National cultural values and the purpose of businesses

We need measures and tests of the effects of national values if we are not to over- or under-attribute management behaviour differences to them, but complex institutional and industrial influences make this difficult. Here, we examine international differences in the purposes of firms as expressed by CEOs, which subject to institutional and industrial factors as well as national values. Having explored these purposes in investment decisions of large public companies, we adopted a ‘quasi-experimental’ approach to measure and test national values’ influence in owner-managed firms in different cultures.We found national values influencing business aims, but not time frames or stakeholders, where other forces were acting. So they are important, but we can only reliably attribute behaviour to them on the rare occasions where other forces are not at play. Good measures of values’ effects may themselves aid understanding of the background to international business negotiations and partnerships.