Question

I need to find articles on Hofstede's cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance in South Korea.

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Uncertainty avoidance is one of Hofstede's five dimensions of culture, and I'd like to apply it to South Korea in order to write a paper comparing the country's dimension of uncertainty avoidance in the past and transitioning to the present.

Answered By: Trustee Library
Last Updated: Sep 02, 2020     Views: 598

 

What an interesting subject! Since you are a student in the graduate business program, the best place to start for this topic is the Business LibGuide, located at http://libguides.brenau.edu/business. 
 
 
Click on the yellow tab for Organizational Leadership. In the center of the page, you'll see a list of databases where you can search for your topic. All are good choices with excellent collections, but I suggest starting with the database ABI/INFORM Complete. Click on the link to  ABI/INFORM Complete and enter your Brenau username and password. You'll arrive at the main search page.
 
 
Enter your first search: try the whole term "uncertainty avoidance" AND "south korea". You'll note two things about this search term. 
 
#1, the conjunction AND is placed between the phrases. This tells the search engine that you want articles with both these things in it, not just one or the other. (Imagine having to look through all the articles on South Korea just to find the ones that mention uncertainty avoidance!)
 
#2, there are quotation marks around each phrase. These marks tell the search engine to only look for articles where those two words appear side by side, which focuses your results and eliminates clutter you have to look through. 
 
When you arrive at your results, you can make adjustments to which results are shown by using the options on the side of the results page. In ABI/INFORM Complete, you'll find results like this one below:
Jung, J. M. (2002). Interactive impact of culture and individual characteristics on ethical decision
making processes, criteria, and judgmental outcomes: A cross-national comparison between South Korea and United States. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati.

Your topic is unique - there seems to be quite a lot of comparative studies that look at South Korea in addition to one or more other countries, but not many in-depth studies of only South Korea in particular. ABI/INFORM Complete includes one article I found that addresses the management situation in South Korea in the late 1990s with respect to Hofstede's dimensions that you may be able to apply to your paper. See the citation below:

Tony, M., & David, B. (1998). Management in South Korea: a review. Management

Decision, 36(5), 316-330.

If you would like to continue to focus on only South Korea, a good strategy might be to use an older article (like the one above) in addition to current articles on South Korea (from 2010-2012), and use them compare the past and present in your assignment. 

After reviewing your article results from the first search, try more versions of your search - for example, you may want to look for Hofstede AND "South Korea" for more information on Hofstede's dimensions as applied to that particular country. 

When you are done with the first database, try these same searches in another of the business databases in the LibGuide list. Each database has a unique collection, so keep trying different databases if you are not satisfied with your results - you may find additional articles in one database that were not available in the other.

If you need more, respond and let us know!

 

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