minimum effort coordination games stochastic potential and logit equilibrium abstract this paper revisits the minimum effort coordination game with a continuum of pareto ranked nash equilibria noise is introduced via a logit probabilistic choice function the resulting logit equilibrium distribution of decisions is unique and maximizes a stochastic potential function in the limit as the noise vanishes the distribution converges to an outcome that is analogous to the risk dominant outcome for 2 2 games in accordance with experimental evidence logit equilibrium efforts decrease with increases in effort costs and the number of players even though these parameters do not affect the nash equilibria journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 c92

ten little treasures of game theory and ten intuitive contradictions this paper reports laboratory data for games that are played only once these games span the standard categories static and dynamic games with complete and incomplete information for each game the treasure is a treatment in which behavior conforms nicely to predictions of the nash equilibrium or relevant refinement in each case however a change in the payoff structure produces a large inconsistency between theoretical predictions and observed behavior these contradictions are generally consistent with simple intuition based on the interaction of payoff asymmetries and noisy introspection about others decisions

national cultural distance and cross border acquisition performance previous theoretical research has argued that national cultural distance hinders cross border acquisition performance by increasing the costs of integration this article tests the alternative hypothesis that national cultural distance enhances cross border acquisition performance by providing access to the target s and or the acquirer s diverse set of routines and repertoires embedded in national culture using a multi dimensional measure of national cultural distance and controlling for other effects we examine a sample of 52 cross border acquisitions that took place between 1987 and 1992 and find a positive association between national cultural distance and cross border acquisition performance

the role of key stakeholders in the international joint venture negotiations case studies from eastern europe recent literature has suggested that a key stakeholder may be able to shift the balance of bargaining power during a joint venture negotiation and thus change the outcome of the process this paper explores the role of central and eastern european transitional governments as key stakeholders and how they influence international joint venture negotiations this role is described and analyzed by examining eight dyads of western european and central eastern european enterprises that have recently negotiated agreements the findings suggest that transitional governments as key stakeholders intervene at different stages of the negotiation process have both direct and indirect influences on the process and that they can change the balance of power in the negotiations sometimes to the detriment of their own state owned enterprise

building international business theory a grounded theory approach the field of international business ib is in need of more theory development as such the main focus of our manuscript was to provide guidance on how to build ib specific theory using grounded theory gt moreover we contribute to future theory development by identifying areas within ib where gt can be applied and the type of research issues that can be addressed using this methodology finally we make a noteworthy contribution by discussing some of gt s caveats and limitations particularly those relevant to ib this effort is intended to spur further interest in the development of ib theory

political economic context and sensitivity to equity differences between the united states and the transition economies of central and eastern europe recent labor economics studies suggest that low enterprise productivity in former socialist economies can be corrected by adopting reward systems emphasizing compensation for performance we used t

two little treasure games driven by unconditional regret for traveler s dilemma and minimal effort coordination games the unconditional regret matching urm procedure predicts outcomes close to the experimental ones this supports a claim that the urm procedure can be well suited to predict the behavior of experimental subjects in repeated games

a general class of adaptive strategies abstract we exhibit and characterize an entire class of simple adaptive strategies in the repeated play of a game having the hannan consistency property in the long run the player is guaranteed an average payoff as large as the best reply payoff to the empirical distribution of play of the other players i e there is no regret smooth fictitious play fudenberg and levine 1995 j econ dynam control19 1065 1090 and regret matching hart and mas colell 2000 econometrica68 1127 1150 are particular cases the motivation and application of the current paper come from the study of procedures whose empirical distribution of play is in the long run almost a correlated equilibrium for the analysis we first develop a generalization of blackwell s 1956 pacific j math 6 1 8 approachability strategy for games with vector payoffs journal of economic literature classification numbers c7 d7 c6

the bathsheba syndrome the ethical failure of successful leaders reports of ethical violations by upper level managers continue to multiply despite increasing attention being given to ethics by firms and business schools much of the analysis of these violations focuses on either these managers lack of operational principles or their willingness to abandon principles in the face ofcompetitive pressures much of the attention by firms and business schools focuses either on the articulation of operational principles a deontological approach or on the training of managers to sort their way through subtle ethical dilemmas in the face of competitive pressure a utilitarian approach while valuable these approaches alone are incomplete

motivating employees to act ethically an expectancy theory approach employees face an array of moral issues in their everyday decision making environmental concerns employee and community welfare and the interests of other companies competitors customers and suppliers are only a few examples yet businesses do not always address the issue of how employees should assess the moral import of their actions and incorporate these considerations into their decisions as a result moral considerations are often ignored leading to unethical practices which may hurt the long term interests of the company in this paper we present a model to help eliminate this problem our model uses expectancy theory a process theory of motivation to show that teaching employees to engage in moral reasoning and creating a corporate culture in which ethical behavior is both encouraged and rewarded can increase the likelihood that a company s employees will act ethically

do country level institutional frameworks and interfirm governance arrangements substitute or complement in international business relationships interfirm relationships among partners from institutionally distant environments are subject to governance difficulties owing to the paucity of shared cognitive and regulatory frameworks we examine the potential of formal contracting and relational governance developed at the partnership level to overcome the formal and informal institutional gap at the country level empirical results from a sample of 184 international partnerships of large us firms support an overall substitutive relationship between informal institutional frameworks and interorganizational relational arrangements whereby the performance benefits of relational governance are reinforced at higher degrees of informal institutional distance contrastingly formal institutional frameworks and contractual governance are found to have a complementary relationship with performance gains from formal contracting undermined at higher degrees of formal distance

hungarian western partnerships a grounded theoretical model of integration processes and outcomes international cooperative ventures icvs are known to be strongly influenced by the parent firms values practices and systems vpss however less clear is whether and why vpss actually adopted by an icv are those of either parent singly both parents jointly or neither parent this question is especially timely in the transition economies of central and eastern europe where cooperative activity with western multinationals is growing rapidly and where decades old legacies of communism abound in this exploratory study we used a multiple case study methodology to examine 17 hungarian western icvs results show that a majority of the icvs adopted the vpss of the western partner we develop a theoretical model of integration process and outcomes and suggest future research directions

theorising from case studies towards a pluralist future for international business research the literature on case studies both in the field of international business ib and in the social sciences more generally has tended to focus on the methods of data production and analysis suited to this research strategy in contrast in this paper we investigate methods of theorising from case studies we seek to understand how case researchers theorise and how future ib research might utilise case studies for theorising by means of a qualitative content analysis of case studies published in journal of international business studies academy of management journal and journal of management studies we construct a typology of theorising from case studies two dimensions of the case study namely causal explanation and contextualisation form the basis for our typology we distinguish four methods of theorising inductive theory building interpretive sensemaking natural experiment and contextualised explanation only the first of which has been widely used in jibs in the period that we investigate on the basis of our own qualitative analysis we show the limitations of inductive theory building and argue that greater utilisation of the other methods of theorising would enhance the case study s explanatory power and potential for contextualisation we argue for a more pluralist future for ib research

a few bad apples scandalous behavior of mutual fund managers recent scandals in the business world have intensified the demand for an explanation of the causes of corporate wrongdoing this study empirically tests the effects of mutual fund management fees and control structures on the likelihood of illegal activity within mutual fund organizations specific attention is given to the presence of agency duality issues in the mutual fund industry and how this influences the motivations and decisions of fund managers findings provide support for the hypothesized relationship that higher levels of management fees decrease the likelihood of illegal behavior additionally control of the mutual fund by external management is found to have a negative impact on the likelihood of illegal activity while also acting as a moderator of the management fee illegal behavior relationship

a study of the link between a corporation s financial performance and its commitment to ethics a number of studies have tested the relationship between a corporation s social and ethical performance and its financial performance in contrast this is the first study to demonstrate a link between overall financial performance and an emphasis on ethics as an aspect of corporate governance it identifies the 26 8 percent of the 500 largest u s public corporations that in their annual report to shareholders commit to ethical behavior toward their stakeholders or emphasize compliance with their code of conduct the financial performance of these corporations ranks higher than that of those who do not at a significance level of p 0 005 using the 1997 business week ranking which averages eight publicly reported measures of historical financial performance these findings should motivate more corporations to utilize the principles of social and ethical accounting auditing and reporting seaar

the impact of managerial networking intensity and market based strategies on firm growth during institutional upheaval a study of small and medium sized enterprises in a transition economy varying institutional environments provide the foundation for a great deal of international business research yet relatively little empirical work has examined the determinants of small and medium sized enterprise sme growth during institutional upheaval although the importance of sme development for economic transition and growth is widely acknowledged our paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining how the competitive strategies of smes evolve during institutional transitions and assessing the implications for firm growth using data collected from 135 smes in 1993 and 200 smes in 2001 we find that managerial networking intensity i e developing and maintaining relationships that may be used for business purposes declines markedly over time whereas the importance of market based strategies increases managerial networking intensity is strongly associated with firm growth early in the institutional transition process but not later market based strategies are not associated with firm growth in either time period drawing on convergent insights from multiple theoretical perspectives we argue that changes in strategy are concurrently driven by socially constructed norms that legitimize new ways of competing and delegitimize old ones and by knowledge acquisition and learning which provide managers with a more diverse set of tools with which to exercise their strategic choices

understanding the differences in korean and u s executives strategic orientations competitive positioning in a global market requires an understanding of the decision processes and behavioral attributes of executives from different countries these attributes reflect the executives cultural background the national policies under which they have worked and their home country s level of economic development institutional context the current research compared strategic decision models of u s and korean executives and the results suggest that criteria employed by the executives from the two countries differ differences in institutional context between korea and the u s a were reflected in the weightings of objective criteria used by the executives korean executives emphasized industry attractiveness sales and market share because of policies that encourage growth and u s executives emphasized projected demand discounted cash flow and roi because of policies and institutions that focus on profitability the results suggest the importance of understanding the strategic orientations of international competitors partners in international strategic alliances and managers of international subsidiaries or divisions 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

complementarity status similarity and social capital as drivers of alliance formation using data on u s investment banking firms syndication in underwriting corporate stock offerings during the 1980s this study explores the factors that drive alliance formation between two specific firms we compare resource complementarity status similarity and social capital as a basis of alliance formation the findings indicate that the likelihood of investment banks alliance formation is positively related to the complementarity of their capabilities as well as their status similarity social capital arising from banks direct and indirect collaborative experiences also plays a very important role in alliance formation the number of deals given by a lead bank to a potential partner over the past three years has an inverted u shaped relationship to the probability that the lead bank will invite the potential partner to form an alliance our findings indicate that status similarity and social capital have a stronger effect on alliance formation in initial public offering deals than in secondary offering deals as the former are more uncertain than the latter using these findings we discuss the role of complementarity status similarity and social capital in alliance formation copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

relation of dominant problems to stages of growth in technology based new ventures two studies investigating the growth patterns of new ventures are presented in the first study a stage of growth model theorized to apply specifically to technology based new ventures was develop

interfirm diversity organizational learning and longevity in global strategic alliances organizational theorists have correctly argued that the emergence and maintenance of robust cooperation between global strategic alliance partners is related to the diversity in the partners characteristics yet previous research has failed to systematically delineate the important dimensions of interfirm diversity and integrate the dimensions into a unified framework of analysis this paper develops a multilevel typology of interfirm diversity and focuses on organizational learning and adaptation as critical processes that dynamically moderate diversity s impact on alliance longevity and effectiveness

on the future of international joint venture research international joint ventures ijvs are an important type of international strategic alliance isa and have been studied by scholars for decades resulting in a plethora of empirical studies publications and reviews yet an inadequate accumulation of knowledge exists as a closer look reveals much more than providing a summary and critical assessment of past contributions this paper develops an expansive research agenda based upon a deep understanding of past research and comprehensive frameworks that distill this research we identify a number of research opportunities that would not only advance ijv research but also closely related literatures and disciplines such as isas theories of the multinational firm international business research and strategic management

anomalous behavior in a traveler s dilemma the notion of a nash equilibrium has joined supply and demand as one of the two or three techniques that economists instinctively try to use first in the analysis of economic interactions moreover the nash equilibrium and closely related game theoretic concepts are being widely applied in other social sciences and even in biology where evolutionary stability often selects a subset of the nash equilibria many people are uneasy about the stark predictions of the nash equilibrium in some contexts where the extreme rationality assumptions seem implausible kaushik basu s 1994 traveler s dilemma is a particularly convincing example of a case where the unrelenting logic of game theory is at odds with intuitive notions about human behavior the story associated with the dilemma is that two travelers purchase identical antiques while on a tropical vacation their luggage is lost on the return trip and the airline asks them to make independent claims for compensation in anticipation of excessive claims the airline representative announces

complexity context and governance in biotechnology alliances this study explores the effect of coordination needs on alliance governance we examine coordination needs that arise as a consequence of the characteristics and the context of the alliance we posit that alliance characteristics and contextual factors influence alliance form and equity investment levels we evaluate the effects of the complexity of technology transfer and strategic complexity of the alliance we also study contextual factors represented by the distance between the intellectual property protection regimes of the home countries of the participants the focal firm s prior presence in the alliance country and its primary expertise in the industry we offer contrasting predictions based on appropriation and coordination perspectives our results demonstrate support for a dominant coordination perspective with alliance characteristics and some contextual factors influencing alliance form appropriation concerns play a weaker role and receive less support

the ethical context of entrepreneurship proposing and testing a developmental framework the aim of this study is to increase our understanding of the ethical climate of entrepreneurial firms as they grow and develop a developmental framework is introduced to describe the formal and informal ethical structures that emerge in entrepreneurial firms over time factors influencing where firms are within the developmental framework are posited including the entrepreneur s psychological profile lifecycle stage of the business and descriptive characteristics of the venture it is also proposed that the implementation of ethical structures will impact perceptions of the clarity and adequacy of the ethical standards of the firm and the firm s preparedness to deal with ethical challenges as they arise results are reported of a cross sectional survey of small firms at different stages of development the findings indicate the existence of four distinct clusters of firms based on their formal and informal ethical structures superlatives core proponents pain and gain and deficients evidence is also provided of statistically significant relationships between the proposed antecedent and outcome variables implications are drawn from the results and priorities are established for future research

ethics in american companies a managerial perspective this study investigated several issues with 1498 managers nationwide regarding for example how ethical they felt their organizations were and whether their personal principles must be compromised for the organization s sake in addition their decision criteria for two scenarios involving ethical implications were articulated

enhancing the obsolescing bargain theory a longitudinal study of foreign ownership of u s and european multinationals this research attempts to enhance the obsolescing bargain theory for manufacturing companies by statistically testing the effects of nine explanatory variables on the static and dynamic manifestations of bargaining success with longitudinal firm level data in order to highlight those effects it develops a conceptual framework that provides a broader context in which the primary variables operate it demonstrates that the obsolescing bargain took effect in india over a fifteen year period following restrictive legislation unlike previous research this study measures the effect of benefits received by multinationals from the host government in exchange for equity dilution american companies are found to retain a smaller share of their foreign ownership over time than british and other european multinationals some explanatory variables that have previously been found to influence level of foreign ownership static bargaining success are found to be less important or have a different effect in explaining proportion of foreign ownership retained dynamic bargaining success

managerial behaviors and job performance a successful manager in los angeles may not succeed in hong kong few studies have attempted to examine how american managers actually manage while on assignment in foreign countries or the effectiveness of these managerial behaviors this study compared the self reported managerial behaviors of american expatriate managers in hong kong to a sample of american managers in the u s and hong kong chinese managers in hong kong the results from the study indicated that american expatriate managers in hong kong exhibit very similar managerial behaviors to the sample of managers in the u s however while these managerial behaviors were positively related to job performance for the managers in the u s they were not related to job performance for the expatriates in hong kong nor were these managerial behaviors related to job performance for hong kong chinese managers in hong kong

a cross national study of managerial values this study investigated cross national differences in managerial values a total of 567 managers from twelve nations participated in the study managerial values were assessed by means of rokeach s value survey factor analysis of the eighteen instrumental values included in rokeach s value survey revealed four underlying value dimensions the value dimension that included the instrumental values broadminded capable and courageous was ranked as the most important value dimension by managers from all twelve nations national differences were found on three of the four value dimensions

using founder status age of firm and company growth rate as the basis for distinguishing entrepreneurs from managers of smaller businesses abstract this article examined the empirical implications of definitions that distinguish entrepreneurs from managers of smaller businesses based on their founder nonfounder status and their firms ages and growth rates the best distinctions were created using 1 founders 2 younger companies and 3 the combination of founders and younger companies growth indicators did not discriminate well the two founder based distinctions shared a profile of entrepreneurs as running smaller companies with higher return on assets roa than nonentrepreneurial managers having shorter tenure in their positions having previous work experience in the same industry and having higher risk taking propensity the distinction based on age of firm also showed strong ability to discriminate among respondents the field of entrepreneurship has few longer standing controversies than the one surrounding the question of what distinguishes entrepreneurs from nonentrepreneurial managers in trying to separate entrepreneurs from managers of smaller businesses in particular questions exist concerning the key defining differences definitions of entrepreneurship have utilized founder versus nonfounder status company age and company growth rates as distinguishing elements entrepreneurs have been defined by one or more of the following elements being a company founder running a young company and running or desiring to run a high growth company this article tests these elements to see if they provide a clearly differentiated profile of entrepreneurs it uses the founder nonfounder distinction for example to see if this distinction functions well in identifying a number of company financial and personal attributes that associate with founders rather than nonfounders the approach advocated here borrows from configurational theory as it has emerged in the fields of strategic management and organizational theory meyer tsui and hinings 1993 to look for a constellation of variables that group together in depicting entrepreneurs if founder status company age and growth rate are useful definitions of entrepreneurship they should point to a configuration of factors that together comprise a profile of an entrepreneur in predicting what configuration of factors will emerge this article adopts a strategic adaptation perspective low and macmillan 1988 to argue that differences between entrepreneurs and nonentrepreneurs spring from divergent thought processes and personal attributes of individuals who face the question of whether and how to enter business for themselves using the founder nonfounder distinction we view individuals who decide to start a new business rather than buy or manage an existing one as more likely to have previously founded a business have experience in the same industry be higher in risk taking show more type a behavior and be more growth oriented findings from a sample of ceos in the smaller business association of new england indicated that neither of the two tests based on high growth as a definition of entrepreneurial firms proved adept at creating a distinct entrepreneurial profile distinctions based on founder status younger firm status and founder of a younger firm status on the other hand proved effective in creating such profiles dimensions shared by the two founder based definitions of entrepreneurship included company attributes of smaller size and higher roa and ceo attributes of shorter tenure on the job previous experience in the same industry and higher risk taking propensity additional attributes showed in the younger company founder group including company attributes of lower liquidity and higher sales growth and personal attributes of having previously founded a business ranking roa as a high priority and external locus of control the distinction based on younger firm status performed well in discriminating among respondents in this study in addition to sharing several variables with the founder based distinctions it alone identified younger firms ceos as having lower education and type a tendencies and higher expectations of children succeeding them in the business as one implication of these findings knowledge of the profiles may help people who deal with these groups to have a better sense of how to interact with and respond to them the young company founder profile for example presents a picture of a relatively small company experiencing high rates of sales growth squeezing all it can from its assets in the face of high comparative liabilities because the company is young its founder has relatively short tenure but may well have had previous experience in the industry and have previously founded a company personally the founder is a risk taker who is external in locus of control and places high priority on roa if this configuration holds firm in future research those who deal frequently with entrepreneurs such as bankers venture capitalists consultants accountants and lawyers will be able to use a few identifying factors such as founder status and age of firm to draw reasonable inferences about a host of other characteristics of their clients the attempt to profile the entrepreneur in recent years thought to be futile may yet prove viable