Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 150 ( 2014 ) 908 – 916
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
1877-0428 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under
the CC BY-NC-ND license
(
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
).
Peer-review under responsibility of the International Strategic Management Conference.
doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.100
ScienceDirect
10
th
International Strategic Management Conference
Relationship between Uncertainty Avoidance Culture,
Entrepreneurial Activity and Economic Development
Yasemin Hanc
ı
o
ğ
lu
a*
, Ülkühan
Bike Do
ğ
an
b
,
Ş
ükran S
ı
rk
ı
nt
ı
o
ğ
lu Y
ı
ld
ı
r
ı
m
c
a,b,c
Ankara University, Ankara,06560, Turkey
Abstract
The aim of this study is to observe uncertainty avoidance as an important national cultural dimension and to analyze uncertainty
avoidance effect on "Total Entrepreneurial Activity". Total entrepreneurial activity measures the level of the economic development
and entrepreneurship. The relationship between uncertainty avoidance, entrepreneurship and economic development was analyzed
by three hypothesises. Correlational regression analysis
in SPSS was used, and as a result of analysis, it has been found that a
country’
economic development level (GDPPC) influence its uncertainty avoidance level and the total entrepreneurial activity
(TEA)rate.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.:+0-90-535-828-8620; fax:+0-90-312-319-7736.
E-mail address
: yaseminhancioglu@gmail.com
1.
Introduction
Entrepreneurship involves a great diversity of contexts and factors as being a complicated phenomenon.
Economic
growth has been affected by entrepreneurship in various forms. Entering markets with new products or production
methods enable entrepreneurs to present valuable innovations (Acs and Audretsch, 2003; Steel et al. 2005).
Beugelsdijk (2007) affirms that personality characteristics,
organizational knowledge, social networks, family, the
economic environment and culture all affect the entrepreneurship behavior.
Entrepreneurship activities, which are brought to market by innovative products, are essential components of
economic growth in developed economies (Austretch, 2004;
O’Gorman and Fitzsimons, 2007).
Global
entrepreneurship monitor (GEM) has been used
to compare 57 countries’ entrepreneurship level.
In this study, we
examine uncertainty avoidance, total entrepreneurial activity and economic development at the
country level. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) gives us older and newer data. GEM involves Total
Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rate. TEA evaluates the rate of burgeoning (nascent) entrepreneurs and young
enterprises for a range of countries. Wennekerset. al. (2005) define the rate of nascent entrepreneurship
as the number
of people actively involved in attempting to start a new business. Economic development is defined as
“
per capita
income
”
or as
“
innovative capacity
”
by same researchers.
Keywords:
Uncertainty Avoidance, Entrepreneurship, Economic Development
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
).
Peer-review under responsibility of the International Strategic Management Conference.
909
Yasemin Hancıo
ğ
lu et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 150 ( 2014 ) 908 – 916
This study begins by a literature
review of entrepreneurship, economic development and Hofstede’s cultural
dimensions. Then, development of hypotheses, research methodology, research model and results are given. At the
end, results are being argued.