Abstract
Cultural distance continues to be one of the most studied variables in international business research. Scholars have operationalized cultural distance in various ways—using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions in index or aggregated form, GLOBE project scores, and Hofstede’s dimensions in individual form—and, in the process, often produced inconsistent and contradictory findings. In this study we employ different measures of cultural distance, aggregated and individual dimension-based, to examine how they influence collaborative project execution performance in the emerging market context. Utilizing institutional perspective as theoretical background and examining a sample of capacity expansion projects involving foreign MNEs and Indian firms, we find that aggregate versus individual measure of cultural distance produce different impacts on the likelihood of project completion. Individual dimension-based measure of distance yields fine-grained results that are masked when aggregate measure is used in the analysis.