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Introduction
There are well-documented variations in technological innovation across nations ([49] Kogut, 1991; [67] Porter, 1990; [61] Nelson, 1993; [65] Porter and Stern, 2004). Researchers have explored a variety of national factors that could potentially explain variation in innovation including wealth and investment levels ([67] Porter, 1990; [91] Teece, 1992), and national political and institutional configurations and their governance structures ([8] Bartholomew, 1997; [52] Lenway and Murtha, 1994; [29] Griffin and Puia, 2009; [85] Spencer et al. , 2005). One important and well-established research stream suggests a strong relationship between a nation's culture and its level of innovativeness ([2] Ambos and Schlegelmilch, 2008; [35] Herbig and McCarty, 1993; [86] Steensma et al. , 2000; [81], [80] Shane, 1992a, b; [71] Rhyne et al. , 2002). Studies have emphatically concluded that in terms of innovation generation, national cultural dimensions matter ([73] Rinne et al. , 2012; [46] Jones and Teegan, 2001; [66] Porter, 2000; [82] Shane, 1993).
To move beyond a narrow emphasis on national cultures in international business research, some scholars suggest studying within-country diversity or intra-cultural variation (ICV) ([5], [4] Au, 1997, 1999; [57] Morris and Schindehutte, 2005; [78] Schwartz, 1994; [90] Tayeb, 2001; [69] Puia and Ofori-Dankwa, 2005; [104] Yeganeh and Su, 2006). [5], [4], [3] Au (1997, 1999, 2000; [6] Au and Cheung, 2004) in several separate studies makes perhaps the strongest and most explicit case for the incorporation of ICV to compensate for the known weaknesses in using aggregated measures of culture. This is particularly true for the specific instance of examining national levels of innovation and in international management research in general. In his research, [4], [3] Au (1999, 2000) highlights several potential ICV dimensions such as demography, spoken languages, ethnic composition, geography, and institutional characteristics and conceptualizes them as subsequently being associated with national outcomes such as technological innovation and productivity advances. Surprisingly, most studies investigating the national culture - national innovativeness relationships have not taken within-country cultural variations into account ([73] Rinne et al. , 2012; [35] Herbig and McCarty, 1993; [46] Jones and Teegan, 2001; [60] Nakata and Sivakumar, 1996; [81], [80], [82] Shane, 1992a, b, 1993). We posit that researchers that do not consider within-country diversity may miss the opportunity for a more holistic, nuanced...