What is competition? An international comparison of culture in Germany and the Netherlands in times of high prosperity markets in 1999

Scholarly Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Sociology - Culture, Technology, Peoples / Nations, grade: -, University of Groningen, course: Dutch Work Values for Erasmus-Students, 45 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: What is competition? The crisis of market failure has hit the global economy. In this article, the question is raised, how competition effects market-functioning - an indirect method of Rational Choice-Model testing with public opion pols is analysed. This paper also focuses on the abstract concept of competition by applying it to cultural-historical theory of Max Weber, Inglehard and Hofestede. Hierarchical mixed-level linear modeling is used for the comparison of the culture of Germany and the Netherlands regarding the endorsement of competition, using wave three of the European Value Survey (1999) The results indicate, that Germany had a higher endorsement of competition compared to the Netherlands. The strongest predictor was the endorsement of economic freedom. Possible experiments related to competition research are presented, concerning the velocity of knowledge in social networks.