The competitive advantage of European nations: The impact of national culture—A missing element in Porter’s analysis

This article uses as its starting point Michael Porter’s model of the national ‘diamond ’ to explain the role of the national environment in the competi-tive position of industries and firms. The authors believe, however, that the influence of national culture on the competitive advantage of nations is given too little attention in this model. In particular, strong or weak uncertainty avoidance behaviour in nations and their masculine/feminine characteristics are neglected. lacking. Porter (1990), in his book Tire Compefifiz~e Ahm-tap of Nofiom, claims to contribute to this topic. This topic becomes more and more important. The mere mention of the worsening of competitive advantage of the European Community compared with the USA and Japan stresses this. However, it is generally believed that one of the strengths of the European Community is its cultural diversity, roughly corresponding with the related national environments of the Member States. Hofstede states in his new book (1991) that the laboriously developed experience while working together with these different nations, generates a competitive advantage over other economic superpowers. In this connection, the growing importance of the internal EC market has stimulated the quest for European manage-ment (Thurley and Wirdenius, 1989). According to Van Dijck (1990, p. 478), a key element in European manage-The national diamond rests on the base of national culture, and the latter is exogenous to the firm. In a European context, managing the different diamonds that exist itself generates competitive advantage.