women leaders and social performance evidence from financial cooperatives in senegal how do women leaders such as board members and top managers influence the social performance of organizations this paper addresses the question by exploiting a unique database from a senegalese network of 36 financial cooperatives we scrutinize the loan granting decisions made jointly by the locally elected board and the top manager assigned by the central union of the network our findings are threefold first female dominated boards favor social orientation second female managers tend to align their strategy with local boards preferences third the central union tends to assign male managers to female dominated boards probably to curb the boards social orientation

competition and microfinance abstract competition between microfinance institutions mfis in developing countries has increased dramatically in the last decade we model the behavior of non profit lenders and show that their non standard client maximizing objectives cause them to cross subsidize within their pool of borrowers thus when competition eliminates rents on profitable borrowers it is likely to yield a new equilibrium in which poor borrowers are worse off as competition exacerbates asymmetric information problems over borrower indebtedness the most impatient borrowers begin to obtain multiple loans creating a negative externality that leads to less favorable equilibrium loan contracts for all borrowers

gender bias and the availability of business loans abstract social structure values and gender socialization have undoubtedly disadvantaged women in the process of preparing for a career in business and there is a widely held view that women are subject to discrimination by financial institutions however the evidence to verify this belief has largely been from studies where women have claimed that they were subject to discrimination in the loan situation without either supporting evidence or control data from a sample of male loan applicants two experiments were carried out using a goldberg type procedure to test the belief that women are unfairly discriminated against when seeking a loan to establish a business venture carefully constructed scenarios of an application for loan finance to purchase a commercial enterprise were mailed to loan officers of major trading bank branches the scenarios were identical in all respects except for the sex and education level of applicants loan officers were asked whether or not they would approve loan finance for the proposed business purchase and to indicate factors that contributed to their decisions significant differences in response to female and male applicants were observed in both experiments in experiment i university education both sexes were equally likely to obtain a loan but education was considered a more important factor for the female applicant than for the male in experiment ii high school education the female applicant was less likely to obtain a loan than the male applicant the results support the widely held perception that women can experience gender discrimination when seeking start up capital such discriminatory behavior by loan officers may not be and probably is not intentional rather the pervasiveness of the social construction of differential gender roles in western culture is such that it is more likely that discrimination is unconscious and consequently more difficult to change

the supply and demand side impacts of credit market information abstract we utilize a unique pair of experiments to isolate the ways in which reductions in asymmetric information alter credit market outcomes a guatemalan microfinance lender gradually started using a credit bureau across its branches without letting borrowers know about it one year later we ran a large randomized credit information course that described the existence and workings of the bureau to the clients of this lender this pairing of natural and randomized experiments allows us to separately identify how new information enters on the supply and the demand sides of the market our results indicate that the credit bureau generated large efficiency gains for the lender and that these gains were augmented when borrowers understood the rules of the game the credit bureau rewarded good borrowers but penalized weaker ones increasing economic differentiation

vive la difference social banks and reciprocity in the credit market social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non economic i e social ethical and environmental criteria to investigate the behavior of social banks on the credit market this paper proposes both theory and empirics our theoretical model rationalizes the idea that reciprocity can generate better repayment performances based on a unique hand collected dataset released by a french social bank our empirical results are twofold first we show that the bank charges below market interest rates for social projects second regardless of their creditworthiness motivated borrowers respond to advantageous credit terms by significantly lowering their probability of default we interpret this outcome as the first evidence of reciprocity in the credit market

women business owners and terms of credit some empirical findings of the canadian experience abstract most previous studies of this topic have followed a methodology of selecting a sample of women business owners and then questioning them on their experience with their own business es although financing frequently is noted as a major problem previous studies suffer from the absence of a control group a corresponding group of male business owners with whom to compare experiences furthermore previous studies have tended to ask the respondent if she believes that she was treated any differently because she was a woman a leading question which could potentially bias the conclusions previous work reveals a pervasive perception that there is discrimination by bankers against women business owners a conclusion based on a widespread but subjective perception by some women owners however there also appears to be a lack of real statistical evidence moreover it is not clear that personal feelings of apparent reluctance displayed by some bankers carry over to professional judgements and to systematically different terms of credit one of the contributions of this paper is that a comparison of the actual experiences of both female and male business owners in their relationship with financial institutions are compared over a fixed period of time every attempt has been made to carry out these comparisons in a rigorous statistical manner another contribution arises because the findings to be described here are based on a broad and comprehensive study of the small business banking relationship and did not exclusively focus on the male female issues thus any bias that could have occurred in other studies by focusing on women business owner problems is likely to be minimized the findings described in this study are based on a total of 3 217 business principals responses to a national survey the number of women business owners in the sample was 153 in aggregate it was found that the financing conditions for women principals are less favorable than those for male business owners however it was also found that female owned firms tend to be both younger and smaller than male owned firms in the sample moreover woman business owners were more likely to be proprietors than their male counterparts and were less likely to be incorporated businesses in addition a statistically significant tendency for businesses owned by women to be characterized by lower rates of sales growth than those owned by men was also identified these differences between patterns of small business ownership between men and women allow alternative explanations of what might at first seem to be an apparent gender bias in order to separate the effects of ownership patterns from potential gender bias it was necessary to focus on the effect of the gender of the owners by holding constant those factors which provide alternative explanations of the aggregate results this was accomplished by creating benchmark subsamples of male respondents by matching women respondents with male respondents on the basis of age size industry growth rate and organization form of the businesses when this was done one area was identified in which statistically significant gender related differences remained that of collateral requirements for a line of credit apparent gender related differences in the other aspects of banking practices rates of loan approvals cosignature requirements requirements for loan collateral and interest rates on loans and lines of credit can be accounted for by the differences in the characteristics of male and female owned businesses the difference in the collateral required of men and women owners is an important difference collateral requirements were identified as a major concern by a high proportion of all survey respondents in fact collateral requirements appear to be the major banking related concern of small businesses the line of credit is viewed to be essential to growth and survival yet a lower proportion of women owners than men owners report having a line of credit thus it seems that development of the banking relationship including the establishment of a line of credit has proven more difficult for women than for men

the liability of localness in innovation i analyze differences in the innovativeness of domestic firms and subsidiaries of foreign firms operating in the same country i argue that domestic firms suffer a liability of localness in innovation or a competitive disadvantage in product innovation relative to subsidiaries of foreign firms i propose that this liability of localness is driven by the relatively lower levels of multiculturalism in employees of domestic firms in comparison with subsidiaries which limit the identification transfer and integration of a large diversity of knowledge that supports product innovation i also propose that managers of domestic firms can compensate for this liability of localness in two ways by investing in the training of their employees and by exporting training modifies the mindsets and abilities of employees and enables them to become more cognitively multicultural which facilitates product innovation exporting changes employees mindsets as they become exposed to new ideas available abroad which also facilitates product innovation i test these arguments on a sample of manufacturing firms and find that although domestic firms introduce fewer new products than subsidiaries of foreign firms they introduce more new products than subsidiaries at the same level of investment in language training and of exports

market structure and discrimination the case of small businesses this paper examines bank market structure to draw inferences concerning the role of discrimination in credit markets for small businesses the authors analyze credit application and denial rates loans outstanding and interest rates across demographic groups this set of variables in combination with information on local bank market structure helps them distinguish among borrower preferences lender tastes and inadequate lender information as likely causes of differences in credit market experiences of small business operators from distinct demographic groups the authors find that white men and women can expect similar treatment in credit markets with some benefits to female owned firms located in concentrated banking markets minorities by contrast fare worse than whites moreover by appealing to becker s 1957 classic theories we find some clear evidence to support the view that prejudicial discrimination is at least partly to blame

building professional discourse in emerging markets language context and the challenge of sensemaking using ethnographic evidence from the former soviet republics this paper examines a relatively new and mainly unobserved concept in international business literature the phenomenon of communication disengagement that manifests itself in many emerging markets we link it to the deficiencies of the local professional business discourse rooted in language limitations which reflects a lack of experience with the market economy this hampers cognitive coherence between foreign and local business entities adding to the liability of foreignness as certain instances of professional experience fail to find adequate linguistic expression and complicates cross cultural adjustments causing multinational companies mncs financial losses we contribute to the ib literature by examining cross border semantic sensemaking through a retrospectively constructed observational study we argue that a relative inadequacy of the national professional idiom is likely to remain a feature of the business environment in post communist economies for some time and therefore should be factored into business strategies of mncs consequently we recommend including discursive hazards in the risk evaluation of international projects

modeling structural and temporal variation in the market s valuation of banking firms hidden capital exists whenever the accounting measure of a firm s net worth diverges from its economic value such unbooked capital has on balance sheet and off balancesheet sources this paper develops a model to estimate both forms of hidden capital and to test hypotheses about their determinants in effect the analysis expands the twoindex model by endogenizing the market and interest rate sensitivities of any stock and decomposing each sensitivity into on balance sheet and off balance sheet elements for a sample of banks during 1975 1985 the model finds considerable variation in both forms of hidden capital to the extent that an accounting representation of a firm s net worth diverges from its economic value the firm is said to have hidden capital two sources of hidden capital exist accountants misvaluations of portfolio positions that accounting principles designate as on balance sheet items and the systematic neglect of off balance sheet sources of value that these principles do not permit to be formally booked this paper develops a model for estimating both types of hidden capital the model makes direct use of accounting information on the bookable positions of a firm and separates bookable from unbookable sources of value we use regression analysis to partition the market value of a firm s stock i e its market capitalization mv into two components recorded capital reserves and unrecorded or hidden net worth hidden capital is in turn allocated between values that are unbooked but bookable through asset turnover or writedowns on a historical cost balance sheet under generally accepted accounting principles gaap and values which gaap currently designates as an unbookable offbalance sheet item we estimate the net unbooked value of on balance sheet positions by estimating an intermediate variation ratio k this variable expresses the ratio of the market value to the book value of the collected components of a firm s bookable

how non native english speaking staff are evaluated in linguistically diverse organizations a sociolinguistic perspective the aim of this paper is to examine the effects of evaluations of non native speaking staff s spoken english in international business settings we adopt a sociolinguistic perspective on power and inequalities in linguistically diverse organizations in an anglophone environment the interpretive qualitative study draws on 54 interviews with non native english speaking staff in 19 uk business schools we analyze along the dimensions of status solidarity and dynamism the ways in which non native speakers on the basis of their spoken english are evaluated by themselves and by listeners we show how such evaluations refer to issues beyond the speaker s linguistic fluency and have consequences for her or his actions the study contributes to the literature on language and power in international business through offering fine grained insights into and elucidating how the interconnected evaluative processes impact the formation and perpetuation of organizational power relations and inequalities it also puts forward implications for managing the officially monolingual yet linguistically diverse organizations

cultural and language skills as resources for boundary spanning within the mnc we examine the role of cultural and language skills as resources for individuals boundary spanning ability in multinational corporations our combined qualitative and quantitative analysis shows that cultural and language skills influence the extent to which individual boundary spanners perform four functions exchanging linking facilitating and intervening boundary spanners with both cultural and language skills perform more functions than those with only cultural skills and language skills are critical for performing the most demanding functions key boundary spanners have properties that potentially make them not only valuable organizational human capital but also rare and difficult to imitate theoretical and practical implications are discussed

cultural gap bridging in multinational teams multinational teams are an organizational reality but they present several challenges the literature suggests that individuals with multicultural identities are more likely to show behaviors that aim at improving intercultural interactions in multinational teams though scholars have yet to determine the precise nature of these behaviors we address this research gap in a multimethod two study design by identifying five team cultural gap bridging behaviors cgb behaviors facilitating translating integrating mediating and empathetic comforting in study 1 we draw on one qualitative and two quantitative datasets to identify within team cgb behaviors and develop a measure of cgb behaviors in study 2 drawing from two wave survey data we investigate and find support for the direct relationships between cultural identity plurality and cgb behaviors and the indirect relationships via cultural intelligence

the commercialization of the microfinance industry is there a personal mission drift among credit officers recent research suggests that many microfinance institutions increasingly focus on financial performance at the expense of the social component of their dual objectives existing studies typically assume that capital providers and managers mainly drive this so called mission drift in this study we investigate whether personal mission drift at the credit officer level can further explain the reduced emphasis on poorer clients among microfinance institutions we present both qualitative and quantitative evidence that more experienced credit officers tend to serve fewer vulnerable clients specifically we show that all else being equal credit officer experience is negatively correlated with the provision of small loans loans to young clients and loans to clients with disabilities our qualitative analysis suggests that perceived client risk and preferences for increased time efficiency mainly drive more experienced credit officers relative neglect of more vulnerable clients this drift appears to be reinforced by the industry s incentive schemes therefore credit officer incentives and training should be designed to prevent this mission drift which is observed at the microfinance institution level but is actually initiated at the credit officer level

gender biases in bank lending lessons from microcredit in france the evidence on gender discrimination in lending remains controversial to capture gender biases in banks loan allocations we observe the impact on the applicants of a microfinance institution mfi and exploit the natural experiment of a regulatory change imposing a strict eur 10 000 loan ceiling on microcredit descriptive statistics indicate that the presence of the ceiling is associated both with bank mfi co financing and with harsher treatment of female borrowers to investigate causal links we develop an econometric approach that addresses the concerns of selection biases multicollinearity and endogeneity our empirical findings suggest that the change in the mfi s gender related attitude was triggered by banks through co financing hence we speculate that co financing pushes ceiling constrained mfis to import whatever biases in loan granting that the banks are prone to overall this paper stresses that apparently benign regulations such as loan ceilings can significantly harm the women s empowerment efforts made by mfis

the use of village agents in rural credit delivery using a simple principal agent model this article examines the incentive problems that arise when a formal financial institution such as a rural bank utilises a member of the rural community to act as an agent in screening potential borrowers and collecting repayment optimal compensation schemes are derived for the agent and their implications are discussed in addition i show that the norms and rules that govern village life may aid the financial institution by helping to constrain possible strategic behaviour by the agent

microfinance mission drift summary claims have been made that microfinance institutions mfis experience mission drift as they increasingly cater to customers who are better off than their original customers we investigate mission drift using average loan size as a main proxy and the mfis lending methodology main market and gender bias as further mission drift measures we employ a large data set of rated multi country mfis spanning 11 years and perform panel data estimations with instruments we find that the average loan size has not increased in the industry as a whole nor is there a tendency toward more individual loans or a higher proportion of lending to urban costumers regressions show that an increase in average profit and average cost tends to increase average loan and the other drift measures more focus should be given to cost efficiency in the mfi

unsubsidized microfinance institutions this paper starts from the observation that 23 of the world s microfinance institutions mfis manage without subsidies we examine how unsubsidized institutions cope with their social mission overall the lack of subsidies worsens social performances however our results show that strategies to achieve financial self sufficiency differ substantially across regions african and asian mfis compensate for non subsidization by charging higher interest rates in eastern europe and central asia unsubsidized mfis find it more suitable to target less poor clients unsubsidized latin american mfis tend to reduce their share of female borrowers

organizational attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder the interaction of demographic characteristics with foreignness our analysis of 4605 individual evaluations of the 60 companies in the reputation quotient annual 2000 study suggests that foreign headquartered companies are less attractive employers whereas more international companies are more attractive moreover we find that gender race respondent age and educational level significantly interact with our foreignness variables in predicting company attractiveness

employees willingness to adopt a foreign functional language in multilingual organizations the role of linguistic identity language holds a central role in sustainable international expansion for multinationals the choice of the functional language can facilitate or hinder communication between headquarters and subsidiary locations in order to communicate effectively with the parent organization host country employees often have to adopt a language that is not native to the subsidiary region we take a subsidiary employee perspective in presenting an interdisciplinary theoretical model of host country employees willingness to adopt a foreign language in multinational organizations the construct of linguistic identity shaped by the linguistic landscape of the host location is introduced as an important determinant in this process specifically the foreign functional language may pose a threat to the employees existing linguistic identity willingness to adopt the foreign functional language may depend upon the extent of this perceived threat we incorporate the effects of foreign language proficiency and individuals motivation for enhancement in the theoretical model both high proficiency in a foreign language and need for social economic and career enhancements can increase individuals willingness to adopt the foreign functional language finally we develop and present implications of the linguistic identity processes for entry mode location and language strategies

microcredit an answer to the gender problem in funding microfinance institutions mfis target people excluded from the traditional banking system by providing start up capital to these under financed individuals they enable a greater number of women to start their own business particularly in sectors where initial capital requirements are high our study follows a portfolio of 3 640 microcredit applicants in france over the 2000 2006 time period identifying mfi client profiles and bringing to light gender differences in borrowers compared to a wider sample of entrepreneurs this study shows that the male female gap found amongst company creators is also maintained amongst the clienteles of mfis empirical results also suggest that gender is a decisive factor regarding the amount of credit provided to borrowers when comparing with other factors in the borrower and firm profile thus to a certain extent mfis are found to reinforce gender inequalities in france

englishization in offshore call centers a postcolonial perspective the spread and use of english as the lingua franca of international business ib corporate englishization has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years but the focus has mostly been on the communication benefits and challenges of using english as a shared language inside multinationals in this article we examine how english is used externally in the provision of business services and apply a postcolonial perspective to frame our analysis drawing on fieldwork in india within the call center units of two outsourcing organizations serving anglo american firms we show how corporate englishization 1 relies on and contributes to producing comprador managerial cadres 2 serves to construct a transnational intra linguistic hierarchy of power and privilege and 3 undercuts its own effectiveness by simultaneously eliminating and maintaining the alterity of the other through processes of mimicry we thus show how corporate englishization does not merely overcome or conversely worsen transnational communication problems it also re produces colonial style power relations between the anglosphere and the rest our analysis deepens our understanding of corporate englishization and opens a new avenue for postcolonial research on the role of language in ib our analysis also advances the field of postcolonial organization studies and has implications for ib scholarship more generally

discrimination in the small business credit market we use data from the 1993 and 1998 national surveys of small business finances to examine the existence of racial discrimination in the small business credit market we conduct an econometric analysis of loan outcomes by race and find that black owned small businesses are about twice as likely to be denied credit even after controlling for differences in creditworthiness and other factors a series of specification checks indicates that this gap is unlikely to be explained by omitted variable bias these results indicate that the racial disparity in credit availability is likely caused by discrimination

understanding the words of relationships language as an essential tool to manage csr in communities of place multinational enterprises mnes encounter relentless stakeholder pressures when operating across linguistic cultural and institutional boundaries our aims are to examine whether and how acquisition of language resources may help mnes to bridge these boundaries and reduce pressures on mne legitimacy by improving their corporate social responsibility csr outcomes we propose an mne model of language resource acquisition policy based on three language orientations language as problem language as resource and language as right using sociolinguistic tools an ecological analysis of how language affects mne stakeholder relationships and surveying 15 mining mnes from australia canada china south africa switzerland and the united kingdom operating in east africa our research found some mnes employ regional lingua francas like swahili and local leadership practices to build sustainable relationships with local stakeholders these local stakeholders are members of communities of place cofp who steward the land their ancestors have inhabited for centuries and their voices have grown as to how that land is used as their voices have grown mnes should improve csr outcomes with cofp through better communications a well designed language acquisition policy may improve such communication and so fend off threats to mne legitimacy

sex differences in access to a small enterprise development fund in peru abstract in an attempt to ensure that the direct benefits of an urban small enterprise project were reaching women the industrial bank of peru undertook a study of the constraints to women s access to a major credit program it had initiated in the squatter settlements pueblos jo venes of lima the study found that the low proportion of women among the program s borrowers was not due to more women being rejected when they applied for loans but to the fact that few women applied high collateral requirements and complicated application procedures deterred women from applying those women who did apply received smaller loans than men and were concentrated in garment manufacture services and commerce taking these factors into account the authors make recommendations for ways to enhance women s participation in the credit scheme and similar small enterprise programs in the developing countries

re considering language within a cosmopolitan understanding toward a multilingual franca approach in international business studies much of the literature on language in international business ib has sought either to lay out the advantages of a common language or lingua franca that crosses the linguistic boundaries of a multinational company mnc harzing koster magner 2011 luo shenkar 2006 or to identify the imperialistic and hegemonic effects of using such lingua franca which mostly turns out to be english on actors in local subsidiaries piekkari vaara tienari santti 2005 tietze 2008 in our view looking into the relationship between globalization and language s is more complex than simply pointing at the proliferation of english and the effects of its linguistic imperialism within one global market place actually there is within every process of globalization simultaneously a genuine concern about issues of localization and contextualization appadurai 1996 bauman 1998 also increased mobility has provided people access to very fragmented and incomplete language repertoires often consisting of spoken vernacular and accented varieties of different languages in which they have differentially developed literacy skills blommaert dong 2010 such complexities between globalization processes and linguistic repertoires raise the question of how until now studies on language in ib tend to approach the notion of language itself and how they often implicitly think about the relationship between universality and particularity when studying language within globalization processes

observing unobservables identifying information asymmetries with a consumer credit field experiment information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice we estimate the presence and importance of hidden information and hidden action problems in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology we randomized 58 000 direct mail offers to former clients of a major south african lender along three dimensions i an initial offer interest rate featured on a direct mail solicitation ii a contract interest rate that was revealed only after a borrower agreed to the initial offer rate and ii a dynamic repayment incentive that was also a surprise and extended preferential pricing on future loans to borrowers who remained in good standing these three randomizations combined with complete knowledge of the lender s information set permit identification of specific types of private information problems our setup distinguishes hidden information effects from selection on the offer rate via unobservable risk and anticipated effort from hidden action effects via moral hazard in effort induced by actual contract terms we find strong evidence of moral hazard and weaker evidence of hidden information problems a rough estimate suggests that perhaps 13 to 21 of default is due to moral hazard asymmetric information thus may help explain the prevalence of credit constraints even in a market that specializes in financing high risk borrowers

careers in foreign owned firms in japan this article examines how organizational environments affect labor market processes in japan i hypothesize that labor market inequality is generated through workers being positioned in either domestic or in foreign firms i apply the concept of social versus economic exchange to distinguish the nature of transactions between domestic and foreign firms i argue that foreign firms operate under an institutional context that is conducive to the economic mode of exchange which has enormous consequences for their personnel practices and reward systems using a dataset of japanese workers collected in 2000 i examine the extent to which employment practices in foreign firms deviate from the benchmark features observed in the japanese labor market my results confirm that employment in foreign firms significantly affects career outcomes the highcommitment culture commonly associated with the japanese workforce is an outcome of the organizational environment i find little evidence of japanese employment pra

the emergence and regulation of contingent commitment banking abstract in but a relatively few years banking has changed considerably now it is very much a business of making contingent promises or commitments and even just a decade ago it was not recognizing change is apparently easier though than accounting for it or than not worrying about it in this paper an attempt is made to account for the change from traditional to contingent commitment banking an attempt which must however be regarded as less than brilliantly successful and responding to the concern that has been expressed by among others federal reserve officials it is argued that even if banking keeps on changing until the last vestige of the traditional has disappeared the federal reserve need not in the end be less effective as the u s monetary authority than it is at present there is also a concern shared by some federal reserve officials that if change persists then unless bank regulatory policy is altered appropriately financial stability will be increasingly threatened that could be but as is argued in the paper it is far from obvious that more capital and or a risk adjusted capital requirement will make bank failures rarer than they otherwise would be

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

competition and risk in south east asian commercial banking this article investigates the effects of competition on bank risk taking behaviour in four south east asian countries indonesia malaysia philippines and vietnam our main finding is that competition does not increase bank risk taking behaviour and the results appear robust to different model specifications estimation approaches and variable construction we also find that concentration is inversely related to bank risk whereas regulatory restrictions positively influence bank risk taking

on competition risk and hidden assets in the market for bank credit cards abstract the market for credit cards has been the subject of recent attention and controversy because of high profits earned on credit cards and substantial premiums on the resale of credit card receivables this paper estimates risk return profiles for credit card banks and explores the role of intangible assets in determining resale premiums on credit card receivables in addition the effects on the resale market of securitization and the opportunity cost of acquiring new accounts are analyzed using alternative measures of risk and alternative control groups we find for the years 1989 to 1995 that credit card banks earned significantly higher returns on assets but that these returns were associated with greater risk taking analysis of premia for the years 1993 to 1995 suggest that acquiring banks pay higher premia for mid sized regional accounts than for larger national portfolios perhaps because of richer cross selling opportunities

selling resistance and reconciliation a critical discursive approach to subsidiary role evolution in mnes studies of political dynamics between multinational enterprise mne parents and subsidiaries during subsidiary role evolution have focused largely on control and resistance this paper adopts a critical discursive approach to enable an exploration of subtle dynamics in the way that both headquarters and subsidiaries subjectively reconstruct their independent interdependent relationships with each other during change we draw from a real time qualitative study of a revealing case of charter change in an important european subsidiary of an mne attempting to build closer integration across european country operations our results illustrate the role of three discourses selling resistance and reconciliation in the reconstruction of the subsidiary parent relationship from this analysis we develop a process framework that elucidates the important role of these three discourses in the reconstruction of subsidiary roles showing how resistance is not simply subversive but an important part of integration our findings contribute to a better understanding of the micro level political dynamics in subsidiary role evolution and of how voice is exercised in mnes this study also provides a rare example of discourse based analysis in an mne context advancing our knowledge of how discursive methods can help to advance international business research more generally

knowledge transfer in multinational corporations productive and counterproductive effects of language sensitive recruitment this paper focuses on the multifaceted role of language and language sensitive recruitment in knowledge transfer in multinational corporations mncs in particular we develop a framework that helps to better understand how language sensitive recruitment is related to competence networks identity and power we started by conducting a qualitative interview based study of 101 mnc subsidiaries this analysis elucidates the productive and counterproductive effects of language sensitive recruitment on knowledge transfer related to communication competence networks identity and power to further understand the productive and counterproductive effects we conducted a quantitative study in 285 mnc subsidiaries we found an inverted u shaped relationship between language sensitive recruitment and knowledge transfer together these two studies provide a better understanding of the multifaceted and at times counterintuitive implications of language sensitive recruitment on knowledge transfer in mncs by elucidating these effects this paper contributes to the stream of research examining the role of language in mncs and international business more generally it further adds to research on mnc knowledge transfer that to date has focused little attention on language by elaborating on the potential unintended consequences of language sensitive recruitment this paper also has implications for international human resource management research

outreach sustainability and leverage in monitored and peer monitored lending abstract i study the contract design problem facing microfinance lending organizations mfos that want to maximize the impact and outreach of their lending activities to a target population of poor borrowers while remaining financially sustainable tradeoffs between outreach sustainability and financial leverage are shaped by the endogenous monitoring and delegation costs that arise within a chain of agency relationships subject to moral hazard between borrowers loan staff mfo equity owners and outside investors all else equal sustainable mfos that target poorer borrowers must charge higher interest rates have higher staff costs per dollar loaned and are less leveraged analysis of data for 72 mfos tends to support the findings

the demand for credit cards evidence from the survey of consumer finances i introduction the credit card market has expanded rapidly over the past 20 years in 1983 65 of households held at least one card by 1998 about 74 did so the size of real balances on these cards more than tripled in this period analysts have proposed a number of explanations for the increase but untangling the main causes is complicated by the unique nature of the credit card financial product an individual who obtains a credit card has obtained the right to borrow a certain amount called the limit with no questions asked under predetermined payback rules thus credit cards involve both assets and liabilities the available limits are best thought of as assets which can be used by a consumer to hedge against future income shortfalls or just to facilitate paying for goods and thereby reducing the need to carry cash the asset and limit components of credit cards makes them similar to financial instruments for example the asset component is essentially an option a subject that has been studied extensively in the corporate finance literature the seminal work is black and scholes 1973 who developed a method for valuing an option washam and davis 1998 extend this method to the problem of valuing the liquidity of credit resources this body of literature suggests that for some people a credit card can be viewed as a source of liquid funds for business purposes moreover once a credit card is used it becomes a debt liability in effect these are loans that the user has taken on to cover an income shortfall or simply to make a purchase for which borrowing makes sense again a corporate equivalent would be line of credit borrowing see myers 1989 or miller et al 1998 for an introduction these similarities raise the question of what sort of sample one should analyze for a study of consumer use of credit cards in all likelihood many average consumers who use credit cards are actually business entrepreneurs who use the cards to finance small business considering that wealth is an important element of any study of credit cards one faces the further problem that small business wealth is hard to measure accurately some research lindh and ohlsson 1998 suggests that access to liquid credit such as credit cards can make the difference between becoming self employed or not dunn and holtz eakin 2000 argue that family financial capital can ease the transition to self employment although they do not discuss credit availability in their study their results are strong evidence that credit cards would also ease that transition other studies that focus on the role of liquid credit and entrepreneurial activity include meyer 1990 blanchflower and oswald 1998 cox and japelli 1990 and evans and jovanovich 1989 our focus here is not on the use of credit cards as a business financing tool however it is apparent from this literature that business finance certainly plays a powerful role in determining the use of credit cards by some owners the research suggests that entrepreneurs would be more likely to be using credit cards for financing business rather than for consumer purposes for this reason it is important to separate the self employed from the non self employed in our sample looking specifically at consumers the unusual nature of the credit card financial product raises interesting questions for empirical researchers who hope as we do to provide some estimates of the responsiveness of the credit card demand to standard price and income effects the object of this article is to raise these questions and then answer some of them estimating regression models using data from the survey of consumer finances scf specifically we make two empirical approaches first we model credit card demand as a two stage process with a consumer obtaining limits in the first stage and then borrowing some fraction of those limits in the second

international evidence on the impact of adopting english as an external reporting language this study investigates the economic consequences of non english speaking companies adopting english as an external reporting language we examine a sample of european companies that initiate the voluntary issuance of an annual report in english in addition to the local language annual report to control for self selection we use a difference in differences design with a propensity score matched control sample we find that adoption of english as an external reporting language is associated with increased foreign ownership decreased information asymmetry and increased analyst following we also find that these benefits are not conditional on the use of ifrs for financial reporting our findings hold if we run a number of robustness checks to control for correlated events creation of an investor relations service provision of conference calls and or changes in management these results are consistent with the language used in the annual report acting as a barrier to investment for some investors and with annual reports issued in english reducing investors information processing costs

women and repayment in microfinance a global analysis notice this is the author s version of a work that was accepted for publication in world development changes resulting from the publishing process such as peer review editing corrections structural formatting and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication a definitive version was subsequently published in world development 39 5 758 772 http dx doi org 10 1016 j worlddev 2010 10 008

the failure of competition in the credit card market the bank credit card market containing 4 000 firms and lacking regulatory barriers casually appears to be a hospitable environment for the model of perfect competition nevertheless this article reports that credit card interest rates have been exceptionally sticky relative to the cost of funds moreover major credit card issuers have persistently earned from three to five times the ordinary rate of return in banking during the periods 1983 88 the failure of the competitive model appears to be partly attributable to consumers making credit card choices without taking account of the very high probability that they will pay interest on their outstanding balances copyright 1991 by american economic association

the impact of institutional sources of capital upon the minority oriented venture capital industry venture capital vc funds specializing in investing equity capital in minority owned businesses have grown rapidly over the past decade fueled by the willingness of major institutional investors to support this traditionally neglected niche we investigate impacts of public pension funds upon the minority vc sector these funds providing over half of all capital invested in minority vcs selectively invest seeking to fund only those vcs likely to generate high returns although they attempt to pick the winners our findings indicate that they have failed to do so the influence of public pension funds upon the minority vcs is nonetheless real skewing investing away from traditional practices and toward those of the venture capital mainstream in the process minority vcs funded by pension fund money invest in high tech fields more than other minority oriented vc funds do further they are less likely to fund minority owned small firms focusing increasingly upon firms owned by nonminority whites neither of these trends has resulted in increased returns rather diverting minority oriented vcs away from their traditional mission of investing in minority firms operating in a broad range of industries has resulted in lower returns over the years studied

from a distance and generalizable to up close and grounded reclaiming a place for qualitative methods in international business research journal of international business studies 2011 42 573 581 doi 10 1057 jibs 2011 19 it is exhilarating to write the introduction to this special issue as it presents an important opportunity for qualitative research to reclaim its position as an integral part of international business ib research the field of ib was founded on a rich qualitative research legacy e g bartlett 1979 crozier 1965 fayerweather 1969 johanson vahlne 1977 kindleberger 1956 prahalad 1975 wilkins 1970 1974 over time however such methods have been progressively marginalized in our field as quantitative methods have become the norm this shift in emphasis has mirrored the broader trend toward more positivistic empirical methods in the social sciences the field of ib is multidisciplinary in scope and interdisciplinary in content and methodology statement of jibs editorial policy however as our respective home disciplines came under growing pressure to solidify their legitimacy as scientific endeavors that merit scholarly attention it is not surprising that we began to take on the norms propagated within our own academic communities that typically equated quantitative data with hard science while there are clear merits associated with quantitative methods the multi cultural multi dimensional and dynamic nature of the field of ib lends itself to a broad range of research methodologies qualitative methods being one of them in order to understand the complexities of emergent and evolving phenomena scattered over distance and the differentiated contexts typical to many topics under investigation in ib it is often inappropriate to engage in large scale cross sectional studies or reductionist methods in the absence of well developed theory rather thick description exploratory research and comparative case analysis that focus on inductive theory building and hypotheses generation may be more suitable

translation in cross language international business research beyond equivalence in this paper we problematise the way translation has been treated in international business ib research we start by conducting an interpretive content analysis of both qualitative and quantitative cross language studies published in four core ib journals over the course of a decade our analysis shows the dominance of a technicist view of translation associated with the equivalence paradigm in contrast we advocate a shift to a more contextualised approach informed by theoretical developments in translation studies more specifically we focus on two theoretical perspectives skopos theory and cultural politics which offer related but distinct approaches to rethinking equivalence we conclude by advocating that the translation process be reframed as a process of intercultural interaction rather than a lexical transfer of meaning this reconceptualisation would we argue open up what is currently a black box in most ib studies the contextualised approach that we offer has the potential not just to enrich the findings of studies but also provide insights that are of multidisciplinary relevance

multiculturalism from a cognitive perspective patterns and implications multiculturalism the internal representation of multiple cultural meaning systems has critical implications for global managers and multinational corporations mncs understanding multiculturalism is becoming increasingly important given that the locations within which mnc activity resides and the composition of the workforce even within a given location are more diverse building on the connectionism perspective we offer a novel cognitive conceptualization of multiculturalism that incorporates the individual s multicultural cognitive content and structure based on that we explain how specific sociocultural experiences interact with existing individual cognitions to form different patterns of multiculturalism specifically we propose five stylized patterns compartmentalization integration inclusion convergence and generalization and explain how they are developed through specific sociocultural experiences we discuss how different patterns of multiculturalism influence specific capabilities of multicultural mnc managers and their effectiveness in a variety of critical mnc tasks we believe the cognitive connectionist perspective which has not been brought before into international business discussions of culture and cultural capabilities holds great promise for better understanding global managers capabilities and development

designing credit agent incentives to prevent mission drift in pro poor microfinance institutions abstract credit agents in microfinance institutions mfis must be given incentives to acquire information on potential borrowers and select them in accordance with the mfi s objectives we show that while giving incentives has no cost in for profit mfis it is costly in pro poor mfis when repayment and wealth are positively correlated a pro poor mfi cannot obtain the selection of poor clients in the proportion it wishes with incentives based solely on repayment it then becomes necessary to audit the share of very poor borrowers selected by an agent in order to provide the latter with adequate incentives when audit costs are large pro poor mfis may have to forego selection on wealth and use other targeting devices such as working in impoverished geographical locations driven by donor concerns with mission drift away from the poor audits on the wealth status of clients have been introduced at the level of mfis we show that introducing pro poor incentives requires extending such audits to the level of credit agents

subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs evidence from brazil this paper estimates the impact of loan officer subjectivity on microcredit granting by exploiting an exceptionally detailed database from a brazilian microfinance institution the loan officers collect field data meet with applicants and make recommendations to the credit committee which has the final say on both loan approval and loan size ls the loan officer s subjectivity is captured through gender bias our estimations indeed show subjective gender gap in ls this gap is almost exclusively attributable to loan officers we interpret this finding as evidence that despite monitoring and wage incentivization microcredit officers let their subjective preferences interfere with loan granting we conclude by suggesting alternative means to curb subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs

racial and gender discrimination in the micro firms credit market evidence from trinidad and tobago this paper examines the market for loans from banks to micro and small enterprises in trinidad and tobago it tests for the presence of racial and gender discrimination it takes the reported refusal to grant loans to groups when all other indicators of credit worthiness are taken into account as evidence of discrimination the paper distinguishes between application and denial rates it finds that once all other indicators of credit worthiness are taken into account neither application nor denial rates differ significantly by gender reported denial rates are however higher for africans compared with other ethnic groups implying the possible presence of discrimination

language policies and practices in wholly owned foreign subsidiaries a recontextualization perspective this study adopts a recontextualization perspective on language policies and practices in wholly owned foreign subsidiaries drawing on a field study of 101 subsidiaries in japan we develop a contingency model that distinguishes between four different types of recontextualization with characteristic language policies and practices developing locally adaptive developing globally integrated established locally adaptive and established globally integrated our analysis shows how each of these four types is accompanied by specific problems and challenges in particular it elucidates five important aspects of language implementation 1 the emergence of language praxis from the interplay of headquarters strategies and local responses 2 the hybridization of language practices 3 the central role of key actors such as subsidiary presidents in recontextualization 4 the pervasive power implications of language policies and practices and 5 the multifaceted implications for strategic human resource management by so doing our analysis opens up new avenues for context specific and practice oriented studies of language in multinational companies

the performance of village intermediaries in rural credit delivery under changing penalty regimes evidence from senegal this article concerns the use of village intermediaries to mitigate asymmetric information problems in rural credit delivery we consider an example from senegal and examine the intermediaries screening of loan applicants the results show that when the intermediaries expected to incur a substantial penalty in the event of borrower default they engaged in appropriate screening allocating credit to borrowers likely to repay their loans when the default penalty was lowered however the intermediaries engaged in opportunistic screening emphasising political affiliation and consanguinity in their lending decisions these results reveal both the potential efficacy of village intermediaries in allocating credit and their extreme sensitivy to penalty regimes

the multinational corporation as a multilingual community language and organization in a global context this paper develops a framework for analyzing the multinational corporation mnc as a multilingual community in which parent functional language and subunit functional languages are concurrently used and recursively linked through an intra corporate communication network the unit breadth and intensity of an mnc s language system are designed to apply global strategies within the context of evolving environmental and organizational realities to the extent that language design is the product of deliberate choice we suggest that headquarters functional language is determined by the mnc s international strategy organizational structure and transnationality while subunit functional language is designed in accordance with organizational form strategic role and expatriate deployment aligning language systems with organizational strategy and dynamics improves mnc communication coordination and knowledge sharing

microfinance and gender issues challenges and the road ahead this special collection examines the claim that microfinance promotes gender equality the focus is on three areas of the debate first the question of how successful microfinance has been in empowering women second whether and how negative gender discrimination operates within the sector third how power relations within and beyond the household shape the context and outcomes of microfinance initiatives the papers in this collection demonstrate the divergence of circumstances and emphasise the need to go beyond the past searches for a simple narrative regarding the impact of microfinance rather as the sector evolves and is incorporated into the mainstream financial system the challenge ahead for researchers is to marshal the evidence on gendered dynamics to ensure that the gains made are built on through deeper understanding of why impact outcomes and processes differ and use this to inform new initiatives to further gender equality