The influence of national culture on cooperative attitudes in high-technology start-ups

The main focus of this chapter is the concept of cooperation by hightechnology start-ups or HTSUs and in particular, the influence that culture may have upon attitudes that may predict cooperative behaviour. HTSUs are defined in this chapter as young companies whose aim is to produce technologically innovative products, processes and/or services. These firms typically generate a high turnover per employee. Adapted from Barnard (1938), furthermore, HTSU cooperation is defined as a functional system of activities between the HTSU and one or more outside parties, with the purpose of improving its performance. Note that although the outside party may also benefit, key to this definition is the notion that cooperation, at minimum, benefits the HTSU. Finally, although culture is a rather broad term, the focus is primarily upon national culture (NC) and in particular, variables developed in earlier research by Hofstede (2001). According to Hofstede, culture can be treated as 'the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another'.