Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions and the International Graduate Student in the Finance Classroom
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
We examine factors impacting performance in the international graduate student classroom. Extending a broad literature, we measure academic outcomes for a coterie of students from across the globe that are enrolled in an international MBA (IMBA) program. We marry those outcomes to the six dimensions of national culture (Hofstede, 1984, 1994, et al) and the power that those dimensions have in anticipating student success. Employing a unique data set, we consider how such prosaic factors as age, gender, marital status, and undergraduate major and institution affect grades in graduate finance courses. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions frame some of the results, suggesting – as Hofstede and a host of other researchers have proposed – that several dimensions of “cultural values” influence student success. We employ two broad measures of graduate success: the students’ GPA, and a dichotomous variable for the completion of the student thesis. Among our descriptive factors, we find initially that only the students’ undergraduate GPA is a significant descriptor of the masters level GPA; it is not a robust indicator of the likelihood of thesis completion. Detailed analyses uncover the importance of other factors influencing graduate student outcomes. As student success and the thesis completion are important markers for the success of the IMBA program, this study’s findings will be meaningful to faculty member and administrator alike.
