Naslov
Innovation Culture in Crony Capitalism. Does Hofstede's Model Matter?

Autori
Švarc, Jadranka ; Lažnjak, Jasminka

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija knjige
Autorske knjige, monografija, znanstvena

Izdavač
Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar

Grad
Zagreb

Godina
2017

Stranica
236

ISBN
978-953-7964-58-0

Ključne riječi
innovation culture, crony capitalism, Hofstede, national culture, Croatia

Sažetak
This book explores the innovation culture in Croatia from theoretical and empirical point of view. The starting assumption is that national / regional culture, innovation and entrepreneurship are interacting in a way that affects innovation in the economy and social progress. The interest in exploring the regional innovation culture was initiated by the slow economic growth of Croatia and the large differences in the development of the region, and the assumption that some regional cultural features based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions can be one of the predictors of low innovation and low economic growth. The nearly eight-year recession, which is almost unprecedented among the European countries, was certainly a challenge to explore invisible and hidden social factors that go beyond the purely technological and economic factors of economic and innovation lagging that permeate the whole society, such as national / regional cultural characteristics. The book consists of three parts. The first part seeks to clarify the theoretical framework and the concept of innovation and innovation culture, and consists of five subchapters discussing the notion of innovation, and cultural theories that link cultural factors and economic growth. Hofstede's model is analysed in detail since it is the basis for the empirical research. The second part of the book is an empirical study of interregional cultural differences in Croatia using the Hofstede model to identify possible implications of cultural differences on regional innovation capacities and overall development. The results describe: - the differences between the Croatian regions with regard to Hofstede's dimension of national culture ; - innovation-enabling and innovation- hindering cultural dimensions by regions ; - the relationship between Hofstede's cultural dimensions and the tendency for innovation and entrepreneurship by region. The basic conclusion is that this research, similar to some earlier foreign studies, did not meet the expectations in linking the regional culture and the tendency to innovate and, in general, it failed to explain the differences in regional development. The obtained data do not give the unambiguous and convincing evidence that the regional innovation culture has an impact on innovation and that it has a role in explaining regional variations in the tendencies of innovation and entrepreneurship. The cultural dimensions, defined in Hofstede, have emerged, in the case of Croatia, to be "contentiously empty" and to speak very little about the cultural aspects of innovativeness. Innovation culture, at least within Hofstede's framework, proved to be insufficient to explain and understand the tendency for innovation and entrepreneurship the consequent economic growth of the analysed regions. This basically means that Hofstede's approach did not prove to be a productive theoretical and analytical framework for exploring the influence of regional innovation culture on innovation within a country in this case Croatia. Hofstede's approach, which is methodologically fairly simple and prone to hyper empiricism, has proven far more fruitful in cross-cultural inter-cultural differences between several countries. Therefore, the third part of the book suggests that, due to the limited scope of the Hofstede model, it finds an alternative approach to the study of "hidden" social factors that affect the weak dynamics of innovation and entrepreneurship. The fruitfulness of such an alternative approach was found in the relatively rich literature of Croatian authors that analyzed the various socio-cultural and political factors of Croatia's weak economic growth during transition. These studies are classified into two main groups. One, developed by sociologists, that causes find in “path dependency” concept, the cultural heritage of socialism and cultural inertia, and the other, developed by political economists who see the reasons for the lagging behind in a special form of capitalism developed in the post- socialist period during the transition, “clientelist capitalism” and its closely related corruption. Finally, the epilogue gives a brief overview of recent political circumstances that led to the collapse of the Croatian government only 6 months after the general elections in December 2015. It confirms our main conclusion how corruption and incorrect political discourse together with divided Croatian society by outdated ideologies, political attitudes, ethical values, worldview and behaviors, are the biggest obstacle to innovation and entrepreneurship. In this way, cultural and social factors and the "state of mind" are shown to be decisive in the development of innovativeness but analyzed from the aspect of socio-economic reality. Such an approach, as opposed to relatively abstract global cultural theories, enables mobilization activities to overcome the present state.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Sociologija

POVEZANOST RADA