Discusión: El Sentido Profesional Del Decálogo

This section reports the results of the exploratory factor analysis of the 26-item CVSCALE (Yoo and Donthu 2002) that was used to investigate cultural orientation at the individual level. The same procedure was used as detailed in the previous section to analyse this scale. As before, both the KMO MSA and

the Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity were conducted on the CVSCALE data to determine whether the data were appropriate for factor analysis. The KMO MSA score was .840 and the Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity was significant, indicating that the variables were correlated enough to provide a reasonable basis for factor analysis (Tabachnick and Fidell 2006). Following these preliminary analyses, exploratory factor analysis was conducted using principal component analysis and VARIMAX orthogonal rotation as used with the expectations portion of the SERVQUAL scale.

The factor analysis of the CVSCALE resulted in a clean solution and all 26 items loaded on the dimensions reported in Donthu and Yoo (1998), thus indicating convergent and discriminant validity (Patterson et al. 2006).

However, only 25 of the items were used in the final analysis (item 20 was dropped) as explained below. In terms of practical significance, the factor solution was deemed satisfactory as the cumulative percentage of variance extracted by the five factors retained was greater than 60 percent (Hair et al.

2010). Additionally, the reliabilities of the five factors extracted were good, ranging from .702 to .875. A condensed version of the results is reported in Table 6.3 (below).

The first factor extracted was Long-term Orientation, which explained 13.95%

of the variance in the data. All six items making up this sub-scale had significant loadings ranging from .595 to .795. The reliability of this factor was high, with " = .875. The second factor extracted was Uncertainty Avoidance, which explained 13.92% of the variance in the data. All five items making up this sub-scale had significant loadings, the lowest of which was .708. The reliability of this factor was also high, with " = .873. The third factor extracted was Individualism, which explained 13.26% of the variance in the data. The six items making up this sub-scale had significant loadings ranging from .589 to .825. The reliability of this factor was also high, with " = .830.

Table 6.3: Dimensionality of the CVSCALE

1. Most decisions should be made by people in higher positions 2. Relative unimportance of the opinions of people in lower positions

3. People in higher positions should avoid social interaction with people in lower positions

4. People in lower positions should not disagree with decisions by people in higher positions

5. Important tasks should not be delegated to people in lower positions

6. Importance of clear instructions

7. Closely following instructions and procedures 8. Rules and regulations are important

9. Standardized work procedures are helpful 10. Instructions for operations are important

.873

11. Individuals should sacrifice self-interest for the group 12. Individuals should stick with the group even through difficulties

13. Group welfare is more important than individual rewards 14. Group success is more important than individual success 15. Individuals should only pursue their goals after considering the welfare of the group

16. Group loyalty should be encouraged even if individual goals suffer

17. Have a professional career is more important for men 18. Men usually solve problems with logical analysis; women usually solve problems with intuition

19. Solving difficult problems usually requires an active, forcible approach, which is typical of men

.731

.562 .705 .706

Long-term Orientation

21. Careful management of money is important

22. It is important to go on resolutely even when there is opposition 23. Personal steadiness and stability are important

24. It is important to plan for the long-term

25. Giving up today’s fun for success in the future is important 26. It is important to work hard for success in the future

.875

The fourth factor extracted was Power Distance, which explained 12.27% of the variance in the data. The five items making up this factor had significant loadings ranging from .519 to .782. The reliability of this factor was acceptable, with " = .737. The final factor extracted was Masculinity, which explained 10.20% of the variance in the data. The four items making up this

sub-scale had significant loadings ranging from .551 to .706. The reliability of this factor was acceptable, with " = .702, however this rose to .731 when item 20 (There are some jobs that a man can always do better than a woman) was removed. This is explained by the low item-to-total correlation (.335) of the item. It was therefore decided to remove this item from the Masculinity sub-scale since this variable had an unacceptable communality value (Hair et al.

2010). The final Masculinity sub-scale was therefore made up of items 17, 18, and 19.

Overall, all five scales were deemed to be good measures of the constructs being investigated, as all the reliability scores were above the 0.7 minimum value recommended by Hair et al. (2010). Additionally, the reliabilities reported here compare favourably with the alpha values reported by Patterson et al. (2006), Kueh and Voon (2007), Prasongsukarn (2009), and Schoefer (2010) who all recently employed the CVSCALE in their research. As reported in Section 5.3, Patterson (2007), reported alpha values of three dimensions from .61 to .80, Schoefer (2010) reported alpha values of four dimensions from .77 to .86, Kueh and Voon (2007) and Prasongsukarn (2009) reported alpha values of five dimensions from .72 to .83 and .61 to 85, respectively.

This section has reported the results of the factor analysis undertaken on the data collected in this research using Donthu and Yoo’s (1998) CVSCALE scale. The results of the analysis supported the five-factor structure found by others that have used this scale (Donthu and Yoo 1998; Kueh and Voon 2007;

Prasongsukarn 2009; Yoo and Donthu 2001, 2002, 2005) and so this five-factor structure was employed to analyse the relevant hypotheses.

To conclude the examination of this scale, assumptions of normality, linearity, and equality of variance were tested. First, means and standard deviations were calculated for each of the five dimensions of the CVSCALE. Table 6.4 (below) presents data on the means, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of the individual-level cultural value orientation dimensions. As previously noted,

individual cultural orientation was measured on a 7-point scale, with one indicating strong disagreement with the statement and seven indicating strong agreement with the statement. The mean scores vary across the factors making up the CVSCALE, with Power Distance having a low mean considerably less than 3.5, which indicates that the sample has low Power Distance orientation.

Masculinity in the sample was exactly at the midpoint of the scale. The means on Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance are above the central point, but can still be classed as being ‘Medium’ at less than 5 out of 7. Long-term Orientation was ‘Medium-High,’ indicating that the respondents in the sample generally had a long-term orientation. Additionally, this dimension of culture had the lowest standard deviation, suggesting that there is little difference in opinion among respondents on this variable.

Table 6.4: Descriptive Statistics of the Measured Independent Variables The Measured Independent Variables

Mean Std Dev Skewness Kurtosis

Power Distance 2.7076 1.17879 .833 .525

Uncertainty Avoidance 4.9835 1.16664 -.507 .071

Individualism 4.5985 1.10013 -.217 .148

Masculinity 3.5424 1.32914 .064 -.592

Long-term Orientation 5.4711 1.06349 -1.025 .973

In terms of skewness, only the Long-term Orientation set of variables fell outside the ±1 range, indicating substantial negative skewness of the data.

Long-term Orientation also had large, positive kurtosis value. These results indicate that the data are non-normal. Kurtosis was not found to be a significant problem in the rest of the sample but a large number of variables were skewed. This is not surprising because for samples that hold the same cultural values, some degree of homogeneity would be expected in their responses. In other words, students’ responses about cultural values would be expected to cluster around a certain value on the scale. For instance, Long-term Oriented individuals would be expected to have above-average ratings on the Long-term Orientation scale rather than being normally distributed. Similarly, if culture affects service quality expectations as hypothesised, groups that are culturally similar should have similar levels of service quality expectations,