Impact of Socio-Cultural Factors onto the National Technology Development

Abstract

The paper proposes the empiric research of socio-cultural factors’ impact on the national technology development. It is well noted that the rapid technology development gives an increase of living standards, boost country economy, and contributes substantially to the gross domestic product. Being intangible socio-cultural factors are still potential drivers to the technology development enhancement and play an important role in constituting national welfare. The aim of the present research is to empirically investigate whether socio-cultural factors have significant impact on the national technology development and whether Hofstede’s indices play a mediating role between chosen factors and the technology development. The literature review has shown that results of the similar empiric research are rather controversial. Based on a dataset from more than 100 countries we have designed and analyzed a second-order model that confirmed the impact of the chosen factors to the technology development at a national economy. The most unexpected result deals with the direct impact of the business culture (R2 = 0.92). The received results also confirmed the role of the human capital and the social capital. Hofstede’s indices play a mediating role in two from three cases: between human capital and the national technology development and between business culture and the technology development.