The Impact of Cultural Values and Dissatisfaction on New Venture Creation - A Comparison of Brazil and the Netherlands

Culture is one of the constructs thought to explain differences in national levels of entrepreneurship. In an attempt to facilitate the transition of the current, intermediate state of research into causation and effectuation to the next stage, the research at hand sets out to analyze whether there is an empirical relationship between Sarasvathy’s (2001a) theory on effectuation and culture by comparing the mean tendencies of Brazilian and Dutch student-entrepreneurs to use elements of causational and effectual entrepreneurial processes. Expectations of the direct and indirect influence of culture are derived from the literature and form the basis for four hypotheses which are subsequently tested. Results indicate that there may not be a straightforward, linear relationship between Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimensions and modes of cognitive framing. Instead, the thesis at hand argues that a more nuanced perspective might be appropriate, taking into account Hofstede et al.’s (2004) Dissatisfaction theory and collecting more qualitative data on the perceptions of entrepreneurs to facilitate a more inclusive picture of why entrepreneurs employ certain cognitive processes. Furthermore, the research provides useful directions for future research on the relationship between culture and effectuation.