management practices across cultures role of support in technology usage as global corporations pursue a dual strategy of global integration and local responsiveness it becomes necessary to determine whether some management practices can be applied across borders using a sample of 143 employees from nine nigerian organizations we found that organizational support contributed to technology usage however only employees with low computer training associated support with aspects of technology usage such as daily use frequency of use and total application

migration remittances and the family remittances by migrants along with migration itself are elements in a migrant familys intertemporal contractual arrangement the reasons why the migrant and his family voluntarily enter into a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement with each other rather than with a 3rd party are discussed and the conditions under which the contractual arrangement is self enforcing are identified both parties can usually benefit from a number of pareto efficient mutual contractual arrangements this gives rise to an indeterminacy problem solved through a bargaining process between the parties who consequently converge to a contractual arrangement implying a specific flow of migrant to family remittances the chosen contractual arrangement reflects the relative bargaining powers of the parties and variables impinging upon these powers thus bear upon remittances in the light of these arguments tests are conducted on observed remittance behavior across individual migrants in botswana authors

internationalisation conceptualising an entrepreneurial process of behaviour in time this paper presents a three stage process of conceptual development in response to the call for a unifying direction for research in the emergent field of international entrepreneurship drawing on classic approaches to internationalisation and importing insight from entrepreneurship as a separate and distinct field of study the paper develops three potential models of internationalisation as a time based process of entrepreneurial behaviour the models evolve from the simple through general to precise levels of conceptualisation research implications are discussed

hysteresis in unemployment after two decades of ratcheting unemployment in europe most economists agree that structural changes associated with higher equilibrium rates of unemployment have occurred but the direction of causality is a matter of controversy have the structural changes caused the long lasting increases in actual unemployment or have the increases in actual unemployment caused the structural changes the latter possibility is often referred to as hysteresis during the past decade a distinct research program has evolved around the idea that equilibrium employment tracks actual unemployment this survey reviews the various hysteretic explanations offered in the literature and evaluates their empirical standing

the internationalization of entrepreneurship our article that has been awarded the 2004 journal of international business studies decade award toward a theory of international new ventures represents an integration of international business entrepreneurship and strategic management scholarship this retrospective article explains the intellectual and personal origins of the work in addition it highlights the definitions of international new ventures and international entrepreneurship finally in response to recent concerns about the importance of international business scholarship the research discussed here stands as an example of the successful exportation of international business scholarship into adjacent disciplines

nafta and franchising a comparison of franchisor perceptions of characteristics associated with franchisee success and failure in canada mexico and the united states abstract business format franchising which includes the product or service the brand name or trademark and the operating system developed by a franchisor has experienced significant growth over the past few decades international franchising also is growing at a rapid pace in part because of market opportunities that include new trade agreements the debate over north american free trade agreement nafta increased the focus on north american franchising in spite of this attention there are few if any comparative studies of franchising in canada mexico and the u s at the same time that international franchising growth is extolled there is an argument over the extent to which franchising increases business success a number of studies support the success thesis however recently critics claim that franchising does not significantly increase survival rates of franchisee owned units the objectives of this study are first to extend the study of franchisee success and failure by analyzing franchise executives perceptions of the importance of a number of characteristics associated with franchisee success and failure and second to examine differences among the executives perceptions of these characteristics based on the location of the franchisor canada mexico or the united states we also analyze the effects of franchise strategy type of franchise business and size of the franchise on executive perceptions of the characteristics associated with franchisee success and failure franchisor executives rated the relative importance of 39 statements taken from previous research that are associated with perceptions of success results from a factor analysis indicate that 30 of the variables load on 5 significant factors examination of the content of the factors indicates that the first factor system quality and the second factor brand name consist of variables that directly relate to the core of business format franchising the quality of the operating system and the brand name of the franchise the third factor local environment consists of statements that represent general characteristics of the local franchise environment the fourth factor communication consists of variables that link the franchisee with the franchisor and other franchisees the fifth factor franchise activities consists of variables that represent idiosyncratic characteristics or activities of a franchisee franchise executives also rated the relative importance of 16 statements associated with franchisee failure of these 6 statements associated with franchisor activities are combined to form a scale of franchisor failure and 10 statements associated with franchisee activities are combined to form a scale of franchisee failure the findings indicate that there are significant differences in most of the scales of success and failure among franchisor executives perceptions based on country location in addition there is also a significant effect of franchise strategy on perceptions there are no significant differences by type of franchise business or size of the franchisor this research contributes to two important areas of research in franchising the study of perceptions of the characteristics associated with franchisee success and failure and international franchising research the study also has practical applications knowledge about country differences in perceived characteristics of success and failure will help franchisors to identify aspects of the business system that require increased monitoring and investment awareness of country differences will also influence the selection of relevant training and development finally knowledge of differences in perceptions may assist franchisors in adapting systems and policies that are likely to increase the success of their international sites

the role of family ownership in international entrepreneurship exploring nonlinear effects empirical research on international entrepreneurship is growing but results on the role of family ownership in this phenomenon are inconsistent we believe these inconsistencies owe to prior researchers having not yet investigated nonlinear relationships drawing on opposing perspectives of stewardship and stagnation we explore potential benefits and drawbacks of family ownership for international entrepreneurship and explore nonlinear relationships among these two variables using a sample of 1 035 us family businesses and applying ordinal regression analysis we find an inverted u shaped relationship between family ownership and international entrepreneurship international entrepreneurship is maximized when family ownership stands at moderate levels we discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and indicate avenues for future research

international entrepreneurship research versus international business research a false dichotomy international entrepreneurship ie research draws from work in both international business ib and general entrepreneurship it examines inter alia entrepreneurial behaviour when crossing borders first stream and makes international comparisons of entrepreneurship as found in different countries and regions second stream see wright and ricks 1994 1 two influential ie articles have been bestowed with the jibs decade award namely oviatt and mcdougall 1994 and knight and cavusgil 2004 both articles suggested the need for new theory to explain the empirical phenomenon of early internationalization these papers developed the concepts of international new venture inv and born global bg respectively and stimulated a lively debate on early internationalizing companies oviatt and mcdougall defined an inv as a business organization that from inception seeks to derive significant

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

emerging themes in international business research this study is motivated by two research questions 1 which recent contributions have been driving the research agenda in international business 2 which emerging themes in the literature are likely to set the stage for future work to examine these questions the study examined scholarly work in international business over the time period 1996 2006 in six leading international business journals journal of international business studies management international review journal of world business international marketing review journal of international marketing and international business review next a delphi study of the most prolific authors in these journals over the same time period was conducted to delineate a future research agenda in international business addressing these two research questions provides us with a more complete understanding of the progress made to date in international business research and provides a glimpse of the future

the role of shocks and institutions in the rise of european unemployment the aggregate evidence two key facts about european unemployment must be explained the rise in unemployment since the 1960s and the heterogeneity of individual country experiences while adverse shocks can potentially explain much of the rise in unemployment there is insufficient heterogeneity in these shocks to explain cross country differences alternatively while explanations focusing on labour market institutions explain current heterogeneity well many of these institutions pre date the rise in unemployment based on a panel of institutions and shocks for 20 oecd nations since 1960 we find that the interaction between shocks and institutions is crucial to explaining both stylised facts

trends in international business research twenty five years later international business ib research has made enormous strides in the quarter century since jibs was inaugurated this article reflects upon the development of ib research during that period it first reviews the findings and recommendations of a comprehensive survey of the embryonic field of ib research conducted twenty five years ago several early trends identified then are discussed the astonishing acceleration in the pace of ib research the broadening of research activity across a greater range of functional areas and an expanding geographic base of research outside of north america especially in europe we then discuss the evolution of ib research since that formative period growing breadth and diversity greater methodological sophistication a move toward research transcending traditional functional boundaries development of new research areas such as management information systems and international coalitions and alliances research on the phenomenon of transnational firms as complete systems and the continued broadening of the geographic base of research emerging research areas such as international entrepreneurship and small business and the greening of business are identified the article concludes with calls for more research collaboration across national boundaries and for greater synthesis of research into broader more integrative frameworks

wheat export restrictions and domestic market effects in russia and ukraine during the food crisis abstract studies investigating the effects of wheat export controls on the domestic market in the exporting country itself are scarce this paper analyses the domestic market impact of wheat export controls in russia and ukraine during the 2007 2008 global food crisis within a spatial price transmission approach using a markov switching vector error correction model we contrast our estimation for russia and ukraine with germany and the usa two countries that did not intervene in their wheat export markets an explicit crisis regime during times of export controls is exclusively identified for russia and ukraine we find that export restrictions temporarily reduced the degree of integration of russian and ukrainian domestic markets in world wheat markets which pushed the growers prices below their long run equilibrium level further domestic markets were disconnected from their equilibrium and market instability increased these effects were even more pronounced and long lasting in ukraine export quota than in russia export tax the negative market effects discouraged private investors thereby preventing russia and ukraine from maximizing their grain potential and contributing to global food security

an assessment of the measurement of performance in international business research a sizeable body of international business ib research is devoted to building knowledge about the determinants of organizational performance a key precursor to accurately diagnosing why some organizations succeed in the international marketplace while others struggle is operationalizing performance appropriately yet to date no systematic investigation has considered how well ib research measures performance we examine the measurement of performance in 96 articles published in the academy of management journal administrative science quarterly journal of marketing journal of marketing research journal of international business studies management science organization science a nd thestrategic management journal between 1995 and 2005 the findings reveal that most studies do not measure performance in a manner that captures the multifaceted nature of the construct we describe the implications of these results and offer suggestions for improving future practice journal of international business studies 2008 39 1064 1080

the beveridge curve in europe new evidence using national and regional data the beveridge curve depicts the empirical negative relationship between job vacancy rate and unemployment rate and reflects the efficiency of the job matching process movements along a fixed downward sloping beveridge curve are associated with cyclical shocks while shifts of the curve arise from structural factors that alter the matching efficiency between job vacancies and unemployed workers national and regional data on job vacancies and unemployment are combined to estimate the beveridge curves of five european countries and their regions focusing on the period 1975 to 2004 i also analyse whether shifts in european beveridge curves are due to changes in the composition of the unemployed pool labour market rigidities or cyclical and structural shocks the empirical evidence suggests that changes in labour market rigidities long term unemployment as well as cyclical shocks are responsible for outward shifts in european beveridge curves i also find evidence of nonlinearities in the relation betw

innovation in international business research a call for multiple paradigms scholars disagree on ib s domain and future prescription yet agree that research will engage topics dealing with dynamic change and hard to explain phenomena this paper builds on these views endorsing a multiparadigmatic perspective that complements ib s scientific and humanist paradigms with that of chaos theory the latter we argue is instrumental in studying the non normal patterns of nonlinear far from equilibrium systems we illustrate our ideas in the context of ngos

relevance in international business research a need for more linkages the bi annual presentation by the outgoing aib president has become traditional it is not only an honor but also an unusual opportunity to address an audience composed of international experts in all areas relating to international business it is also a perplexing challenge to choose a topic that should be of general interest without departing too much from one s own field of specialized interest fortunately the aib officers agreed on a theme for this year s meeting relevance in international business research which presented me a topic to discuss

panel data analysis of the beveridge curve is there a macroeconomic relation between the rate of unemployment and the vacancy rate this study investigates whether the beveridge curve the relation between vacancy and unemployment rate is helpful for the quantification of structural unemployment since aggregate time series are too short to test detailed hypotheses about the beveridge curve the author assembles a panel of nine regions in west germany analyses of these data produce little support for a structural macroeconomic interpretation of the beveridge curve the observed shifts of the beveridge curve are too sudden to be explained by structural changes there is evidence for aggregation bias and variables associated with structural unemployment do not substitute for the explanatory power of dummy variables for the observed shifts while cyclical variables do so copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

the study of international business a plea for a more interdisciplinary approach scholastic efforts to study and teach international business is entirely dependent on our capability to marshal and organise the necessary human and other assets so as to supply a range of end products which are acceptable to the academic community of which we are part our paymasters and the main purchasers of our products viz the business community of course the determinants of success of the practice and study of ib are interrelated and in our particular pursuit for excellence there is no unique or sure fire recipe for success but i observe that in an ever increasingly complex world of international business which is dominated by rapid and far reaching changes in technology and by environmental turbulence this is no less true of successful practitioners rarely in seeking to identify the reasons for business achievement is one able to find a single common denominator sometimes excellence is primarily based on innovatory ingenuity sometimes on the access to or control of key inputs or markets sometimes on aggressive or novel methods of advertising and marketing sometimes on super efficient capital budgeting sometimes on dynamic and imaginative entrepreneurship sometimes on the diversity of operational experiences and capabilities and sometimes on an unusual aptitude to manage human relationships but in most cases success is founded on some amalgam of these and it is the way in which these discrete though increasingly interdependent advantages are ombined with each other and with complementary assets in different countries and cultures which contemporary research suggests is the key competitive advantages of international firms call it what you will e g

cross section estimation of the matching function evidence from england and wales this paper analyses how the levels of unemployment and vacancies affect the rate at which unemployed workers find employment the worker firm matching function in particular we test the robustness of previous empirical work by checking whether we obtain the same estimated function using cross section data rather than aggregate time series data we find strong evidence of constant returns to scale similar to previous work we also find larger cities have higher wages this provides indirect support for increasing returns but where those returns are taken in the form of better quality matches

labour market policies and unemployment in the oecd unemployment policies richard jackman christopher pissarides and sawas savouri the massive increase in unemployment throughout the oecd since the early 1970s has led governments in many countries to introduce or to expand labour market policies such as training schemes employment subsidies public works or schemes of counselling or assistance in job search such programmes have the objective of reducing unemployment by improving the workings of the labour market after a description of these programmes this article proposes a framework based on the relationship between unemployment and vacancies or beveridge curve within which the rise in unemployment can be analysed and the effects of policies and of institutions examined this framework helps to identify the main factors which have affected the unemployment and vacancy rates in 14 of the main oecd countries over the period 1970 88 the main results are that while corporatism remains the institutional feature with the biggest single impact in sustaining low unemployment rates labour market policies also have had a significant and well defined effect on unemployment which appears large relative to the budgetary costs of the programmes

diaspora interest in homeland investment this paper examines four diaspora communities resident in the united states that were targeted by their homelands as foreign investors during the 1990s the homelands comprise armenia cuba iran and palestine we pose the question what are the determinants of interest in homeland investment and can they be generalized across the four communities the paper explores concepts of ethnic advantage altruism homeland orientation and perceptions of business impediments as well as investigating the role of demographic factors regarding investment interest

the beveridge curve and regional disparities in canada the beveridge curve establishes an inverse relationship between the unemployment rate and the vacancy rate it has been documented and discussed at length by blanchard and diamond 1989 for the united states the unemployment vacancy relationships of the canadian economy and its regions are considered this analysis reveals some important distinctions in the behaviour of the regional baveridge curves and some interesting similarities at the aggregate level the observations are not strikingly different from those of blanchard and diamond for the us economy

the network dynamics of international new ventures this study uses multi site case research to advance a set of propositions regarding the network dynamics of early stage international new ventures the investigative approach builds on arguments that network theory and analysis are fundamental to international entrepreneurship in the spirit of cross disciplinary research perspectives from the entrepreneurship literature are embraced to help inform our understanding of international new venture networks

ranking unemployment duration and wages it explores the implication of one central assumption when firms receive multiple acceptable applications they hire the worker who has been unemployed for the least amount of time this assumption ranking is contrasted with the assumption of random hiring no ranking by embodying this assumption in a model of the labour market with job creation destruction and matching the joint behaviour of unemployment the distribution of unemployment durations and wages are characterized the implication that the re employment prospects of employed workers were they to become unemployed are better than those of the currently unemployed appears to have been an important feature of european unemployment experience in the 1980 s this paper examines the effects of the composition of unemployment on wage determination it explores one central assumption when firms receive multiple acceptable applications they hire the worker who has been unemployed for the least amount of time we refer to this assumption as ranking and contrast it throughout to the assumption of random hiring or no ranking by embodying this assumption in a model of the labour market with job creation destruction and matching we characterize the joint behaviour of unemployment the distribution of unemployment durations and wages ranking has a number of important implications first in addition to the obvious result that the exit rate from unemployment is a decreasing function of duration we show that the effect of duration is stronger the higher the rate of unemployment second with the wage depending on the distributions of prospective unemployment durations the presence of long term unemployed per se has little effect on wages third looking at the relation between the wage and the aggregate level of unemployment and comparing ranking to the case of no ranking the wage moves less with the level of unemployment but more with the change in unemployment put simply ranking and no ranking models show exactly the same aggregate unemployment slightly different long run responses of wages to unemployment and sharply different wage dynamics the paper is organized as follows section i characterizes the matching process and derives a matching function based on an urn ball process with vacancies as urns and applications by unemployed workers as balls thus the distribution of applications per vacancy depends on aggregate unemployment and vacancies vacancies with at least one acceptable application are filled when a vacancy receives more than one acceptable application firms use a rule to choose among applicants thus the rule determines who is hired but does not affect the number of hires section ii uses this matching function in a model of the labour market with continual job creation and destruction and characterizes the equilibrium values of unemployment vacancies and hires

export restrictions and price insulation during commodity price booms for individual countries variable trade barriers can be used to reduce the volatility of domestic relative to world prices if this is done by countries accounting for a large share of the market its effect is offset by increases in world price volatility this study shows the nature of the resulting collective action problem with the policy being ineffective on average in stabilizing domestic prices while increasing the volatility of the income transfers from terms of trade changes a simple approach to assessing the contribution of insulation to the price increases is developed and used with new estimates of agricultural distortions to assess its contribution to the price spikes in 1972 74 and 2006 08 for rice and wheat the analysis suggests that 45 percent of the increase in rice prices in 2006 08 and 30 percent of the increase in wheat prices was due to insulating behavior one sign of progress since 1972 74 was a substantial reduction in the extent of price insulating behavior by the industrial countries this provides little stabilizing benefit in the rice market because countries not classifying themselves at the world trade organization as developing account for only 3 percent of world rice consumption but it does offer some benefit for the wheat market where non developing countries account for 27 percent of consumption

membership of editorial boards and rankings of schools with international business orientation using 4 year data 1990 1994 1998 and 2002 we have provided a ranking of schools with international business ib orientation based on the membership of editorial boards of 30 leading international business journals participation on the editorial boards of quality journals is highly selective and should provide a quality indication of the schools both quality unadjusted and adjusted board membership based ranking are calculated in this study several interesting findings are worth noting first us schools play a significant leadership role among the leading ib programs second the findings of this study also show the major contribution of non us schools which confirms the importance of the global nature of the ib discipline third the top ranked schools share a number of characteristics finally the correlation among different ranking criteria can be low particularly for the top ranked schools suggesting that care should be exercised in interpreting school ranking

the impact of remittances on economic growth an econometric model abstract remittances in the world represent one of major international financial resources which sometimes they exceed the flows of foreign direct investment fdi for centuries there have been heated debates on the sources of economic growth in developing economies and also why some countries reflect strong economic growth comparing to others this study aims to observe the impacts of remittances on economic growth using panel data set of six high remittances receiving countries albania bulgaria macedonia moldova romania and bosnia herzegovina during the period 1999 2013 these countries have experienced a major increase in remittance inflows and at this time accounts for the bulk of total remittance receipts compared with other regions most countries remittances represent the largest source of foreign exchange earnings and represent more than 10 percent of gdp in other words the econometric analysis will be based on those six remittance receiving countries the paper is then to review the empirical literature devoted to the impact of remittances on economic growth in order to identify empirically if there are significant relationships between remittances and growth in these countries the results suggest that remittances have a positive impact on growth and that this impact increases at higher levels of remittances relative to gdp

international business and trade in the next decade report from a delphi study the globalization of business causes major changes in the business environment and in business practices forecasting such changes is crucial for the preparation of responses to them this article reports on a delphi study conducted with a global set of experts drawn from the policy business and academic communities over three rounds of mailings these experts analyzed and debated the likelihood of changes in the international business environment over the next decade and the impact of these changes on corporate practices the findings identify key geographic areas of business growth major sectoral transformations shifts in the trade framework and its institution and strategies for corporate adjustment