A survey of ‘culture and finance'

In this research article, peer-reviewed academic journals in the area of finance have been screened to investigate the recent rise in interest for ?cultural approaches?. The aim has been to let the definitions emerge from the screening process; thus, building a field-based analysis about ?culture? in finance, and its operationalization. The results of that screening are as follows: firstly, the concept of ?culture? is mainly connected to the notion of ?national cultures?. Secondly, the survey shows that ?culture? is now used in a very large range of financial research areas: from the study of international financial flows, to corporate financial management, through to the analysis of the development, efficiency and robustness of stock markets and financial macro-structures. Thirdly, a marked polarization has been noted: some approaches rely on ?national cultural indices? (dimensionalism), while others generally provide no definition of ?culture?. Taken together, these other approaches provide a fuzzy view, and no consistent framework emerges to compete with dimensionalism. As a consequence, the review, presented here, is extended to all dimensionalist work that can be identified in the field of finance, which provides a fourth result: the only framework with current generality in finance is not likely to be adapted as a unifying model anytime soon. Overall, the research contributes to a preliminary roadmap for cross-referencing with other disciplines; it suggests the adoption of backward definitions, and the building upon of complementarities in existing approaches, including, in particular, dimensionalism, trust, religions, or, still, the idea of ?culture?, as layers, derived, in particular, from recent advances in cognitive sciences.