Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies (ISSN: 2220-6140) Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 145-154, April 2018 145 Relationship between National Culture and Development Tranos Zuva, Zeleke Worku Vaal University of Technology (VUT) ICT Department, South Africa Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Business School, South Africa tranosz@vut.ac.za,WorkuZ@tut.ac.za Abstract:Culture, as it is defined and well understood, differentiates one group from the other; in more general form, one country from the other. Culture then influences the behaviour and how we think in our everyday lives but so far culture of any group can only be measured in terms of a collection of cultural dimensions. This has made it difficult to establish whether there is any relationship between culture and any other social factors. In this study we derived national culture index from the four (4) Hofstede cultural dimensions (power (equality versus inequality), collectivism (versus individualism), uncertainty avoidance (versus uncertainty tolerance), masculinity (versus femininity)) using geo-mean formula. We then investigated whether there is any relationship between national culture index and national development index. In doing this we endeavoured to answer the question “Is There Really a Relationship Between Culture and Development?” posed by Mbakogu (2004:38). The data used for our experiments for Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture values were retrieved from Hofstede website that has an open licence for academic researchers. Data for human development national index were retrieved from UNDP website (Letter of consent was obtained from UNDP officials). The Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated (r=0.083, p=0.502>0.05), which indicated that there is very negligible positive relationship between cultural index values and the development index values. Since the value of p is greater than the significance level of 0.05, we concluded that there is inconclusive evidence about the significance of the association established between National Culture Index and National Development Index. Since we currently have a national culture index, researchers can now talk about culture as a homogeneous unit. Researchers may use the national culture index to investigate relationship between culture and any other social factors. In future we intend to use other cultural dimensions proposed by other researchers to present a national culture index. Keywords: Hofstede cultural dimensions, National development index, National cultural index 1. Introduction National culture and national development are very complex concepts and difficult to define. Many authors gave their view of culture and development thus there are so many definitions in literature (Morden, 2016; Albu, 2006; Aluko, 2003). Researchers endeavoured to measure national culture and national development, giving a vast array of cultural measurements and developmental measurements of nations (Hofstede, 2011; Schwartz, 2008). Through these measurements researchers endeavoured to establish relationships within culture and development (Sempere, 2011; Grosser & Lombard, 2008). In order to establish relationships using culture and/or development these concepts have been dimensionalized. Authors have been able to establish relationships between cultural dimensions and development dimensions then concluded by saying either there is relationship or not between culture and development. The first challenge in conducting research involving culture is arriving at an understanding of what culture is, given the myriad of definitions, conceptualizations, and dimensions used to describe this concept. Culture as it is defined, well understood and differentiates one group from the other, in more general form one country from the other. Culture then influences the behaviour and how people think in their everyday lives but so far culture of any group can only be measured in terms of a collection of cultural dimensions (Mazur, 2010). This has made it difficult to establish if there is any relationship between culture and any other social factors. In an event that one wants to find the influence of culture to society then one needs to find the influence of the individual dimensions of culture while at the same time talking about culture as a unit. The dimensionalization of culture entails we cannot talk about culture as a homogeneous unit but as a heterogeneous unit. Although there are measurements for cultural distance between nations to enable multinational companies to know the cultural distance between host-home countries, there is still no national culture index that can be used to measure any relationship with other social or economic factors (Zuva & Worku, 2016). Researchers so far have relied on cultural dimensions to establish relationship between