reconciling the advantages and liabilities of foreignness towards an identity based framework this article leverages identity theory to address the question of when and how foreignness acts as an advantage and liability for the mne subsidiary applying an organizational identity lens i delineate how subsidiaries manage their foreignness by accentuating and attenuating internal and external organizational attributes drawing on this conceptualization i theorize how an accentuated foreign identity moderates context specific advantages and liabilities in offering a more nuanced understanding of how subsidiaries actively manage their foreignness and its contextual implications an identity based framework helps to both explain and reconcile the advantages and liabilities of foreignness

the social structure of a national securities market in this article a national securities market the stock options market is characterized as a social structure represented by the networks of actors who traded options on the floor of a major securities exchange trading among actors exhibited distinct social structural patterns that dramatically affected the direction and magnitude of option price volatility the argument that this market is socially structured is constructed in four parts behavioral assumptions about the nature of economic actors models of micronetworks models of macronetworks and price consequences in the ideal typical model of the market actors are assumed to be hyperrational and never to act opportunistically with these behavioral assumptions the micronetworks of actors should be expansive a condition which would result in undifferentiated and homogeneous macronetworks such macronetworks would tend to reduce the volatility of option prices but in the empirical market studied here actors are subject to bounded rationality a

non walrasian equilibria with speculation abstract the paper examines equilibria with out of equilibrium trading there are two types of consumers speculators who feel they have insight into where the ultimate equilibria price of the economy will be and non speculators the limit of the price process is a pareto optimum if and only if speculators are right and at the limit all consumers have zero excess demand when speculators are wrong price processes may converge to non pareto optimal limits with zero excess not every price process has a limit and not every limit of every price process will lead to zero excess demand

standardization preferences a function of national culture work interdependence and local embeddedness both theoretical and empirical studies of professional service employee standardization preferences are relatively scarce using responses from 398 employees of an international public relations firm this study finds that employees from high power distance high uncertainty avoidance and high context cultures prefer greater standardization whereas employees from high individualism cultures prefer less standardization additionally work interdependence is positively associated with standardization preferences whereas local embeddedness is negatively associated with standardization preferences

stickiness and the adaptation of organizational practices in cross border knowledge transfers the reuse of organizational practices in multiple locations is a fundamental way in which mncs leverage knowledge to seek competitive advantage scholars approaching the issue of adaptation from both a market and an institutional perspective argue that in order to achieve fit with the local environment some degree of adaptation is advisable and the need for adaptation increases as the institutional distance between source and recipient locations increases however arguments to date have examined the effect of adaptation primarily on a subsidiary s long term performance a necessary precursor is to understand the effect of adaptation on the transfer process itself as transfer difficulty or stickiness may preclude the reuse of an organizational practice in the first place in this paper we explore how the adaptation of organizational practices affects the stickiness of cross border transfers we use structural equation modeling to analyze data from 122 internal transfers of best practice contrary to expectation we find that adaptation significantly increases rather than decreases the stickiness of cross border knowledge transfer

intellectual capital configurations and organizational capability an empirical examination of human resource subunits in the multinational enterprise building on the organizational capabilities literature and theories of the multinational enterprise this paper develops and tests a framework that examines the relationship between intellectual capital configurations and organizational capabilities in human resource hr subunits looking at 187 subunits from 20 mnes findings show that intellectual capital dimensions vary in their usefulness for generating sharing and implementing hr management practices in particular while certain resources may help in the development of one capability they may harm the development of another implications are that an organization s intellectual capital investments will differ depending on the desired capability

converging or diverging a comparative analysis of trends in contingent employment practice in europe over a decade this paper makes a unique contribution to the hrm convergence divergence debate by examining whether organisations operating in europe over the 10 year time period preceding 2000 are converging in their adoption of contingent employment practice the susceptibility of contingent employment practice to both convergent and divergent pressures acts as a useful analytical lens data are drawn from organisations operating in germany spain sweden the netherlands and the uk in 1991 2918 organisations 1995 2048 organisations and 2000 1555 organisations the results suggest that convergence is limited by the institutional embeddedness of organisations

mne institutional advantage how subunits shape transpose and evade host country institutions scholars increasingly emphasize the impact of institutions on multinational enterprises mnes but the opposite relationship has attracted less research that is mne agency in relation to institutions based on a comparative case study of six mnes from the united states and sweden this paper remedies this it explores and explicates mne subunits strategic responses to host country institutional constraints and opportunities in five different regions a new institutional approach is adopted which allows for an investigation of mne subunit agency in relation to normative and cognitive institutions as well as regulative ones this fine grained analysis reveals not only what kinds of responses mne subunits invoke but why and how they are able to respond we identify four strategic responses by which subunits shape transpose and evade institutions in the pursuit of competitive advantage innovation arbitrage circumvention and adaptation these responses are driven by three key enablers multinationality foreignness and institutional ambiguity that serve to enhance and heighten three mechanisms reflexivity role expectations and resources by linking the enablers and the mechanisms to specific types of strategic responses in a framework and typology the paper not only contributes to emerging research on the interplay between mnes institutions and strategy but to strategy practice

explaining stakeholder evaluations of hrm capabilities in mnc subsidiaries this paper examines how functional and line management stakeholders evaluate operational human resource management capabilities in multinational corporation mnc subsidiaries we suggest that such evaluations are a function of two key structural factors 1 that focal subsidiary human resource hr departments respond differentially to the expectations of differently located stakeholders and 2 that the structural position of the stakeholder determines what cues he or she relies upon to construct the evaluation our findings show that the focal hr subsidiary department is likely to exert more effort towards meeting the expectations of line management stakeholders and we suggest that this is a function of line management s co location with the focal hr department second we find that co located line management stakeholders are more likely to rely on experience based cues when constructing evaluations whereas headquarters located functional stakeholders tend to rely on cognition based evaluation driven by their ability to compare across different subsidiary hr departments we contribute to the literature by going beyond existing research that has tended to focus on evaluation from the perspective of organizational behavior by providing a structural perspective on capability evaluation in mncs that combines the insights of role theory and cognitive choice heuristics

an iterative lmp calculation method considering loss distributions generally the locational marginal price lmp is obtained by solving a linear programming formulation network losses are considered through the preset loss factors based on historical operation information this usually brings errors in the calculated loss under different new scenarios further the congestion component of an lmp is dependent on the choice of the reference bus in this paper a new iterative lmp calculation method is proposed to overcome the aforementioned two drawbacks associated with the traditional lmp calculations at each iteration a linear programming problem for market clearing is solved first losses on branches are considered as fictitious nodal demands at their terminal buses secondly the ac power flow is calculated according to the dispatch results loss factors and fictitious nodal demands are then updated according to the ac power flow solution thus removing the need and dependence on presetting loss factors another important merit is that lmp and its congestion component obtained from the proposed iterative lmp calculation method are independent of choice of the reference bus the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated on two benchmark systems the importance of obtaining accurate losses and lmps is also demonstrated

state capacity and long run economic performance we present new evidence about the long run relationship between state capacity the fiscal and administrative power of states and economic performance our database is novel and spans 11 european countries and 4 centuries from the old regime to world war i we argue that national governments undertook two political transformations over this period fiscal centralization and limited government we find a significant direct relationship between fiscal centralization and economic growth furthermore we find that an increase in the state s capacity to extract greater tax revenues was one mechanism through which both political transformations improved economic performance our analysis shows systematic evidence that state capacity is an important determinant of long run economic growth

towards a european model of human resource management the concept of human resources management hrm has been much debated in the literature the concept developed initially from work in the u s a in the 1960s and 1970s and since then has been adopted increasingly around the world this paper argues that in europe there is only limited acceptance of the organizational autonomy upon which the concept in based and that therefore different approaches to the notion of human resource management are required external constraints are analysed and a new model of the concept that would encompass eurohrm is proposed

the slave trade and the origins of mistrust in africa in a recent study nunn 2008 examines the long term impacts of africa s slave trade he finds that the slave trade which occurred over a period of more than 400 years had a significant negative effect on long term economic development although the article arguably identifies a negative causal relationship between the slave trade and income today the analysis is unable to establish the exact causal mechanisms underlying this reduced form relationship in this article we examine one of the channels through which the slave trade may affect economic development today combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we ask whether the slave trade caused a culture of mistrust to develop within africa initially slaves were captured primarily through state organized raids and warfare but as the trade progressed the environment of ubiquitous insecurity caused individuals to turn on others including friends and family members and to kidnap trick and sell each other into slavery sigismund wilhelm koelle 1854 p e h hair 1965 charles piot 1996 we hypothesize that in this environment a culture of mistrust may have evolved which may persist to this day we show that current differences in trust levels within africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and indian ocean slave trades combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today evidence from a variety of identification strategies suggests that the relationship is causal examining causal mechanisms we show that most of the impact of the slave trade is through factors that are internal to the individual such as cultural norms beliefs and values jel j15 n57 z13

institutional theory and mnc subsidiary hrm practices evidence from a three country study this study sets out to explore human resource management hrm practices in multinational corporation mnc subsidiaries within an institutional theory framework based on a sample of 158 subsidiaries of mncs operating in the united states russia and finland the paper examines factors hypothesised to influence the hrm practices adapted in us japanese and european mnc subsidiaries located in russia finland and the us the results indicate significant differences in hrm practices used across host countries both the status of the subsidiary human resource department and the degree to which the subsidiary was involved in knowledge transfer with other parts of the mnc had a significant impact on the selection of hrm practices

an architectural framework for global talent management a unique characteristic of the multinational corporation is that it comprises a geographically dispersed and culturally differentiated workforce that embodies both firm specific and location specific human capital this article takes an architectural approach to describe how different types of human capital develop from the individual level to the unit level and then to the firm level in order to build a talent portfolio for the multinational corporation depending on the company s strategy multidomestic meganational transnational different configurations of the talent portfolio tend to be emphasized and integrated to achieve competitive advantage implications for theory and practice are discussed and a research agenda is introduced

good bye lenin or not the effect of communism on people s preferences preferences for redistribution as well as the generosities of welfare states differ significantly across countries in this paper we test whether there exists a feedback process of the economic regime on individual preferences we exploit the experiment of german separation and reunification to establish exogeneity of the economic system from 1945 to 1990 east germans lived under a communist regime with heavy state intervention and extensive redistribution we find that after german reunification east germans are more in favor of redistribution and state intervention than west germans even after controlling for economic incentives this effect is especially strong for older cohorts who lived under communism for a longer time period we further find that east germans preferences converge towards those of west germans we calculate that it will take one to two generations for preferences to converge completely

market networks and corporate behavior data on market relations between a large population of corporations and investment banks are used to study the organization market interforce the pattern of direct market ties between a firm and its banks forms of interfaces range from a long term exclusive tie the relationship interface to many short lived episodic ties the transaction interface with hybrid forms between the two poles contrary to widespread belief the article finds that strong relationships still exist transactions interfaces are rare most firms use hybrid interfaces a firm s interface is conceptualized as the intentional result of its efforts to reduce dependence and exploit power advantages observed interfaces are shown to be related systematically to various power dependence concepts including resource intensity number of transactions and dollar amounts raised criticality the availability of resource alternatives power asymmetry between a firm and its main bank organization size standardization of exchange and

institutional theory and the cross national transfer of employment policy the case of workforce diversity in us multinationals this paper uses a comparative institutionalist approach combined with a power interests perspective to examine the processes whereby diversity policy is internationalised by us multinational companies it argues that the process of policy transfer to uk subsidiaries is complicated by incomplete and contested institutionalisation of diversity within the us itself and by differing conceptions of diversity between the us and the uk the ability of actors within the uk subsidiaries to mobilise and deploy specific power resources allows them to resist the full implementation of corporate diversity policy leading to a range of compromise accommodations it is argued that the findings have more general implications for analysing the transfer of hr practices between national business systems

the impact of strategy on conflict a cross national comparative study of u s and japanese firms an empirical test of 290 u s and 653 japanese managers using the miles and snow typology provides a cross national examination of strategy s impact on conflict results substantially support the study s predictions and indicate that firms should 1 monitor their conflict handling mechanisms 2 emphasize integrative approaches and 3 appropriately use formalization for conflict handling despite a convergence of management practices globally findings indicate that considerable differences still exist between u s and japanese firms

the origins of violence in rwanda this paper shows that the intensity of violence in rwanda s recent past can be traced back to the initial establishment of its precolonial state villages that were brought under centralized rule one century earlier experience a doubling of violence during the state organized 1994 genocide instrumental variable estimates exploiting differences in proximity to nyanza an early capital suggest these effects are causal in other periods when the state faced rebel attacks with longer state presence violence is lower using data from several sources including a lab in the field experiment across an abandoned historical boundary i show that the effect of the historical state is primarily sustained by culturally transmitted norms of obedience the persistent effect of the precolonial state interacts with government policy where the state developed earlier there is more violence when the rwandan government mobilized for mass killing and less violence when the government pursued peace

sensitivity based security constrained opf market clearing model this paper proposes a novel technique for representing system security constraints that properly include voltage stability limits in the operation of competitive electricity markets the market clearing algorithm is modeled as a voltage stability constrained optimal power flow opf problem while the distance to the closest critical power flow solution is represented by means of a loading parameter and evaluated using a continuation power flow cpf technique sensitivities obtained at the opf step are used to estimate power directions for the cpf method while the cpf analysis provides the loading parameter to be used in the opf problem based on an n 1 contingency criterion the opf and the cpf steps are repeated until the maximum loading parameter is found thus providing optimal solutions considering both proper market conditions and security margins two benchmark systems with both supply and demand bidding are used to illustrate and test the proposed technique

the global configuration of a speculative trading operation an empirical study of foreign exchange trading this paper proposes a theory of firm boundaries based on fore knowledge development and exploitation in speculative or informed trading foreign exchange trading provides this study s empirical context from research on information economics we suggest optimal speculative trading operations are multiunit and globally dispersed alternatively transaction cost economics suggests atomistic actors prevail in the market for fungible commodities like currencies we also develop competing hypotheses about information technology s effects on foreign exchange trading operations speculation arguments predict that the global scope of trading operations will expand after the introduction of generic information technologies transaction cost economics proposes that when atomistic actors do not prevail trading operations will contract after this introduction we test competing predictions with models of the expansion contraction and net change in a firm s global dispersion we estimate these models with data from the population of banks worldwide engaged in interbank foreign exchange currency fx trading from 1974 to 1993 our results uncover two types of firms those that approach the atomistic actor of transaction cost economics and those that resemble the globally dispersed multiunit configuration from our speculation discussion these results encourage reflection on how the theory of the firm differs when firms trade to produce versus speculate

organization development and firm performance a comparison of multinational and local firms this study examines the usage and outcomes of organization development od interventions in multinational firms we test competing hypotheses derived from the cultural and institutional isomorphic perspectives data from firms operating in hong kong show that western firms u s and european are more receptive to od interventions than asian firms local and japanese which supports the cultural explanation however the local isomorphism explanation is valid in predicting organizational outcomes that od interventions have similar effects regardless of a firm s country origins hence neither perspective alone is sufficient to explain both usage and outcomes this implies that local adaptation of od interventions is a complex issue for managing multinational firms

multinational experience and the creation of linkages with local firms evidence from the electronics industry the paper focuses on the nature and determinants of multinational firms creation of linkages with local firms with specific reference to the electronics industry the study of the recent evolution of international operations in this sector seems to highlight a relevant and somewhat generalisable pattern of industrial organisation and dynamics it is argued that the nature and intensity of multinational companies involvement into linkages with local counterparts are strongly influenced by a combination of factors that are partially inter dependent but still rely on different decision making centres on the one hand host countries long term investment policies in the field of human capital training and accumulation and on the other hand firms decisions to take roots in local contexts through the creation of foreign subsidiaries it is further suggested that human capital and subsidiaries will particularly favour the development of collaborative linkages with local firms compared to previous work of the authors on this subject this paper utilises an expanded and updated data set covering international operations of the top european and us electronics companies over the 1984 1995 period and attempts a more detailed and in depth analysis concerning the nature determinants and evolution in time of international growth strategies

the empire is dead long live the empire long run persistence of trust and corruption in the bureaucracy we hypothesise that the habsburg empire with its well respected administration increased citizens trust in local public services in several eastern european countries communities on both sides of the long gone habsburg border have shared common formal institutions for a century now we use a border specification and a two dimensional geographic regression discontinuity design to identify from individuals living within a restricted band around the former border we find that historical habsburg affiliation increases current trust and reduces corruption in courts and police falsification tests of spuriously moved borders geographic and pre existing differences and interpersonal trust corroborate a genuine habsburg effect

an empirical analysis of ex ante profits from forward speculation in foreign exchange markets this paper constructs a time series band for ex ante profits from forward speculation and examines the permanent component of the median of the band for six different exchange markets the unpredictability of ex ante profits is rejected using nonparametric tests deviations of ex ante profits from forward premia are attributed to deviations of nominal exchange rates from martingale processes it is shown that movements in the terms of trade are responsible for most of the variability and serial correlation properties of ex ante profits t is by now widely recognized that the forward rate is not an unbiased predictor of future spot rates and that realized nominal profits from spec ulating in the forward market are nonnegligible and highly volatile see e g hodrick 1987 frankel and meese 1987 however the nature of these profits is as of yet undetermined this paper attempts to shed light on this issue by examining the time series properties of ex ante profits from forward speculations in six foreign exchange markets i focus on three aspects of the problem first i provide a measure of the range and the variability of ex ante profits two issues with contradictory evidence in the literature see hodrick 1987 and frankel 1988 for refer ences second i relate deviations from uncov ered interest parity to risk and to deviations of nominal spot rates from martingale processes third i link the time series properties of ex ante profits to the behavior of the real exchange rate since ex ante profits are not observable the empirical analysis requires the construction of a time series for the expected future spot rate frankel and froot 1987 ito 1988 cumby 1988 and diebold and nason 1990 have all suggested ways of computing this series here i provide an alternative method for constructing a time series for expected future spot rates and for statistically assessing the properties of ex ante profits expected future spot rates are measured as a 90 confidence band obtained from the simulated recursive distribution for the linear predictor of the series i simulate the distribution of the linear predictor rather than use simple point forecasts in order to reduce the forecast error due to parameter uncertainty an addi tional measure for expected future spot rates considered is a point estimate of the permanent component of the median of the band i use nonparametric tests to examine the rela tionship between ex ante profits and other series nonparametric tests are employed here for two reasons first i am interested in the entire popu lation properties of the data existing results are derived by examining only the first and second moments of the data second efficiency tests are generally based on linear parametric functional forms pagan and ullah 1988 have pointed out problems with these tests when the conditional mean of the data is nonlinear nonparametric tests overcome these problems the results indicate that nominal and real rates do not follow martingale processes that a risk premium rarely explains the behavior of the ex ante profits and that variations in expected terms of trade account for the time series proper ties of ex ante profits

the evolution of culture and institutions evidence from the kuba kingdom we use variation in historical state centralization to examine the long term impact of institutions on cultural norms the kuba kingdom established in central africa in the early 17th century by king shyaam had more developed state institutions than the other independent villages and chieftaincies in the region it had an unwritten constitution separation of political powers a judicial system with courts and juries a police force a military taxation and significant public goods provision comparing individuals from the kuba kingdom to those from just outside the kingdom we find that centralized formal institutions are associated with weaker norms of rule following and a greater propensity to cheat for material gain this finding is consistent with recent models where endogenous investments to inculcate values in children decline when there is an increase in the effectiveness of formal institutions that enforce socially desirable behavior consistent with such a mechanism we find that kuba parents believe it is less important to teach children values related to rule following behaviors

the effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode characteristics of national cultures have frequently been claimed to influence the selection of entry modes this article investigates this claim by developing a theoretical argument for why culture should influence the choice of entry two hypotheses are derived which relate culture to entry mode choice one focusing on the cultural distance between countries the other on attitudes towards uncertainty avoidance using a multinomial logit model and controlling for other effects the hypotheses are tested by analysing data on 228 entries into the united states market by acquisition wholly owned greenfield and joint venture empirical support for the effect of national culture on entry choice is found

building a process model of local adaptation of practices a study of six sigma implementation in korean and us firms the strategic transformation of asian firms into global players has involved the adoption and adaptation of many organizational practices developed in the west we build a process model of adaptation by observing how an organizational practice is adapted to a local setting different from its locus of origin through inductive methods and case studies of six sigma implementation in korean and us firms based on these cases we propose a cascading sequential pattern to the local adaptation of the conceptual social and technical dimensions of organizational practices reconciling conflicting views in the literature on whether or not to adapt our theoretical model highlights the importance of considering the different degrees of contextual influence on different underlying dimensions of a practice and of configuring each dimension accordingly further we suggest that the sequence and configuration of adaptation across different practice dimensions matter to the successful implementation of a practice across borders

growing up in a recession does the historical macroeconomic environment affect preferences for redistribution we find that individuals who experienced a recession when young believe that success in life depends more on luck than effort support more government redistribution and tend to vote for left wing parties the effect of recessions on beliefs is long lasting we support our findings with evidence from three different datasets first we identify the effect of recessions on beliefs exploiting time and regional variation in macroeconomic conditions using data from the 1972 2010 general social survey our specifications control for nonlinear time period life cycle and cohort effects as well as a host of background variables second we rely on data from the national longitudinal survey of the high school class of 1972 to corroborate the age period cohort specification and look at heterogeneous effects of experiencing a recession during early adulthood third using data from the world value survey we confirm our findings with a sample of 37 countries whose citizens experienced macroeconomic disasters at different points in history

transnational firms and the changing organisation of innovative activities it is suggested that a transition is taking place towards new modes of organising transnational corporations innovative activities first different units of multinational firms including foreign based subsidiaries are increasingly involved in the generation use and transmission of knowledge secondly multinationals are developing external networks of relationships with local counterparts through which foreign affiliates gain access to external knowledge sources and application abilities as a result of this evolutionary process multinationals organisation is subject to both centripetal and centrifugal forces considerable efforts are then necessary to innovate coordination procedures and mechanisms in order to enhance the generation circulation and use of knowledge a number of empirical works are reviewed providing some evidence of the evolutionary process discussed in the paper 1 transnational companies as networks of innovators economists have long viewed innovation as being primarily generated by firms in their home countries classic contributions in the economics of multinational corporations have consolidated this view referring mainly to the us based multinationals vernon 1966 kindleberger 1969 and stopford and wells 1972 theorised a quasi colonial relationship between the parent company and foreign subsidiaries wherein the latter are in charge of replicating the former s activities abroad with strategic decisions including r d and innovation strategies being rigidly centralised particularly vernon emphasised that coordinating international innovative activities would be too costly owing to the difficulties of collecting and controlling relevant information across national borders host countries and foreign subsidiaries would then play a role almost exclusively in the adoption and diffusion of centrally created technology this view was supported mainly by us economists and based on us evidence from the early post world war ii period but it was very influential for the development of studies on the economics of transnational companies tncs and the internationalisation of

the determinants of expatriate staffing by japanese multinationals in asia control learning and vertical business groups we empirically examine the determinants of the decision whether or not to appoint an expatriate as the managing director of overseas affiliates for a sample of 844 japanese manufacturing affiliates operating in asia in 1995 confirmation is found for hypotheses derived both from a control and coordination perspective on expatriation and from a knowledge creation and learning perspective strategic dependence of the parent on the affiliate increases the propensity to appoint expatriates whereas localisation of the affiliate reduces it organisational experience in the country both by the affiliate and by the firm increases the probability that host country nationals will be appointed inter firm relationships within vertical keiretsu groups impact on expatriation policies through inter organisational knowledge exchange in host countries and the mitigation of localisation requirements owing to intra group transactions

task success based on contingency fit of managerial culture and embeddedness the article extends research on the contingency of fit in international management at the level of managerial tasks foreign firms managerial tasks are embedded in two environments with different profiles and different managerial cultures fit them to ensure task success study 1 analyzes 18 critical incidents summarizes chinese and japanese managerial cultures and identifies three types of managerial tasks we hypothesize that task success depends on the fit between task type and the chosen managerial culture such that foreign firms can have their operational local and people tasks successfully completed using home host or integrated managerial cultures respectively study 2 tests our hypotheses using 112 critical incidents the fit pattern at the level of managerial tasks advances the contingency perspective in international management and equips managers with cultural agility to confront international challenges

multiobjective optimization for pricing system security in electricity markets this paper proposes a novel technique for representing system security in the operations of decentralized electricity markets with special emphasis on voltage stability an interior point method is used to solve the optimal power flow problem with a multiobjective function for maximizing both social benefit and the distance to maximum loading conditions a six bus system with both supply and demand side bidding is used to illustrate the proposed technique for both elastic and inelastic demand and a 129 bus test system that models the italian hv transmission network is used for testing the practical applicability of the proposed method the results obtained show that the proposed technique is able to improve system security while yielding better market conditions through increased transaction levels and improved locational marginal prices throughout the system

crossroads the organization of economic activity transaction costs firm capabilities and the nature of governance in a recent 1993 paper in organization science hennart discussed the underlying logic based on transaction cost and agency theory for explaining the choice between firms and markets and the reason why most transactions have both firm like and market like properties relying on williamson s comparative institutional approach which studies economic organization from a transaction cost minimizing point of view under the assumption of opportunism the argument was made that transaction cost tc logic provides a complete theory of the organization of economic activity in this paper i argue that with its purely incentive based logic governed by assumptions of opportunism tc economics is fundamentally incapable of being a complete theory of economic organization the notion of the firm as a bundle of transactions or contracts is an inadequate and shallow basis for a theory of the firm since it basically ignores the essential notion of the firm as a bundle of knowledge and the underlying processes there

qualified immigrants success exploring the motivation to migrate and to integrate high quality employees with international experience bring valuable advantages to internationally operating organizations the growing number and importance of immigrants and particularly qualified university educated immigrants deserves more attention from international business practitioners and scholars the market for highly qualified people within mncs is increasingly becoming international and ever more of them have migrated to a new country to advance their career such employees can be a source of competitive advantage for international firms we use qualitative research with qualified immigrants qis in france to argue that the success of qis depends in large part on their motivation to integrate into their host country which is largely explained by their motivation to migrate from the qualitative data we derive four different types of qualified migrant and suggest that the type will determine the success of the immigrant within and outside the organization the relationship between the motivation to migrate and the motivation to integrate is moderated by met expectations and organizational integration policies such that the effects of these in turn vary with type recognition of the types of qi and the moderating factors will be valuable for practitioners as well as opening up research avenues for scholars

global standardization or national differentiation of hrm practices in multinational companies a comparison of multinationals in five countries drawing on a dataset constructed from a parallel series of nationally representative surveys of multinational companies mncs we compare the performance management pm practices of mncs in the uk ireland canada spain denmark and norway in each country we analyze data relating to mncs from that country and of the foreign affiliates of us mncs we argue that there is evidence of standardization in the nature of practices across countries particularly evident in the analysis of us mncs standardization of practices among mncs is also evident in the rather limited variation in practices between us and indigenous mncs within each country moreover even where there is evidence of variation across and within countries this cannot be fully explained by adaptation to local institutional constraints but rather can be seen as the product of how distinct national contexts can promote the take up of practices

decomposition model and interior point methods for optimal spot pricing of electricity in deregulation environments in this paper an integrated optimal spot pricing model is presented first the proposed model includes the detailed derivation of optimal nodal specific real time prices for active and reactive powers and the method to decompose them into different components corresponding to generation loss and many selected ancillary services such as spinning reserve voltage control and security control the features of the proposed model are discussed in relationship to existing pricing models and classical economic dispatch the model is then implemented by modifying existing newton opf methods through interior point algorithms which can effectively avoid go no go gauge i e highly volatile in the calculation of spot prices case studies on 5 bus and ieee 30 bus systems are reported to illustrate the proposed method

was weber wrong a human capital theory of protestant economic history max weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of protestant regions to a protestant work ethic we provide an alternative theory protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity we test the theory using county level data from late nineteenth century prussia exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the reformation to use distance to wittenberg as an instrument for protestantism we find that protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity but also to better education our results are consistent with protestants higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity

human resource management in us subsidiaries in europe and australia centralisation or autonomy we explore determinants of subsidiary autonomy in setting human resource management hrm practices within us parented multinational enterprises mnes in europe and australia we examine both the effect of strategic context and the effect of the institutional location of the subsidiary we find that us mnes show greater centralisation of control over hrm where the subsidiary faces global markets in coordinated market economies vs liberal market economies and where union density is low

high performance work systems in foreign subsidiaries of american multinationals an institutional model this study examines the implementation of high performance work systems hpwss in 217 subsidiaries of american based multinational enterprises operating in 14 countries in asia africa and europe specifically this paper explores the effect of host country institutional factors on the extent of hpws implementation in subsidiaries and focuses on strong agency influences and dominance effects the proposed model was more successful in explaining the effect of hpwss on rank and file employees than on managers of particular interest is the strong positive association between host country economic growth and hpws implementation which suggests a possible cyclical sensitivity of subsidiaries regarding human resource management strategy

management development and firm performance in germany norway spain and the uk while comparative studies of human resource management hrm are relatively plentiful few have examined the way organisations in different countries train and develop their managers or the impact of this upon firm performance given the centrality of management capability for corporate and national competitive performance this represents an important area of enquiry utilising telephone interview data from the human resource development manager and a line manager in 482 domestic and multinational organisations in four european countries patterns of management development md are found to differ according to country and to a lesser extent by international strategy however a significantly greater amount of organisational performance is explained by internal md strategies adopted by the organisations concerned and the credence accorded these by line managers

catching the wave alertness responsiveness and market influence in global electronic networks this paper introduces the concepts of alertness and responsiveness as key capabilities for firms in fast moving information intensive environments such as global currency trading hypotheses drawn from the resource based view of the firm from network theory and from austrian economics are tested on objective cross section and time series data for the population of 4 088 banks engaged in foreign exchange trading on the reuters dealing system results strongly support the hypotheses that banks that are alert i e use their information networks in ways that expand the range of information they are exposed to and responsive those that act quickly in volatile markets tend to exercise greater market influence in this industry

transfer capability improvement through market based operation of series facts devices traditionally electric system operators have dispatched generation to minimize total production costs ignoring the flexibility of the transmission system implementation of smart grid systems could allow operators to co optimize flexible transmission alongside generation dispatch the technologies that would enable such co optimization are still regulated as part of the monopoly transmission system one particular flexible transmission asset is variable impedance flexible ac transmission system facts this paper 1 points out the positive externality problem existing in a recent market design proposal with active transmission participation and 2 proposes a sensitivity based method to estimate the marginal market value of facts adjustments to overcome this positive externality problem the marginal value would suggest efficient impedance adjustments to the operator and provide the right financial incentives for the facts owners to operate their assets in a socially optimal way revenue adequacy is demonstrated under specific conditions and more broadly investigated through simulation studies an analytical example on a two bus system as well as a numerical study on the ieee 118 bus system are presented the results suggest that inclusion of a price signal for facts devices would lead to significant social welfare improvements in competitive power markets

overt employment discrimination in mnc affiliates home country cultural and institutional effects using job announcements posted by mnc subsidiaries in taiwan and thailand we investigated the effects of mnc home country cultural and institutional forces on the use of employment gender and age discriminatory criteria in host countries where anti discrimination legislation was absent we examined the cultural effects with composite measures taken from the work of hofstede and schwartz the effects of the existence of anti age and anti gender discrimination employment legislation in an mnc home country were also assessed to control for institutional factors logit analysis shows that mnc home country culture and institutional environment can have a strong impact on the use of discriminatory criteria by mncs in host countries at least those lacking protective legislation specifically mncs based in countries that have existing and effective age and gender discrimination laws and have more individualist and less masculine cultures are less likely to engage in at least overt gender based and age based discrimination

attitudes towards women s career advancement in latin america the moderating impact of perceived company international proactiveness while companies operating in latin america have witnessed increased female leadership participation the region remains characterized by traditional gender role attitudes this juxtaposition of traditional machismo attitudes towards women along with progress in women s leadership participation make this setting ideal for examining a topic of continued worldwide debate women s career advancement this study examines attitudes towards the career advancement of women a historically marginalized group in latin america building on the extant literature we test the negative association between traditional gender role orientations and attitudes towards women s career advancement both directly and via a mediated relationship through acceptance of women in the workplace we then theoretically and empirically extend this literature by examining an important context related moderator a company s international proactiveness which we contend serves as a mechanism for keeping traditional machismo attitudes from manifesting we examine these relationships within a sample of 973 respondents within the latin american countries of argentina bolivia brazil chile colombia dominican republic ecuador mexico panama peru and venezuela our findings support our hypotheses and provide practical insight into the important yet generally not considered effects of a company s internationalization efforts on attitudes towards the career advancement of women

circadian rhythms the effects of global market integration in the currency trading industry this essay assesses the impact of global market integration in the currency trading industry as the market interfaces with states with firms and with individuals and raises questions for research from a variety of disciplines issues discussed include the question of state control in global markets the impact of globalization on firm structures and processes how firms can derive competitive advantage from global circadian rhythms and the influences of the circadian rhythms of the global market on the individuals who work in this industry

influences on human resource management practices in multinational corporations a study of human resource management practices in 249 u s affiliates of foreign based multinational corporations mncs shows that in general affiliate hrm practices closely follow local practices with differences among specific practices the degree of similarity of local practices is significantly influenced by the method of founding dependence on local inputs the presence of expatriates and the extent of communication with the parent in addition sharp differences are revealed among affiliates of canadian japanese and european mncs suggesting strong country effects together these findings support the view of mncs as composed of differentiated practices which in turn are shaped by forces for local isomorphism and for internal consistency

union recognition by multinational companies in china a dual institutional pressure perspective over the last decade chinese authorities have pressed foreign multinational companies to recognize official trade unions employing cross classified multilevel modeling on a large data set 10 108 foreign owned firms cross embedded in 32 home countries and 755 chinese cities this study examines the antecedents of the varied positions of foreign owned firms toward union recognition around the midpoint of the first decade of the 2000s a time when the government led union recognition campaign in china was gaining strength drawing on a dual institutional pressure perspective the authors theorize that the likelihood that a foreign owned firm will recognize a union depends on both the industrial relations system in the home country and the location of its operations in the host country specifically a foreign owned firm is more likely to recognize unions if it originated from a nation where the legitimacy of collective representation is high and if it is located in a chinese city where union recognition is prevalent among chinese owned firms

opening the black box of the relationship between hrm practices and firm performance a comparison of mne subsidiaries in the usa finland and russia this paper investigates the extent to which different human resource management hrm practices work better in different countries we also try to open the black box between hrm and multinational enterprise mne subsidiary performance by considering mechanisms through which hrm practices affect mne subsidiary performance the study utilizes a unique data set consisting of subsidiaries of 241 mnes operating in russia usa and finland in the partial least square analysis used to examine our hypotheses we demonstrate that different hrm practices are preferable in different countries and that motivation and ability are important mediating variables in the hrm mne subsidiary performance relationship

an institutional approach to cross national distance cross national distance is a key concept in the field of management previous research has conceptualized and measured cross national differences mostly in terms of dyadic cultural distance and has used the euclidean approach to measuring it in contrast our goal is to disaggregate the construct of distance by proposing a set of multidimensional measures including economic financial political administrative cultural demographic knowledge and global connectedness as well as geographic distance we ground our analysis and choice of empirical dimensions on institutional theories of national business governance and innovation systems in order to overcome the methodological limitations of the euclidean approach we calculate dyadic distances using the mahalanobis method which is scale invariant and takes into consideration the variance covariance matrix we empirically analyze four different foreign expansion choices of us companies to illustrate the importance of disaggregating the distance construct and the usefulness of our distance calculations which we make freely available to managers and scholars

models of the multinational enterprise flexibility is identified as the hallmark of recent modelling of the multinational enterprise the focus on flexibility is a response to the rationalization and restructuring of international business which has occurred since the end of the golden age of western economic growth flexibility has been south in factor markets intermediate product markets and markets for final products it has been sought by both governments and firms flexible firms are attracted to locations with flexible host governments this article contrasts the modern research agenda based on flexibility with the more traditional research agenda which predominates in the literature reviewed by caves 1996

the nature of international integration and human resource policies in multinational companies in this article we demonstrate that the literature concerning multinational companies mncs and employment relations has failed to develop a convincing explanation of variation in the extent to which mncs develop a global element to the management of their international workforces we argue that whether mncs have an incentive to develop international human resource policies is shaped by the extent and nature of international integration which we define as the commonalities and inter dependencies in the production process across borders in particular we identify three aspects of the integration of mncs that are crucial in this respect whether the firm pursues financial economies or synergistic linkages from its international operations whether it segments or replicates its operations across countries and whether it standardises or differentiates its product internationally copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

project escalation and sunk costs a test of the international generalizability of agency and prospect theories previous north american research suggests that aspects of agency theory and prospect theory may explain decisions to escalate commitment to failing projects this study explores the universality of these theories in this context the willingness of north american and asian managers to escalate commitment to losing projects was measured using four go no go decision cases we hypothesized that asian managers would be less willing to act in their self interest a lower agency effect and would be more willing to escalate a decision in the face of negative framing a stronger framing effect we found that agency theory had strong explanatory power for project in our asian sample framing effects were significant in both but they were not significantly different

country effects on information seeking in global electronic networks we examine the existence of country effects on information seeking in response to market volatility and explore the institutional factors underlying these effects the empirical setting is the use of an electronic inter bank network over twelve months by 3 266 banks located in twenty five countries we find significant differences across countries in banks information seeking behavior in response to market volatility influenced both by differences in national industry arrangements and by national culture however national industry arrangements and national culture influence banks information seeking in distinct ways

when the cat s away a content analysis of mnc overseas recruitment print ads this study examines discrimination in the overseas recruitment print ads of multinational national corporations mncs in a lax regulatory environment singapore institutionalization theory suggests that in a weakly regulated environment mnc affiliates would tend to adopt the less stringent requirements with the lack of a strong legal framework in the host country the home country s legal and cultural imperatives would be more salient suggesting differences in discrimination as a function of home country imperatives some 1122 recruitment print ads of u s u k and japanese affiliates of mncs were examined while discrimination was found in the print ads of all organizations u s affiliates were least discriminatory followed by japan and u k affiliates when singapore firms were included they were found to be least discriminatory however singapore firms became more discriminatory when the request for a recent photograph was considered in the discrimination index implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions for future research advanced

the impact of market orientation and strategic hrm on firm performance the case of chinese enterprises this study examines market orientation as the antecedent to strategic human resource management shrm and the related effects on firm performance in an emerging economy context it is suggested that the relationship between shrm and firm performance is moderated by ownership type and autonomy in staffing of these firms empirical results from a sample of chinese firms from various industries and regions reveal that shrm mediates the relationship between market orientation and firm performance it is also found that the effect of shrm on firm performance is stronger for firms with a higher degree of autonomy in staffing and weaker for private firms other types of ownership state or foreign have no effect on this relationship

cross cultural competence in international business toward a definition and a model many international business failures have been ascribed to a lack of cross cultural competence cc on the part of business practitioners however the international business literature appears to lack an adequate conceptualization and definition of the term cc focusing instead on the knowledge skills and attributes that appear to be its antecedents in this conceptual study we propose a definition of cc as it applies to international business and develop a model for understanding how cc is nurtured in individuals linking our definition to the concept of cultural intelligence we discuss the components of the model and suggest that there are environmental and contextual impediments to the effective application of the requisite skills knowledge and attributes that have been identified as necessary for cc resulting in a gap between knowing and doing we conclude by discussing the implications of the model for practitioners and by suggesting appropriate directions for further research

the effect of human resource management practices on mnc subsidiary performance in russia this study investigates the relationship between human resource management hrm and the performance of 101 foreign owned subsidiaries in russia the study s results provide support for the assertion that investments in hrm practices can substantially assist a firm in improving performance further different hrm practices for managerial and non managerial employees are found to be significantly related to firm performance only limited support however is obtained for the hypothesized relationship between efforts at aligning hrm practices with firm strategy and subsidiary performance

the effects of market economy type and foreign mne subsidiaries on the convergence and divergence of hrm this study explores patterns of human resource management hrm practices across market economies and between indigenous firms and foreign mne subsidiary operations offering a novel perspective on convergence and divergence applying institutional theorizing to improve our understanding of convergence divergence as a process and an outcome data collected from nine countries at three points in time over a decade confirm that convergence and divergence occur to different extents in a nonlinear fashion and vary depending on the area of hrm practice observed patterns of adoption and convergence divergence are explained through the effect of institutional constraints which vary between liberal and coordinated market economies and between indigenous firms and foreign mne subsidiaries specifically we expected and largely found supporting evidence confirming that compensation and wage bargaining level practices show more evidence of being institutionally constrained and hence were less likely to converge than contingent employment training and direct information provision practices the study contributes a more graded conceptualization of convergence divergence from constant no difference through robust convergence non robust convergence non robust divergence and robust divergence to constant difference allowing us to tease out the subtle manifestations of the process that can incorporate the complex dynamic reality of international business

towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm this paper outlines a theory of the multiproduct firm important building blocks include excess capacity and its creation market imperfections and the peculiarities of organizational knowledge including its fungible and taut character a framework is adopted in which profit seeking firms are seen to diversify in order to avoid the high transactions costs associated with using various markets to trade the services of various specialized assets neoclassical explanations of the multiproduct firm are shown to be seriously deficient

intra day and inter market volatility in foreign exchange rates four foreign exchange spot rate series recorded on an hourly basis for a six month period in 1986 are examined a seasonal garch model is developed to describe the time dependent volatility apparent in the percentage nominal return of each currency hourly patterns in volatility are found to be remarkably similar across currencies and appear to be related to the opening and closing of the worlds major markets robust lm tests designed to deal with the extreme leptokurtosis in the data fails to uncover any evidence of misspecification or the presence of volatility spillover effects between the currencies or across markets

an analysis of u s multinationals recruitment practices in mexico the frequency of discriminatory language in job advertisements placed by u s multinational corporations operating in mexico was compared with that of mexican companies using content analysis a sample of 300 ads placed by companies from each culture was analyzed and coded by two groups of coders to calculate the frequency of discriminatory language in the job ads with respect to age gender physical appearance and marital status results of a chi square analysis revealed that u s multinationals firms in mexico utilize discriminatory language in job ads less frequently in the categories of age gender and marital status this result suggests that the legal and cultural framework of the country of origin of u s enterprises in mexico may be influencing their actual recruitment practice in mexico and in turn help them in setting a positive example of non discrimination in recruitment among their mexican counterparts

chiefs economic development and elite control of civil society in sierra leone we study the effect of constraints on chiefs power on economic outcomes citizens attitudes and social capital a paramount chief in sierra leone must come from a ruling family originally recognized by british colonial authorities in chiefdoms with fewer ruling families chiefs face less political competition and development outcomes are significantly worse today variation in the security of property rights over land is a potential mechanism paradoxically with fewer ruling families the institutions of chiefs authority are more highly respected and measured social capital is higher we argue that these results reflect the capture of civil society organizations by chiefs

international human resource strategy and its determinants the case of subsidiaries in taiwan this paper explores how the tension between global integration and local responsiveness affects the dimensions and determinants of international human resource ihr strategy to accomplish this jarillo and martinez s 1990 business strategy framework for parents and their subsidiaries was recast in an ihr strategy setting then the relationships between the two dimensions of ihr strategy that emerged global integration and local responsiveness and a set of interorganizational interdependency variables were explored several new and informative associations between the interorganizational interdependency variables subsidiaries dependence on parent s resources local resources and hot institutions and ihr strategy were observed in a sample of one hundred subsidiaries of japanese u s and european mncs operating in taiwan

social norms and the enforcement of laws we examine the interplay between social norms and the enforcement of laws agents choose a behavior e g tax evasion production of low quality products corruption harassing behavior substance abuse etc and then are randomly matched with another agent there are complementarities in behaviors so that an agent s payoff decreases with the mismatch between her behavior and her partner s and with overall negative externalities created by the behavior of others a law is an upper bound cap on behavior a law breaker when detected pays a fine and has her behavior forced down to the level of the law equilibrium law breaking depends on social norms because detection relies at least in part on whistle blowing law abiding agents have an incentive to whistle blow on a law breaking partner because this reduces the mismatch with their partners behaviors as well as the negative externalities when laws are in conflict with norms and many agents are breaking the law each agent anticipates little whistle blowing and is more likely to also break the law tighter laws banning more behaviors greater fines and better public enforcement all have counteracting effects reducing behavior among law abiding individuals but increasing it among law breakers we show that laws that are in strong conflict with prevailing social norms may backfire whereas gradual tightening of laws can be more effective in influencing social norms and behavior