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Journal of World Business 43 (2008) 255–260 www.socscinet.com/bam/jwb
National culture and the adoption of new technologies Richard M. Steers a,*, Alan D. Meyer a, Carlos J. Sanchez-Runde b a b
University of Oregon, USA IESE Business School, Spain
Abstract This paper and the two that follow examine a simple, yet important, question: To what extent can differences in national cultures systematically influence whether and for what reasons nations adopt – or fail to adopt – available emerging technologies? Unfortunately, little in the way of systematic research has been done on this important topic. In particular, there is a lack of grounded modeling that could help explain the culture-technology adoption relationship, as well as an absence of solid case studies exploring the impact of culture on technology adoption. To address this issue, we first examine some recent thinking about how such relationships may emerge. Based on this, specific country cases studies involving technology adoption in Brazil and South Korea are presented in the two articles that follow. Each of the three articles was researched and written by investigators from two different cultures to enhance the cross-cultural perspective of the analysis. Taken together, we hope this forum on culture and technology adoption will stimulate additional research and theory building in this area. # 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. Keywords: Brazil; Culture; Cultural differences; Innovation; South Korea; Technology; Technology adoption
‘‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.’’ Albert Einstein In our world of global commerce, it is generally thought to be a truism that those countries that possess more advanced technologies – and incorporate such technologies into the national fabric of everyday life – will invariably emerge as the economic powerhouses of the future. Technology is both power and prospect, and nations that shy away from widespread technology adoption often first curtail their national competitive-
* Corresponding author at: Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA. E-mail address:
[email protected] (R.M. Steers). 1090-9516/$ – see front matter # 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.jwb.2008.03.007
ness and then their standard of living. The role of technology and technology adoption across nations represents an important, if understudied, aspect of both economic development and international business. To explore this domain, we focus on the role of national cultures and cultural differences, in combination with other factors such as education levels, wealth, and critical local resources, in facilitating or inhibiting nationwide adoption of emerging technologies that often hold the key to future economic success. This topic has received only scant attention in recent years despite its importance to the study of culture, technology and innovation, and global business. Culture has been alternatively defined as: the manner in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas (Trompenaars & HampdenTurner, 1998), the collective mental programming of a people that distinguishes them from others (Hofstede, 2001), and the fabric of meaning through which people
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interpret events around them (Geertz, 1973). All of these definitions share common roots. Culture is characterized by shared values and norms and mutually reinforcing patterns of behavior. Culture is learned and evolves over time, albeit slowly. Culture is also often invisible. Indeed, so inextricably is it interwoven into the fabric of a society that both its characteristics and the manifestations of these characteristics are often recognized least by the very people affected most. The question we pose is whether the characteristics of various cultures might systematically influence whether and for what reasons nations adopt – or fail to adopt – available emerging technologies. On the surface, the proposition that culture can influence patterns of technology adoption appears to have some merit. Bhagat, McDevitt, and McDevitt (in press) have noted that technology transfer across national boundaries is often influenced by cultural factors such as uncertainty avoidance, individualism–collectivism, and future-versus-past orientation. In addition, Schneider and Barsoux (2003) have observed that national leaders often serve as gatekeepers by sending clear signals to their followers concerning which industries or technologies are more highly valued and believed to be crucial to national security or economic prosperity. This practice can be seen in the changing agendas of successive U.S. presidents from a focus on environmental technologies to defense technologies. Hofstede (2001) has argued that countries with a low power distance (that is, countries that tend to be more egalitarian in nature) and with a high need for uncertainty avoidance (that is, a high need for certainty and predictability) tend to stress both technological development and technological adoption more than countries that stress more hierarchical social structures or more tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. Likewise, House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta (2004) argue that national efforts to acquire or develop advanced technologies are related to a country’s future orientation, need to avoid uncertainty, and focus on institutional collectivism. As such, we might expect countries in North America and Eastern Asia to emphasize the pursuit of advanced technologies more strongly than countries in the Middle East or SubSaharan Africa. Despite these important observations, little in the way of systematic research has been done in this area. As a result, such observations must be considered tentative. Our particular concern in this regard is the lack of thorough modeling that may help explain the culture-technology adoption relationship – the ‘‘whats’’ as well as the ‘‘whys’’ – and the absence of systematic case studies of contemporary examples of culture’s
consequences upon technology adoption. To address these issues, we will first examine some recent thinking on how such relationships may come about. We then integrate this line of thought to the articles that follow, which examine two specific cases of technology adoption in two very different cultures, Brazil and South Korea. Taken together, we hope this forum on technology and culture will stimulate additional research – and theory building – in this arena. 1. Culture and technology adoption: Exploring the linkage To learn more about the relationship between cultural differences and the adoption of new technologies by nations, it is instructive to go beyond our field’s traditional business and technology literatures to consider the broader and more complex body of thought emerging from cultural anthropology and other social and biological sciences. Our point of departure for this excursion is the widespread, though simplistic, position in the sciences that the development of technology stands as a fundamental criterion differentiating humans and non-humans. The development or adoption of technology assumes, and indeed requires, the human capacity for reflecting upon an initial state of being and then envisioning improvements that might be achieved by altering one’s environment. Technology development, as a human endeavor, requires both reasoning and a desire for control. It hinges on individuals capacity to reflect upon an action (i.e., consider how a specific action might be performed) separately from actually performing the action. This form of consciousness empowers people to attend to what they and their world are becoming, while at the same time attempting to influence or change the otherwise natural trajectory of development. Technology can be seen as ‘‘an extracorporeal product of our own biological evolution’’ (Bugliarello, 1992, p. 38). But it is much more than this. In terms of economic development and international business, engineers, scientists, and managers tend to believe that technology gives them the creative power ‘‘to make the world according to their own blueprints’’ (Hughes, 2004, p. 9). 2. Technical vs. axiological dimensions of technology and technology adoption Our thinking on this topic would be much simpler if we could conveniently separate the artifactual compo-
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nents of technology and technology adoption (machines, instruments, systems, routines, and gadgets) from the axiological components (values, cultures, and worldviews). However, country-level adoptions of new technologies do not occur in a cultural vacuum, however useful those technologies may be. Adoptions occur in social contexts that can encode values and beliefs regarding innovation and change, acceptable patterns of behavior, and so forth. If this were not so, we would expect it to be easy to introduce new products and new technologies around the world, something that actually has often proven difficult to accomplish, at least in part because of conscious and unconscious fears concerning the likely consequences of technological change for local cultures. Addressing the axiological dimension of technology adoption is more difficult than addressing the artifactual dimension because culture is so pervasive and at the same time so tacit that we often lack the distance necessary to appreciate its influence. This helps explain why so many Western scholars looking at Asia, for example, have repeatedly – and mistakenly, in our view – asked why something occurring in the West did not also occur in the East. A good example here is the search for an explanation to the paradox of the diffusion of several seminal Chinese inventions that, despite their profound impact upon the subsequent development of Western civilization, were abandoned for long periods of time in China. Historian Basalla (1998), for example, provides a ‘‘novelty-selection’’ evolutionary framework to illustrate the effects of culture on the diffusion of, gunpowder, the magnetic compass, and both xylographic and typographical printing. After explaining the role of culture in the differential adoption of those technologies, Basalla (1998, p. 173) cautions that posing questions like ‘‘Why were these discoveries not as influential in changing Chinese culture and technology as they were in the West?’’ are inappropriate (and possibly ethnocentric), because such questions: (1) assume incorrectly that the selection of novel artifacts would have the same meaning across cultures and that technology adoption would follow a pattern with no discontinuities, and (2) are usually grounded in the concerns and values of the West and thus ‘‘reveal more about the attitudes of people asking them than they do about the Chinese.’’ An interesting sidebar question here relates to situations where countries first adopt but later reject technological diffusion from abroad. The interplay of culture and technology can be seen not only in the adoption of technological innovations, but also in the rejection of foreign technologies that have already been
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adopted. Abandonment after adoption may not be as widespread a phenomenon as adoption and retention, but it also can be profoundly influenced by the dominant values of a given society at a given point of time. In this regard, several authors point to the diffusion of firearms into Japan between 1543 (when the Portuguese introduced them) and 1575 (when their utilization was crucial in the battle of Nagoshino) that was followed by a three-century-long, culture-based rejection of firearms that persisted until Commodore Perry’s appearance in 1853 (Basalla, 1998; Nye, 2006). This is certainly not to suggest that culture plays an exclusive role in technology adoption. Diamond (1999), in his widely cited Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, provide an extensive list factors that have also been suggested to help explain national social and economic growth, as well as its decline and collapse. While he favors environmental as opposed to social factors to account for civilization differences, Diamond also recognizes the interaction effects of many other influences in the adoption and diffusion of innovations, including increased life expectancy for inventors, availability of cheap labor, patents and property laws, opportunities for technical training, risk taking propensities, a scientific outlook, tolerance of different viewpoints, religion, modern capitalism, individualism, wars, central governments, climate, and resource abundance. We subscribe to Diamond’s contention that a multitude of factors converge in an interactive way to affect technological evolution, and that asserting the predominance of any single factor is untenable. A further, albeit subtler, speculation about the effects of technology adoption on economic development relates to the presumed influence of culture on national productivity and prosperity. In this regard, Porter (2000) proposes that the culture of productivity underlies the advancement of nations when such cultures emphasize the positive aspects of innovation, competition, accountability, and high regulatory standards. By contrast, countries will tend to lag behind others when non-productive attitudes and values emerge that emphasize monopolies, rigid hierarchies, and rewards based on power instead of success. Porter’s argument leads logically to advice on what to promote and what to avoid in order to create conditions that are conducive to economic growth. If Porter is correct here, and this other ‘‘technology’’ of cultural productivity can help explain the economic advancement of nations, then it follows that technology can be imbued with a diversity of values, be they Western, Confucian, Indian, Muslim, etc., in order to be fully operational.
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Economist and historian David Landes maintains a similar, although perhaps a bit more extreme, position that ‘‘if we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes almost of the difference.’’ (2000, p. 3). Like Porter, Landes assumes that a combination of factors, rather than any a single variable, will ultimately explain phenomena as complex as economic growth. However, unlike, Porter, Landes asserts that in such a determination, the culturetechnology linkage will play a pivotal role. 3. Paths to technology development and adoption Nye (2006) in his book, Technology Matters proposes that advancing our understanding of the interaction between technology and culture will entail a synthesis of three points of view typically seen as separate if not opposing, stances in regard to technology: determinism––the inevitable diffusion of optimal technological arrangements as driven by efficacy and efficiency standards), and internalism–– the role of inventors, engineers, and innovators and institutionalized norms in fostering or hindering technological development), and contextualism––the previously noted reciprocal influence of the artifactual and the axiological aspects of technology (see also: Kidder, 1981; Negroponte, 1995; Staudenmaier, 1994). Two fundamental questions concerning the relationship between culture and technology adoption emerge from the interplay of these three viewpoints. First, should technological development be seen as leading to social advancement along a single trajectory or a multifaceted series of trajectories? In other words, is there one path to economic development and ‘‘civilization’’ (to use Diamond’s term) or are there multiple and divergent paths? And second, to what extent does the evolution of technology shape and homogenize societal cultures? The first question concerning single versus multiple paths of technological advancement is conceptually akin that of the developmental paths of cultures themselves. A commonly held view suggests that mankind’s cultural evolution follows a more or less uniform path towards civilization, and that while progress within specific cultures may vary in their speed of development for various reasons, cultures will ultimately reach the same endpoint. In this regard, we often hear that one culture is ‘‘behind’’ another, implying that the former will simply need time to catch up with the latter. In progressing along a single path, cultures are often seen as pursuing similar, if not identical, social identities and national destinies.
While this view is popular outside academia, many in the social sciences are increasingly skeptical (Geertz, 2000). For example, there is ample evidence that diverse technological choices have been implemented successfully at different points of time and in different settings (e.g., transportation systems and power systems). While authors disagree about the interpretation of this evidence (Winner, 1977), most seem convinced that it shows that technological developments ‘‘are not implacable forces moving through history, but social processes that vary from one time period to another and from one culture to another’’ (Nye, 2006, p. 47). Moreover, according to Basalla (1998, p. 189), it is clearly possible ‘‘to stop or alter the [seemingly] predetermined course of technological progress.’’ Indeed, as noted by Idhe (1992, p. 86), even if scholars see Western dominance as an inevitable effect of Western modern science and technology, it may still be that this ‘‘outward current carries under its surface a countercurrent, and if the surface is that of a dominant new technology, its undercurrent is that of many other old cultures.’’ The second question concerns whether, or to what extent, cultural differences between nations increase or diminish as a given technology diffuses. This is an important question, and not unrelated to the first one. That is, if indeed there is a single path for technological development and adoption that applies to all societies, we would expect those societies to exhibit cultural convergence over time, at least in those aspects linked closely to technology usage. But even if national cultures are seen as pursuing multiple and distinctive trajectories, a good case can still be made that technologies that result in mass-production and consumption of similar goods may ultimately homogenize producers and consumers alike. The observation that young people around the world are attracted to such products as blue jeans, fast food, and MP-3 players has led some to argue for technology’s contribution to cultural convergence. However, upon closer scrutiny, these preferences demonstrate that cultural differences still operate, unchanged and perhaps even reinforced. Blue jeans are a form of convenient and inexpensive dress in the West, for instance, but a luxury item in less developed countries; fast food restaurants provide simple and inexpensive food, but also an occasion for a relaxed and communal eating encounters in collectivist Asian societies; and the popularity of music players has been attributed to a personal desire for isolation and independence in the West, but a desire not to impose noise on others in Japan (Trompenaars & HampdenTurner, 1998; Watson, 1997). Similar observations have
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been made about more advanced technologies like computers, the Internet, standardized home building methodologies, and television (Nye, 2006). 4. Case studies of culture and technology adoption Unfortunately, while the issue of culture and technology adoption is rife with opinions and observations, it remains difficult to find much in the way of substantive theory, let alone empirical evidence. This is particularly true when attention is focused on the modern world in general and the modern global business world in particular. We believe that history and anthropology can guide us here, but more direct studies of a strategic nature are in order to help resolve this conundrum. Towards this end, two articles follow that present the results of case studies delving into the role of national culture in the adoption of emerging or critical technologies. These studies focus more on the business and economic forces at work, but also incorporate important considerations from other disciplines. The first paper, ‘‘Beyond a Better Mousetrap: A Cultural Analysis of the Adoption of Ethanol in Brazil,’’ by Luciara Nardon and Kathryn Aten, offers a case study of the development and widespread use of ethanol in Brazil as a fuel substitute for petroleum products. Lacking sufficient petroleum reserves to support its developing industries and infrastructure, Brazil pioneered the production and distribution of this substitute product, to the point that it is now a major global exporter. The underlying question raised in this paper is why, in view of the worldwide shortage of petroleum, was it Brazil – a country ranked a humble 35th among the world’s most competitive nations and 38th in business attractiveness – who moved ahead of other richer nations in developing alternative fuel resources (World Competitiveness Yearbook, 2006)? Put differently, while the U.S. and many countries in Asia and the European Union have long debated the substitution of ethanol for gasoline on a massive scale, and have allocated sizable subsidies in support of this endeavor, why has Brazil succeeded while the other countries have not? Clearly there are many reasons for Brazil’s accomplishment but, as Nardon and Aten argue, the Brazilian national cultural characteristic of jeitinho may have played a key role. The second paper, ‘‘Towards a Theory of Synchronous Technological Assimilation: The Case of Korea’s Internet Economy,’’ by Sang-Myung Lee and Gerardo Ungson, adopts a different approach to the same
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fundamental research question. These authors focus on Korea and how this medium-sized so-called ‘‘late industrializer’’ surpassed other larger, richer, and more technologically sophisticated countries (including the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, and the U.K.) to become the undisputed leader of the Internet-centric economy; that is, the world’s preeminent technological hub as measured by universal broadband installation and highspeed Internet usage (Lee, O’Keefe, & Yun, 2003). While many factors undoubtedly have contributed to this outcome, Lee and Ungson show that Korea’s highly collectivistic national culture emphasizing personal relationships and networks (in-maek) certainly played a major role. 5. Directions for future research These papers present case studies of national technology adoption involving two very different disruptive technologies and two very different countries and regions of the world. Both cases chronicle successful adoptions, and both demonstrate how national cultural differences played an important – but certainly not exclusive – role in achieving this success. In their discussion and theory development sections, both articles expand on why cultural differences may have played a role in national technology adoption, and why they may play a key role in other nations, both developing and developed. In the case of Brazil, Nardon and Aten contend that national leaders utilized culturally embedded principles of logic that guided concrete actions towards the development of a specific trajectory of technological system development. In other words, a reinforcing system of path dependency was established, based on Brazil’s cultural roots. This argument provides guidance for both further conceptualization and theory development and theory testing. In the case of Korea, Lee and Ungson assert that Internet-based technologies reinforced that country’s national cultural imperative to build, nurture, and maintain personal networks as a means of cultural – and, some contend, economic – survival. In a departure from common stage-of-growth and late industrialization theories, Lee and Ungson argue that three socio-cultural factors (how and when to adopt new technologies, emerging patterns of national consumption, and supporting logic that links these two conditions) played a major role in Korea’s success. This thesis requires a new look at theory development focusing on economic development and global business and highlights several insights worthy of further investigation.
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Beyond the contributions of these papers to our understanding of the culture-technology conundrum, other areas for future research can be identified that have bearing on this issue. For example, how are the meanings and uses of technology constructed at a national level and how does national culture influence this process? Moreover, if national culture can indeed influence technology adoption, what are the processes by which this occurs? Can these processes be readily transferred from one culture to another or are they culturally specific? Are some types of technology (e.g., telecommunications, nanotechnology, transportation, national defense) more likely to be adopted by some nations than others? At the same time, research is also in order concerning how technology adoption can or does change national cultures. The causal arrow may point in both directions here. What do organizations need to do to support technology introduction across national cultures? And finally, how might the interaction between culture and technology influence the convergence (or divergence) of management processes and practices? As should be evident from the materials and questions presented here, little is currently known about this important topic, and much remains to be learned. It is our hope that the following two articles represent a useful first step in this process of discovery. Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank Bill Starbuck for his helpful comments on this project, as well as the National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for Innovation Program (Alan D. Meyer, Principal Investigator) for its support. References Basalla, G. (1998). The evolution of technology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bhagat, R. S., MeDevitt, A. S., McDevitt, I. (in press). Cultural variations in creation, diffusion, and absorption of organizational knowledge. In R. S. Bhagat & R. M. Steers (Eds.), Handbook of Culture, Organization, and Work. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
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