Fashion founded on a flaw

Abstract

PurposeTo comment on Brewer and Venaik's review of the misapplication of the national culture dimensions of Hofstede and GLOBE at the individual and other sub‐national levels. This paper supports and extends their critique.Design/methodology/approachThe implausibility of deterministic claims about the multi‐level power of national culture is described and discussed by drawing on a wide range of disciplines (including anthropology, geography, sociology, and historiography).FindingsDescriptions of the characteristics and origins of sub‐national level behaviour based on a priori depictions of national culture values are invalid and misleading.Practical implicationsThere are important implications for practitioners. The paper highlights the unsoundness of descriptions of the sub‐national (individuals, consumer segments, organizations, and so forth) which are derived from national‐level depictions of culture and the dangers of ignoring the independent causal influence of non‐national culture and non‐cultural factors.Originality/valueThe ecological fallacy in the national culture literature is located within a wider and long‐standing critique of that fallacy. The paper is the first to show that the fallacy in the national culture literature is often an extreme causal version. It not merely supposes cross‐level equivalence, as in the standard version, but more aggressively, it attributes deterministic power to national culture thus excluding other independent influences and agency.