A Tale of Two Different Cultures &; Financial Performance Relationships : The Art of Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions in the Global Context

The organisational culture of any business, industry or nation is like the software designed by their leaders. This viewpoint sheds some light on the differences between the organisational performance of one business and another in the same industry, or of one industry and another in the same nation. This contributes to our understanding of why some nations are more developed than other apparently similar nations. The tale of the relationship between culture and financial performance is primarily due to the "programmer" (leader) not the "software" (culture). For instance, the political conflicts between North and South Korea cannot simply be explained by the differences in their cultural values, without also looking at how these in turn are caused by the differences in their leaders' behaviours. In contrast, despite the similarity in the values of different Arab nations, there are still disagreements among their leaders in announcing the first or the last day of Ramadan. Therefore, let us say, "Leadership behaviour is the missing clue in the tale of two cultures."