Differences and similarities between countries, regions, and cultures lie at the core of international business, and they are often measured in the form of a distance index originally proposed by Kogut and Singh. Because research results using this index are ambivalent, critical observers have challenged the concept, and proposed partial remedies in the form of a standardized Euclidean or Mahalanobis distance measure. This article suggests a different avenue, construes culture as a weight vector based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, and specifies a geometrical difference measurement using the angle of heterogeneity between two such vectors. Its performance is assessed using a mathematical simulation and an empirical example from the field of export marketing, which considers the effect of culture on bilateral export flows.

国家，地区和文化之间的差异和相似性是国际业务的核心，它们通常以最初由Kogut和Singh提出的距离指数的形式来衡量。由于使用该指数的研究结果是矛盾的，因此关键的观察者对这一概念提出了挑战，并以标准化的欧几里得距离或马哈拉诺比斯距离测度的形式提出了部分补救措施。本文提出了另一种方法，将文化作为基于霍夫斯泰德文化维度的权重向量，并使用两个此类向量之间的异质性角度指定了一种几何差异度量。它的性能是通过数学模拟和出口营销领域的经验示例进行评估的，该示例考虑了文化对双边出口流量的影响。