The impact of national culture on SMEs’ participation in Industry 4.0: A cross-country analysis
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2020-07-10
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en
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The successful implementation of Industry 4.0 by SMEs’ plays a major role for the future competitiveness of national industries, but yet there is a dichotomy regarding their participation. Previous studies illuminated the opportunities, challenges, and surrounding conditions. Yet, no satisfactory results were provided to explain SMEs’ torn role for Industry 4.0. Despite the emerging interest in cultural influences on economic activities and its particular relevance for SMEs, national culture was not taken into account as a relevant factor in prior analyses. This gap is filled by this paper, as it examines the impact of national culture on SMEs’ participation in Industry 4.0, using a broad dataset covering 118 countries. To investigate the influence of national culture, the effects of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on SMEs’ technical capacities are analyzed for several samples, subgroups and models. Control variables are integrated to consider other surrounding conditions. The results confirm that national culture has indeed an impact on SMEs’ participation in Industry 4.0. In particular, the positive impact of uncertainty avoidance is robust across all estimations and provides evidence that uncertainty avoiding societies may in fact have an advantage concerning SMEs’ implementation of Industry 4.0.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen