Toward a Theory Based Measurement of Culture
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 culturessome 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