Title: Power distance and uncertainty avoidance differences between two Arabic countries within a same Hofstede cluster under Takaful Industry

Authors: Salman Alajmi; Helmi Temimi

Addresses: Brunel Business School, Brunel University, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, UK. ' Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Gulf University for Science & Technology, Kuwait 1-163 Mubarak Al-Abdullah Al-Jaber Area, (West Mishref) Block 5, Mishref, Al-Aqsa Mosque Road, Building 2, Kuwait

Abstract: This paper aims to investigate the differences of national culture between countries belonging to similar cluster and sharing some attributes such as language, religion or geographic location based on two of Hofstede's cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1980; Hofstede and Hofstede, 1991), power distance and uncertainty avoidance, within the context of Takaful industry (Islamic Insurance). Hofstede classified all Arabic countries within same cluster and gave them same scores for his cultural dimensions. In this study only power distance and uncertainty avoidance were chosen as the dimensions of this study for many reasons of which the ability of power distance to eliminate the information gap in all directions such as informal, horizontal, top and bottom information sharing and gathering and also to strengthen the quality of decisions it makes (Khatri 2009), and uncertainty avoidance which stimulates organisations to provide customer activities (Todeva 1999). This research was conducted on two Arabic countries Kuwait and Egypt.

Keywords: power distance; uncertainty avoidance; Takaful; Islamic insurance; Islamic law; Islam; Kuwait; Egypt; Geert Hofstede; Gert Jan Hofstede; Hofstede clusters; national cultures; cultural attributes; language; religion; geographic location; cultural dimensions; Arabic countries; information gaps; informal information gathering; horizontal information gathering; top information gathering; bottom information gathering; informal information sharing; horizontal information sharing; top information sharing; bottom information sharing; decisions; customer activities; Naresh Khatri; Emanuela Todeva; Arab culture; management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJACMSD.2012.049136

International Journal of Arab Culture, Management and Sustainable Development, 2012 Vol.2 No.2/3, pp.226 - 234

Published online: 29 Jul 2014 *

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