric study on the articles published in four IB journals over the period from 1976 to 2010, examining a sample of 517 articles using citations and co-citation matrices.

Findings

Examining this sample revealed interesting patterns of the connections across the studies. Hofstede’s (1980) and House et al.’s (2004) research on the cultural dimensions are the most cited and hold ties to a large variety of IB research. These findings point to a number of research avenues to deepen the understanding on how firms may handle different national cultures in the geographies they operate.

Research limitations

Two main limitations are faced, one associated to the bibliometric method, citations and co-citations analyses and other to the delimitation of our sample to only four IB journals, albeit top-ranked.

Originality/value

The paper focuses on the main cultural models used in IB research permitting to better understand how culture has been used in IB research, over an extended period.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the research assistance of Dora Ferreira and the financial support of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Portugal.

Citation

Portugal Ferreira, M., Li, D., Rosa Reis, N. and Ribeiro Serra, F. (2014), "Culture in international business research: A bibliometric study in four top IB journals", Management Research, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 68-91. https://doi.org/10.1108/MRJIAM-04-2012-0482

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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