مدلسازی تاثیر فرهنگ ملی بر عملکرد بانک های چند ملیتی : تجزیه و تحلیل مرز غیر پارامتری قوی مشروط

Most of the efficiency studies of large multinational banks operating in different countries calculate banks' inefficiency levels without taking into account the environmental factors in which they are operating in. As a result the estimated inefficiencies are subject to a combination of true managerial inefficiencies and the impact of environmental factors which most of the time are not appropriately controlled in the analysis. This study by examining 282 multinational banks from 43 different countries calculates the influence of their national culture on their estimated efficiency levels. By using conditional and unconditional robust efficiency estimators this paper provides empirical evidence of how different cultural values influence banks' global practices and thus their performances. The results indicate that there is a cultural pattern that has a positive effect on banks' performance. That is lower masculine, uncertainty avoidance and power distance values and moderate individualistic values.

According to the literature the majority of the studies calculating multinational banks' efficiency assume that all banks have a common efficient frontier (Bos and Kool, 2006). In addition the use of such assumption leads to biased efficiency results and thus to misevaluation of policy implications (Dietsch and Lozano-Vivas, 2000). As such cross-country bank efficiency studies must adjust their efficiency measurements towards capturing environmental influences, which usually are beyond the control of management. According to several authors little work has been done on identifying and measuring the environmental factors which affect multinational banks' efficiency levels (Chaffai et al., 2001, Lozano-Vivas et al., 2001, Lozano-Vivas et al., 2002, Berger and Lorreta, 1997 and Bos and Kool, 2006). In a global environment the dynamics and complexities require full collaboration of all operations and production processes within the business in order for the multinational to take advantage of its scale and scope capabilities. Hayes and Thies (1991) suggest that services add more complexity to this complication due to its nature of being labour intensive. In that respect productivity is mostly based upon making the worker more efficient. However, the performance of banks operating in global market place face different challenges when trying to maximising their performances through different production operations management (POM) approaches. Pagell et al. (2005) suggest that national culture is one of the main factors explaining differences in international operational decision making. Similarly, Bendoly et al. (2006) emphasise the fact that national culture can moderate the effects of task interdependence on perceptions of the importance of enterprise resource planning (ERP) communicative capabilities. Based on those lines our study measures and evaluates the impact of multinational banks' national cultures on their efficiency levels. In addition the study investigates the effect of national culture on banks' performance with an attempt to identify cultural patterns that distinguish higher from lower performers. In order to model the effect of national culture on banks' efficiency levels we use conditional and unconditional robust nonparametric techniques. Daraio and Simar (2007a) suggest that robust frontiers have many advantages compared to traditional full frontiers due to the fact that they are less influenced by extreme points and outliers. Therefore they can provide us with measures which avoid the most important limitation when using a nonparametric technique, which is its deterministic nature. In addition, these robust measures of efficiency don't suffer from dimensionality problems. Furthermore our paper in order to establish the cultural patterns that influence multinational bank's performance uses Hofstede's (1980) national cultural dimensions. In contrast with the critique of the usage of Hofstede's cultural measures Merritt (2000) has confirmed the validity of those measures in workplace. The paper is organized a follows. Section 2 reviews the relevant literature whereas Section 3 presents the various variables used in the formulation of the proposed models. In Section 4 the techniques adopted both in theoretical and mathematical formulations are presented. Section 5 discusses the empirical findings of our study. The final section concludes the paper commenting on the derived results and the implied policy implications.

According to Hayes and Wheelwright (1984) business, function and operation strategy is a pattern of decision making and this specific pattern has a direct effect on business performance. Due to the fact that the pattern of decision making is found to be influenced by cultural values (Pagell et al., 2005, Bendoly et al., 2006, Jiang et al., 2007 and Halkos and Tzeremes, 2008) this paper identifies the consequences of such an influence on multinational bank's performance. Using the latest advances in nonparametric techniques we provide accurate efficiency estimators using a sample of 282 multinational financial institutions from 43 different countries operating globally. As such our study constitutes to the literature gap which identifies that research on multinational bank efficiency needs to identify and measure the impact of environmental, uncontrollable factors (Dietsch and Lozano-Vivas, 2000, Chaffai et al., 2001, Lozano-Vivas et al., 2001, Lozano-Vivas et al., 2002, Berger and Lorreta, 1997 and Bos and Kool, 2006). By using conditional robust estimators our paper identifies the cultural patterns of higher performers emphasising the impact of national cultures on multinational banks' efficiency levels. The results indicate that lower masculine and power distance values, moderate individualistic values and lower uncertainty avoidance values have a direct positive impact on multinational bank's performance. Furthermore, the results prove that banks' performances are influenced by different cultural values which in turn are interrelated in a global transformation process whereby people and physical resources are combined into productive systems to provide financial services (Prentis, 1987). The results clearly indicate that when firms pursue efficiency in managing operating systems in countries with different national cultures must take into account (and thus to adapt their practices) foreign country's national culture in order for their operational management practices to be feasible.