Author(s): Yu-Feng L. Lee,Shammi Gandhi,Jim Fatoki
Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing unprecedented global pandemic crippling world economy and all aspects of human life. Facing shifting COVID epicenters from East to West, many developing and lower-developed countries have been devastated to tackle such public health crisis, especially when endowed with sub-standard health care, unstable and meagerly growing economy, and dearth of resources. Given the pressing need of pandemic control which relies weightily on the ‘hardware’ of medical treatments and supplies, along with economic remedial plans, this study accentuates the equal importance of the ‘software’ lying on one’s culture which is deemed to help guiding how people act to collectively reach a COVID relief while achieving societal altruism. Founded on the Hofstede cultural paradigm, this paper offers qualitative investigations on epidemic management of developing and lower-developed countries across East Asia, Latin America, and Africa. It is believed that effective crisis control is most likely resulted from the collaborative culture, reflected in long-term orientation, low individualism, high power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, and low self-indulgence, where an early and comprehensive compliance of public-mandated safety measures is adopted by a country’s citizens, while the risks of failing intervention due to citizens’ defiance may prevail in a relatively uncooperative and solitary culture. Facing impending COVID management, policy makers should hence take the pragmatic cultural traits into consideration. This study is original and creative founded on the classification of Hofstede culture.