Article Gold Open Access 2010

Education and competitive economy: How do cultural dimensions fit in?

Higher Education
Journal · Vol. 59 · Issue 5 · pp. 525-541
Abstract

Globalization has changed the way people behave in different aspects of life. One of the significant differences is that people are now competing with everyone around the world, not just people within or near their own regions. A good way of remaining competitive is to provide quality education that can help students meet the needs of the competitive economy. However, not all nations are responding in the same way. Using a quantitative approach, this explorative study seeks to discover if, and how, cultural dimensions fit into the process of meeting the demands of the competitive economy by means of education across regions. Forty-three regions with different ratings on the Power Distance Index (PDI), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), and the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) are included in this study. The results show that UAI, PDI and IDV are significant factors relating to this issue. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Higher education Globalization Cross-country Hofstede's cultural dimensions

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Funding & Acknowledgements
No funding information
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