Context: Nowadays, agile methods are state of the art approaches in software development and thus, are used in a wide variety of organizational contexts regardless of specific industries, sizes, or regions. Furthermore, agile methods are used in global distributed software development teams. For a successful use of agile methods, social aspects are of high importance as agile approaches focus strongly on human interaction and collaboration. We know, that the cultural shape of individuals guide how people, think, act, and communicate. Thus, one may assume that cultural characteristics play a significant role in agile software development. Problem: We know that one of the core challenges for the use of agile methods in practice is related to culture. However, the existing literature in the field lacks on a systematic understanding of how cultural characteristics influence the elements of agile methods. This ambiguity makes it challenging for practitioners to select a suitable agile approach considering the underlying cultural context. The selection of agile elements based on one’s cultural circumstances is therefore often neglected. Another problem occurs due to the wide-spread use of agile methods in practice. Today, we know that a wide variety of the elements of agile methods exist, which is often argued by intensive tailoring activities when using agile methods. Furthermore, “agile" can be understood differently, which is a good example for a missing common understanding of the core terminology in the area of agile methods. Thus, this situation is challenging for researchers, as we do not have a formalized description of agile methods aiming to provide a well-defined understanding of the elements of agile methods. Objective: The main objective of this thesis is to provide an in-depth understanding of the cultural influence on agile methods. To be more precise and solving the problems above, we develop and empircally evaluate a theory analyzing the influence of cultural characteristics on agile elements. Contributions: The core contribution of this thesis is the Model of Cultural Impact on Agile Elements. MoCA is a theory enabling practitioners and researchers to describe and analyze the cultural influences on agile elements based on case-related empirical data for specific cultural contexts. The theory consists of three components: a causal impact model, an application process, and an evolution process for the theory. The MoCA causal impact model was initially created based on thorough analysis of existing literature. The basis of the MoCA causal model are the dimension of Culture, the dimension of Agile Elements and the theoretical impact between them. The Agile Elements dimension is defined based a created reference model named The Tree of Agile Elements using taxonomy creation grounded by a literature survey. Furthermore, we filled the dimension using the Integrated List of Agile Practices, an up-to-date overview of agile practices based on literature. For the creation of the dimension of Culture, we analyzed the results of a systematic literature review focussing on cultural influences on agile methods. The meta-model defines the systematic structure. Finally, we designed and conducted a multiple case study with a total of four cases, each two in Germany and Japan for the evaluation of MoCA. Based on the empirical data, we improved MoCA while validating the model case by case.