The unique characteristics of online social communities call for a reexamination and adaptation of established behavioral theories of trust decision-making. Guided by relevant social science and computational graph theories, we propose a conceptual model of trust decision-making in online social networks. This is the first study that integrates the existing graph-based view of trust decision-making in social networks into socio-psychological theories of trust to provide a richer understanding of trusting decisions in online social networks. We introduce new behavioral antecedents of trusting decisions, and redefine and integrate existing graph-based concepts to develop our proposed conceptual model. We introduce new behavioral antecedents of trusting decisions that have not been identified in previous research. We also identify novel operationalization methods to measure behavioral trust-inducing factors for online social networks. Our empirical findings indicate that both behavioral and network-specific trust decision-making factors should be considered in studying trusting decisions in online social networks.

The sharing economy, as an emerging business model, has grown greatly in the last decade. However, the acceptance rate of the sharing economy varies from country to country. Researchers have noted the importance of cultural values on technology acceptance in different countries. This study investigates the influence of national cultural values and trust on the acceptance of online sharing hospitality platforms by users in the US and China via a survey methodology. The four espoused national cultural dimensions of individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, and power distance were measured at the individual level. Extending from the technology acceptance model (TAM), the research model integrates both direct and moderating effects of culture and trust. The two constructs of trust both have significant direct effects on intention to use. Uncertainty avoidance has a significant moderating effect. The results emphasize the importance of trust and cultural values, especially uncertainty avoidance in online hospitality platforms adoption.

Knowledge is increasingly being viewed as a critical component for organizations. It is largely people-based and the characteristics of groups of individuals, in the form of organizational cultures, may play a key role in the factors that lead to either the acceptance or rejection of knowledge management systems (KMS). The primary objective of this research is to explore how dimensions of organizational culture influence factors that lead to the acceptance of KMS. While researchers have agreed that culture plays an important role in KMS, the literature has only recently begun to examine organizational culture within this context. We examined the effects of three dimensions of organizational culture through a research model that was tested and analyzed utilizing a field survey of corporate knowledge management users. Our results indicated that both process-oriented and open communication system organizational cultures significantly influenced the factors that led to the acceptance of KMS.

This article examines within-culture variance in the influence of values on perceptions and use of information technology (IT). Based on cross-cultural research, we suggest that cultural values influence technology acceptance and use. Specifically, we argue that masculinity/femininity and individualism/collectivism directly influence personal innovativeness with IT, computer anxiety, and computer self-efficacy, and have a mediated effect on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and use of IT. Overall, analysis provides support for the research model. Our results suggest that masculinity/femininity influences computer selfefficacy, computer anxiety, and personal innovativeness with IT. We also offer implications for research and practice.

In an organizational setting, national culture is not the only type of culture that influences managerial and work behavior. Rather, behavior is influenced by different levels of culture ranging from the supranational (regional, ethnic, religious, linguistic) level through the national, professional, and organizational levels to the group level. The objective of this study is to integrate these different levels of culture by explicitly recognizing that individuals’ workplace behavior is a function of all different cultures simultaneously. It is theorized that the relative influence of the different levels of culture on individual behavior varies depending on the nature of the behavior under investigation. Thus, for behaviors that include a strong social component or include terminal and moral values, supranational and national cultures might have a predominant effect. For behaviors with a strong task component or for those involving competence values or practices, organizational and professional cultures may dominate. These propositions are illustrated with examples from the IS field. This paper is a conceptual study and therefore extends theory and the current understanding of how culture is examined by not only explicitly recognizing that behaviors are simultaneously influenced by multiple levels of culture but by also specifying conditions under which certain levels of culture dominate. Such an approach has the potential to inform researchers and practitioners about the generalizability or universality of theories and techniques across national, organizational, and professional borders.

This paper presents a discussion of methodological issues that are relevant and idiosyncratic to cross-cultural research. One characteristic that typifies cross-cultural studies is their comparative nature, i.e., they involve a comparison across two separate cultures on a focal phenomenon. When differences across cultures are observed, the question arises as to whether the results are true cultural differences or merely measurement artifacts. Methodological considerations in cross-cultural research focus on ruling out alternative explanations for these differences and thus enhancing the interpretability of the results. The paper presents an overview of key methodological issues in cross-cultural research and reviews methods of preventing or detecting methodological problems.

In reviewing the history of the conceptualization and measurement of “culture,” one quickly realizes that there is wide-ranging and contradictory scholarly opinion about which values, norms, and beliefs should be measured to represent the concept of “culture.” We explore an alternate theory-based view of culture via social identity theory (SIT), which suggests that each individual is influenced by plethora of cultures and sub-cultures–some ethnic, some national, and some organizational. In IS research, the culture of subjects and respondents is problematic because it is typically an overly simplistic categorization. IS research nearly always assumes that an individual living in a particular place and time belongs to a single “culture,” e.g., someone living in Egypt is automatically classified as being a member of the Egyptian culture, or, more broadly, the Arab culture. This dearth of clear concepts and measures for “culture” may explain why cross-cultural research has been so exceedingly difficult to conduct. It may also explain why it has been hard to develop and refine theories. Moreover, it may give insight into why reasonable explained variance in predictive models has not been higher. Finally, it is very possible that much cross-cultural business research could be rightly accused of advancing an “ecological fallacy” by not recognizing the individual makeup of persons with respect to culture. Using SIT (or other theory bases) as grounding for cultural research programs implies the use of certain methodological approaches. Each study would have to establish the salient “cultures” in each individual’s background and include these different “cultures” as independent variables in positivist research. In qualitative research, there would need to be an equally rigorous assessment of the cultural identifiers of each individual.