National culture as a correlate of research impact and productivity

Abstract

National culture has been overlooked in discussions related to research productivity and impact owing to individual, socio-political structure, and economic factors. This study shows the relationships between the dimensions of cultural value orientation of the nation and research performance indicators. More than 60 countries were included and Pearson correlation analysis was employed. The variables were taken from Geert Hofstede and Scimago Journal & Country Rank worksheets. This study found that (1) Individualism has significant correlations with the majority of the indicators; (2) Power distance and indulgence correlate with a country's research impact in the form of citation per document; (3) Masculinity, long term orientation, and uncertainty avoidance do not correlate with the indicators. Owing to the fact that the national culture is relatively enduring, countries need to measure their elasticity of hopes and action plans in an effort to boost research productivity and impact, by integrating the national culture in the estimate.

Keywords: citations per document; individualism; indulgence; national culture; power distance; research impact; research productivity; self citations.