The Impact of National (Arabic) Culture on Interpreting and Responding to Strategic Entrepreneurship: The Case of Palestine رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is the preeminent key for economic advancement and development in worldwide. It considered a national asset to be invested in and encouraged to achieve the greatest value of it. Culture plays important role in individuals’ behaviors and attitudes which determine their intention to perform a specific behavior. Palestinian society is practicing entrepreneurship activities over a decade without a tangible impact on GDP. There is a professional and academic needs to understand what factors are behind the encouragement and reasons for entrepreneurs to establish new businesses. This research will investigate the characteristics of the Palestinian society according to the five Hofstede cultural dimensions which are power distance, long-term orientation, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and collectivism. Then to analyze and examine the relationship between the five Hofstede cultural dimensions and strategic entrepreneurship intention. The research is quantitative and about 515 surveys were collected from Westbank and Gaza. The targeted population are people who lives in Palestine and aged between 20- 39 years old who represent about 31% of the whole Palestinian population. The data have been analyzed through statistical package for social sciences software (SPSS V. 24). The results of the research showed that Palestinian society is practicing high level of all mentioned cultural dimensions which is close and similar to other Arabic cultures expect long-term orientation where Palestinians are having a long-term orientation while other Arabic cultures have low scale. In addition, the research proved there are direct and positive relationships between all Hofstede cultural dimensions and strategic entrepreneurship intention. All cultural dimensions have a weak relationship with strategic entrepreneurship intention expect long-term orientation which have a strong relationship. The field of this research need more researches and efforts to better understand other factors that affect strategic entrepreneurship intention for individuals either it’s cultural or non-cultural factors especially in the Palestinian context which is a fertile ground for future researches.