The making of a construct: Lessons from 30 years of the Kogut and Singh cultural distance index

The 30-year anniversary of Kogut and Singh’s (1988) groundbreaking study that introduced the concept of cultural distance and its accompanying measure provides the opportunity to take stock of what makes for a good construct. We organize our discussion around the issues of concept, algorithm, and data to clarify and gauge their contribution, before highlighting the impact of their work more generally. Many of the challenges raised by critical...