in search of appropriate methodology from outside the people s republic of china looking in choosing a methodology determines what we can study as well as the range of possible results and conclusions this study took an instrument that had been developed in the west and used extensively in europe and north america to investigate managerial behavior in the people s republic of china for a number of reasons it failed to produce a valid and reliable description of chinese managerial behavior this paper investigates some of the methodogical issues involved in extending western organizational knowledge to the east it raises some fundamental questions about being outside looking in

consumer stated purchasing preferences and corporate social responsibility in the wood products industry a conjoint analysis in the u s and china the impacts of disclosed level of corporate social responsibility csr domestic versus imported origin and type of construction on consumers stated wood product purchasing preferences were examined in the u s and china hierarchical logit models based on a bayesian framework were utilized to test the magnitude and statistical significance of each wood product attribute using survey data results indicate that u s and chinese respondents a were more likely to choose products from manufacturing companies with a higher level of csr rating compared with an unknown one b preferred domestically manufactured wood products compared to imported ones and c expressed higher interest in wood products made of solid wood compared with composites in terms of demographics respondents higher education levels corresponded with higher preferences for products from companies with the highest five star csr rating in the u s statistically significant income effects were detected only in the chinese sample when respondents indicated their purchasing preferences for wood products with three star or five star csr levels implications for improving wood products companies managerial performance and suggestions for future studies are provided

information school choice and academic achievement evidence from two experiments we examine a natural experiment and a field experiment that provided direct information on school test scores to lower income families in a public school choice plan receiving information significantly increases the fraction of parents choosing higher performing schools parents with high scoring alternatives nearby were more likely to choose nonguaranteed schools with higher test scores using random variation from each experiment we find that attending a higher scoring school increases student test scores the results imply that school choice will most effectively increase academic achievement for disadvantaged students when parents have easy access to test score information and good options from which to choose

robust storage assignment in unit load warehouses assigning products to and retrieving them from proper storage locations are crucial decisions in minimizing the operating cost of a unit load warehouse the problem becomes intractable when the warehouse faces variable supply and uncertain demand in a multiperiod setting we assume a factor based demand model in which demand for each product in each period is affinely dependent on some uncertain factors the distributions of these factors are only partially characterized we introduce a robust optimization model that minimizes the worst case expected total travel in the warehouse with distributional ambiguity of demand under a linear decision rule we obtain a storage and retrieval policy by solving a moderate size linear optimization problem surprisingly despite imprecise specification of demand distributions our computational studies suggest that the linear policy achieves close to the expected value given perfect information and significantly outperforms existing heuristics in the literature this paper was accepted by gerard p cachon optimization

the translation of corporate governance changes across national cultures the case of germany contrasting systems of corporate governance persist internationally but are subject to regulatory and firm level institutional change such changes may be viewed as organisational innovations often imported from the usa in the face of different national cultures this paper analyses the implications of national culture for the translation of innovations and provides case study illustrations of regulatory and firm level governance changes experienced in germany these illustrations demonstrate that the diffusion of both kinds of change has been subject to substantial translation that is consistent with german national culture

selling to overconfident consumers consumers may overestimate the precision of their demand forecasts this overconfidence creates an incentive for both monopolists and competitive firms to offer tariffs with included quantities at zero marginal cost followed by steep marginal charges this matches observed cellphone service pricing plans in the us and elsewhere an alternative explanation with common priors can be ruled out in favor of overconfidence based on observed customer usage patterns for a major us cellular phone service provider the model can be reinterpreted to explain the use of flat rates and late fees in rental markets and teaser rates on loans nevertheless firms may benefit from consumers losing their overconfidence

international marketing ethics from an islamic perspective a value maximization approach international marketing practices embedded in a strong ethical doctrine can play a vital role in raising the standards of business conduct worldwide while in no way compromising the quality of services or products offered to customers or surrendering the profit margins of businesses adherence to such ethical practices can help to elevate the standards of behavior and thus of living of traders and consumers alike against this background this paper endeavors to identify the salient features of the islamic framework of international marketing ethics in particular it highlights the capabilities and strengths of this framework in creating and sustaining a strong ethical international marketing culture at the heart of islamic marketing is the principle of value maximization based on equity and justice constituting just dealing and fair play for the wider welfare of the society selected key international marketing issues are examined from an islamic perspective which it is argued if adhered to can help to create a value loaded global ethical marketing framework for mncs in general and establish harmony and meaningful cooperation between international marketers and muslim target markets in particular

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

consumer biases and mutual ownership abstract we show how ownership of the firm by its customers as well as nonprofit status can prevent firms from using contractual terms that take advantage of consumer biases by eliminating an outside residual claimant with control over the firm these alternatives to investor ownership reduce the incentive of the firm to offer such terms however customers who are unaware of their behavioral biases may fail to recognize this advantage of non investor owned firms we present evidence from the consumer financial services market that supports our theory comparing contract terms we find that mutually owned firms offer lower penalties such as default interest rates and higher up front prices such as introductory interest rates than do investor owned firms however consumers most vulnerable to these penalties are no more likely to use mutually owned firms

differences in managerial values a study of u s hong kong and prc managers in this study of convergence divergence of managerial values four western developed measures machiavellianism locus of control intolerance of ambiguity and dogmatism and the four dimensions of the eastern developed chinese value survey confucian dynamism human heartedness integration and moral discipline were the measures used the findings indicate that often times both culture and the business environment interact to create a unique set of managerial values in a country

country and organizational level adaptation to foreign workplace ideologies a comparative study of distributive justice values in china russia and the united states drawing from concepts of cultural distance and cultural propensity to change we predict the convergence divergence or crossvergence of distributive justice values in china and russia as compared with us managers using institutional theory we predict responses by organizational type joint ventures foreign owned vs state owned enterprises soes lastly we develop predictions based on the interaction of culture and organizational type results indicate divergence in china regardless of organizational type in contrast differences by organizational type were observed among russian managers with convergence among managers in joint ventures but continuing divergence among managers in soes implications for theory are discussed

cross cultural management research trend and future directions u the historical perspectives on cross cultural studies outlined in the following historical pages are based on negandhi 1975 and england negandhi and wilpert 1979 perspective the emerging field of cross cultural studies on organizational functioning is largely a result of partial integration between the cross cultural comparative management field and organization theory areas although some cross cultural organization studies were conducted prior to the 1950s the large scale projects on industrialization of developing countries at 4 major universities mit chicago california and princeton during the 1950s provided a major impetus to the comparative management area scholars from various social disciplines psychology sociology social and cultural anthropology economics and political sciences contributed toward these efforts the differing backgrounds of these scholars are reflected in their conceptualizations and methodologies as well as in their specific findings harbison and myers 1959 the conceptual and methodological approaches used by the comparative management theorists can be divided roughly into the following groups the economic development orientation the environmental approach and the behavioral approach

the manager as mediator of alternative meanings a pilot study from china the usa and u k managers in china the usa and britain were asked to describe the extent to which they used five sources for handling nine managerial events western managers were found to rely more upon their own experience and training while in china rules and procedures were more salient for most events western managers who described themselves as relying on their own experience and training believed that the events had been well handled they reported that events were less well handled to the extent that they referred to their superiors reliance on the superior was associated with role ambiguity among western managers but not in china even though chinese managers relied more upon rules and procedures they too evaluated events more positively when they had relied on their own experience and training the results are discussed in terms of chinese and western cultural values and the prospects for change in managerial practice in china

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

the political economy of regulation in markets with naive consumers in a model of a competitive industry selling base goods and add ons we investigate the conditions under which citizen consumers will support policies that eliminate behavioral inefficiencies induced by naive consumers unregulated competitive markets have two effects they produce deadweight losses and they redistribute income away from biased consumers both unbiased and naive consumers believe that they benefit from this redistribution the naive consumers are wrong so support for efficiency improving regulation is limited extending our model to consumers with partial sophistication about their naivete we predict patterns of regulation consistent with the form and timing of the credit card accountability responsibility and disclosure card act of 2009

wage inequality and varieties of capitalism this article draws on a new data set that enables the authors to compare the distribution of income from employment across oecd countries specifically the article conducts a pooled cross sectional time series analysis of the determinants of wage inequality in sixteen countries from 1973 to 1995 the analysis shows that varieties of capitalism matter the authors find that the qualities that distinguish social market economies from liberal market economies shape the way political and institutional variables influence wage inequality of particular interest to political scientists is the finding that the wage distributive effects of government partisanship are contingent on institutional context union density emerges in the analysis as the single most important factor influencing wage inequality in both institutional contexts

assessing the effects of culture on managerial attitudes a three culture test cross cultural studies are inherently difficult because the typical research design fails to differentiate cultural from other environmental influences the present study uses a research design that attempts to isolate the influence of culture japanese chinese and mexican managers their ethnic american counterparts and anglo americans are used to test the model results indicate unique persistent cultural characteristics with the cultural effect varying among the three groups of managers

a comparative study of the work values of north and south vietnamese managers we examine managerial work values and subsequent behaviors of vietnamese managers that foreign investors may face doing business in vietnam to establish a global reference point we compare the managerial values of vietnamese managers with those of chinese and u s managers the findings from this exploratory study while not always intuitive should help foreign investors to better understand vietnam furthermore the study raises important theoretical issues concerning individualism and collectivism as cross cultural measures

political economy of pension plans impact of institutions gender and culture abstract national pension systems are an important part of financial intermediation and worker welfare in most countries but how and why do they differ internationally controlling for important political economic and social institutions we document that international differences in pension progressivity or how pensions reflect lifetime earnings are negatively related to masculinity uncertainty avoidance individualism long term orientation employment rights average pension levels social trust and economic inequality we also find that pension progressivity is positively related to the economic and societal role of women the extent of catholicism as well as political voice and accountability these results provide important insights for both public policy and mnc managers

cross cultural interaction the international comparison fallacy international management studies have been based primarily on the comparison of managerial behavior in countries around the world often these studies have implied that business people behave similarly with their domestic colleagues as with their foreign counterparts in questioning that assumption this study tests whether intra cultural behavior accurately predicts cross cultural behavior using a negotiation simulation and a sample of 462 japanese american and canadian businesspeople behaviors in cross cultural negotiations were found to differ in some important ways from those in intra cultural negotiations

consequences of cultural practices for entrepreneurial behaviors although national culture is an important regulator of entrepreneurship there is a dearth of studies that 1 explore the effects of national cultural practices on entrepreneurial behaviors by individuals 2 use appropriate multilevel research designs 3 consider the effects of culture on different entrepreneurial behaviors such as entry and post entry growth aspirations we combined global entrepreneurship monitor gem and global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness globe data from 42 countries for 2005 2008 to address these gaps using a multilevel design we found societal institutional collectivism practices negatively associated with entrepreneurial entry but positively associated with entrepreneurial growth aspirations uncertainty avoidance practices were negatively associated with entry but not with growth aspirations and performance orientation practices were positively associated with entry our analysis highlights the differential effects of cultural practices on entrepreneurial entry and growth aspirations and demonstrates the value of multilevel techniques in analyzing the effect of culture on entrepreneurship

crossvergence 10 years on impact and further potential the 1997 jibs paper by ralston holt terpstra and yu was instrumental in anchoring and extending the construct of crossvergence in cross cultural research ten years on the paper has lost none of its relevance and continues to offer important opportunities for further theory development and attendant empirical research scope for further work seems to exist especially in three areas the meaning of crossvergence national culture and economic ideology and processes of change

culture meaning and institutions executive rationale in germany and japan this paper contributes rare primary empirical evidence to one of the major research questions in the social sciences today namely the linkage between national cultures and institutional structures of national business systems drawing on the work of redding we explore the thinking or rationale of senior executives of leading german and japanese firms about the ideal structure of the economy we find considerable variation in rationale across the two countries and in comparison with the shape of the business system of the united states our study has implications for our understanding of the meaning of economic activity in different countries and of the evolutionary trajectories of national business systems

globalization and household saving is there a link abstractthis article proposes that globalization can affect household saving in the long run in a number of ways social interactions between different cultures can induce value changes which can result in shifts in consumption and saving behaviour international trade allows consumers to have easier access to status goods stimulating consumption and dampening saving extending from veblen s conspicuous consumption theory saving may also decrease when globalization leads to greater population mobility and fosters urbanization thus enhancing the importance of consumption as a way to display wealth in addition financial globalization reduces credit constraints and allows households to save less using cross country data from the united nations un the oecd and other sources this article finds evidence that household saving declines as globalization deepens especially in the social and cultural dimensions

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

differences in value systems of anglo american and far eastern students effects of american business education this study examined differences in the values patterns of business students from anglo american and far eastern country clusters using allport et al s 1970 study of values differences were noted on five of the six attitudes theoretical economic political social and religious next using multiple comparison method the value patterns of newly arrived far eastern students and far eastern students who had spent considerable time in the u s were compared for changes in value patterns that may be attributable to their stay and study in the united states differences were found in terms of five of the six evaluative attitudes between the two groups value pattern of far eastern students who had lived and studied in the u s for a considerable period of time was also compared with that of anglo american students to examine the degree of convergence in their value systems findings of this study suggest that as a result of frequent and sustained cross cultural contacts in another cultural environment the value profile of individuals tend to get modified so as to include the values preferred and desired in the new social environment

developing difference social organization and the rise of the auto industries of south korea taiwan spain and argentina theories of economic development as diverse as modernization dependency world system and market reform take a critical factor view proponents of each theory argue that countries fail to develop because of an obstacle to economic growth we argue instead that neither a critical factor nor a single path leads to economic development viable paths vary economic growth depends on linking a country s historically developed patterns of social organization to the opportunities of global markets we formulate a sociological theory of cross national comparative advantage including not only economic factor endowments but also institutionalized patterns of authority and organization such patterns legitimize certain actors and certain relationships among those actors which facilitate development success in some activities but not in others we illustrate this approach to understanding development outcomes with a comparative analysis of the difficult rise of the automobile assembly and components industries in south korea taiwan spain and argentina

mapping india s regional subcultures implications for international management as india continues to emerge as a global economic player scholars and practitioners increasingly need to understand the cultural heterogeneity within this large and populous nation based on lenartowicz and roth s framework of culture assessment we have identified nine distinct subcultural regions of india and used explanations grounded in functional and neo institutional theories to account for the origin and maintenance of cultural distinctiveness of these regions further we developed seven cultural value dimensions for the indian society and used these to hypothesize and empirically test the existence of cultural differences within india results supported our hypothesized arguments this study advances our knowledge of how global functional and institutional forces have combined with national forces to shape india s overall culture and how more local forces have shaped its regions methodologically it identifies and develops measures that specifically reflect the values of individuals living in india and uses these to assess intra national cultural differences within this nation further it suggests how use of multiple methods can enable us to understand the simultaneous presence of somewhat contradictory values within a society the study also provides applications of the proposed cultural value dimensions and advises implications of regional subcultures for various social and organizational phenomena

cultural stability or change among managers in indonesia in this study we directly measure culture along two of hofstede s 1980 dimensions individualism collectivism and power distance which we argue are potentially more malleable than stable at least within the developing nation of interest indonesia we compare these direct measures from indonesia with those from a developed country the united states to gauge the degree to which the culture of this emerging economy remains stable despite strong foreign influences utilizing english and back translated indonesian language versions of the 1994 values survey module we find statistically significant support for a narrowing of the differences in these two cultural dimensions between indonesian and u s managers compared to earlier findings by hofstede 1991

comparing capitalisms understanding institutional diversity and its implications for international business this paper examines the role of institutional analysis within the field of international business ib studies within ib institutions matter but the view of institutions tends to be thin utilizing summary indicators rather than detailed description and thus approaches institutions as unidimensional variables that impact on particular facets of business activity this paper argues that ib research would be usefully advanced by greater attention to comparing the topography of institutional landscapes and understanding their diversity a number of alternative case based approaches are outlined that draw on a growing comparative capitalisms literature in sociology and political science the paper develops a number of empirical examples to show the utility and limits of these approaches for ib scholars

shrouded attributes consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets bayesian consumers infer that hidden add on prices e g the cost of ink for a printer are likely to be high prices if consumers are bayesian firms will not shroud information in equilibrium however shrouding may occur in an economy with some myopic or unaware consumers such shrouding creates an inefficiency which firms may have an incentive to eliminate by educating their competitors customers however if add ons have close substitutes a curse of debiasing arises and firms will not be able to profitably debias consumers by unshrouding add ons in equilibrium two kinds of exploitation coexist optimizing firms exploit myopic consumers through marketing schemes that shroud high priced add ons in turn sophisticated consumers exploit these marketing schemes it is not possible to profitably drive away the business of sophisticates it is also not possible to profitably lure either myopes or sophisticates to nonexploitative firms we show that informational shrouding flourishes even in highly competitive markets even in markets with costless advertising and even when the shrouding generates allocational inefficiencies

the thick description and comparison of societal systems of capitalism critiques of international business theory have recently pointed to weaknesses in the handling of context of culture and of policy implications it is contended that the origins of such failings lie in the discipline s commonly accepted methodologies and in turn that they have epistemological roots as a route out of the dilemmas faced a proposal is made to adopt more complete ways of handling determinacy including the influences of history culture and the societal emergence of institutions business systems theory is drawn upon and a model proposed developed from the work of whitley in this culture is seen as underpinning formal institutions which in turn underpin societal business systems the use of the model relies on the ideas of geertz on thick description and of ragin on holistic analysis it is illustrated with a comparison of the american and french socio economic systems seen historically findings in strategy research about the geographically defined nature of firm supremacy in many industries are brought into the account using the business systems literature consistent patterns of determinacy as well as distinct and contrasting trajectories of business system evolution are noted a more complete and multidisciplinary form of explanation grounded in socio economics is advocated as a means of meeting the challenges both of understanding and of policymaking at several levels

neither principles nor rules making corporate governance work in sub saharan africa corporate governance is often split between rule based and principle based approaches to regulation in different institutional contexts this split is often informed by the types of institutional configurations their strengths and the complementarities within them this approach to corporate governance regulation is mostly discussed in the context of developed economies and their regulatory demands however in developing and weak market economies such as in sub saharan africa there is no such explicit split and the debates on such contexts in the comparative corporate governance literature have been meagre nonetheless there are sparks of good corporate governance practices in the region drawing from institutional theory and a case study of a largest economy we explore the appropriateness or suitability of corporate governance regulatory frameworks in sub saharan africa our findings suggest that nigeria needs an integrated system that combines elements of both rule based and principle based regulation supported by a multi stakeholder co regulation strategy this paper departs from the mainstream rule based and principle based categorisations by forging ahead new perspectives on corporate governance regulation especially in weak market economies

the impact of natural culture and economic ideology on managerial work values a study of the united states russia japan and china this study assesses the impact of economic ideology and national culture on the individual work values of managers in the united states russia japan and china the convergence divergence crossvergence cdc framework was used as theoretical framework for the study while the schwartz value survey svs was used to operationalize over investigation of managerial work values across these four countries the findings largely support the crossvergence prospective while also confirming the role of national culture implications from the findings are drawn for the convergence divergence crossvergence of values as well as for the feasibility of multidomestic or global strategies for a corporate culture

economic performance through time prize lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 9 1993 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a robust optimization approach to inventory theory we propose a general methodology based on robust optimization to address the problem of optimally controlling a supply chain subject to stochastic demand in discrete time this problem has been studied in the past using dynamic programming which suffers from dimensionality problems and assumes full knowledge of the demand distribution the proposed approach takes into account the uncertainty of the demand in the supply chain without assuming a specific distribution while remaining highly tractable and providing insight into the corresponding optimal policy it also allows adjustment of the level of robustness of the solution to trade off performance and protection against uncertainty an attractive feature of the proposed approach is its numerical tractability especially when compared to multidimensional dynamic programming problems in complex supply chains as the robust problem is of the same difficulty as the nominal problem that is a linear programming problem when there are no fixed costs and a mixed integer programming problem when fixed costs are present furthermore we show that the optimal policy obtained in the robust approach is identical to the optimal policy obtained in the nominal case for a modified and explicitly computable demand sequence in this way we show that the structure of the optimal robust policy is of the same base stock character as the optimal stochastic policy for a wide range of inventory problems in single installations series systems and general supply chains preliminary computational results are very promising

the cultural relativity of organizational practices and theories this paper summarizes the author s recently published findings about differences in people s work related values among 50 countries in view of these differences ethnocen tric management theories those based on the value system of one particular country have become untenable this concept is illustrated for the fields of leadership organization and motivation a key issue for organization science is the influence of national cultures on introduction management twenty or even 10 years ago the existence of a relationship be management and tween management and national cultures was far from obvious to many and it national cultures may not be obvious to everyone even now in the 1950s and 60s the dominant be lief at least in europe and the u s was that management was something univer sal there were principles of sound management which existed regardless of na tional environments if national or local practice deviated from these principles it was time to change local practice in the future the universality of sound manage ment practices would lead to societies becoming more and more alike this ap plied even to the poor countries of the third world which would become rich as well and would be managed just like the rich countries also the differences be tween management in the first and second world capitalist and socialist would disappear in fact under the surface they were thought to be a lot smaller than was officially recognized this way of thinking which dominated the 1950s and 60s is known as the convergence hypothesis during the 1970s the belief in the unavoidable convergence of management prac tices waned it was too obviously in conflict with the reality we saw around us at the same time supranational organizations like the european common market which were founded very much on the convergence belief had to recognize the stubbornness of national differences even within existing nations regional dif ferences became more rather than less accentuated the welsh the flemish the basques the bangladeshi the quebecois defended their own identity and this was difficult to reconcile with a management philosophy of convergence it slowly became clear that national and even regional cultures do matter for management the national and regional differences are not disappearing they are here to stay in fact these differences may become one of the most crucial problems for man agement in particular for the management of multinational multicultural orga nizations whether public or private

the importance of work goals an international perspective the paper probes into the basic question of what individuals seek from working results from a representative sample of the labor force in seven countries n 8192 showed that the two most dominant work goals are interesting work and good pay these were consistent internationally across different organizational levels between the genders and among different age categories

a clash of capitalisms foreign shareholders and corporate restructuring in 1990s japan this article examines the clash between stakeholder and shareholder based business systems resulting from an increase in foreign portfolio investment in the japanese economy during the 1990s an analysis of 1 108 firms between 1991 and 2000 shows that as foreign institutional investors who were more interested in investment returns than in long term relationships replaced domestic shareholders one fundamental pillar of japan s stakeholder capitalism began to crack japanese firms began to adopt downsizing and asset divestiture practices more characteristic of anglo american shareholder economies the influence of foreigners however was weaker in firms more deeply embedded in the local system through close ties to domestic financial institutions and corporate groups thus foreign investors were influential primarily in firms less embedded in the existing stakeholder system this research contributes to debates on globalization and convergence of business systems institutional change and corporate

overconfidence insurance and paternalism it is well known that when agents are fully rational compulsory public insurance may make all agents better off in the rothschild and stiglitz 1976 model of insurance markets we find that when sufficiently many agents underestimate their personal risks compulsory insurance makes low risk agents worse off hence behavioral biases may weaken some of the well established rationales for government intervention based on asymmetric information

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

predicting stakeholder orientation in the multinational enterprise a mid range theory as the reach of corporations increasingly extends across borders a key research question is whether overseas subsidiaries adopt a shareholder centric orientation centered on maximizing shareholder wealth or a stakeholder centric orientation centered on creating value for a broader range of stakeholders existing theories addressing the corporate level of analysis focus on forces exogenous to the firm local resource pressures and institutional norms using a combination of induction and fuzzy set analysis i draw on documentary evidence and 298 interviews with managers and stakeholders to build theory about the conditions that shape subsidiaries stakeholder orientations two major findings emerge first although theory emphasizes external stakeholders control over resources internal control through the corporate parent can crowd out the voices of local stakeholders second although institutional theory proposes isomorphism with local norms and standards some corporations are subject to scrutiny by global stakeholders and their subsidiaries face higher requirements for social engagement than their peers these findings are the foundation of a mid range theory that combines conventional explanations focused on environmental factors and an internal stakeholder perspective based around the roles of the parent corporation as owner and resource provider to predict stakeholder orientation

institutions transaction costs and entry mode choice in eastern europe the process of change from a centrally planned system to a market economy generates an institutional framework that is only partially reformed and therefore inconsistent and unstable this leads to high transaction costs for economic agents multinational enterprises entering transition countries have to adapt their strategies to the local institutions and reduce exposure to highly imperfect markets this paper analyzes how the costs of organizing business in transition environments influence entry mode choice the empirical results show that host country institutions in transition economies have an impact on the choice of entry modes moreover different mechanisms determine the internalization of managerial and technological knowledge

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

knowledge and competitive advantage the coevolution of firms technology and national institutions this issue of jibs offers reviews of two books that analyse the dynamic interaction between the business environments and business strategies in very different ways the institutional underpinnings for business strategies are a major research topic for comparative management aiming to explain why in different contexts firms pursue different strategies and with different implications for performance j peter murman in knowledge and competitive advantage takes a historical perspective focusing on the co evolutionary processes between national innovation systems business strategies and performance this books thus adds to the industry level longitudinal research reviewed in jibs no 4 2003 tom murtha et al s managing new industry creation and david mckendrick et al s from silicon valley to singapore

the organizational choice between evolutionary and revolutionary capability regimes theory and evidence from european air transport resource and capability based models of firm strategy gain in analytical power by incorporating some of the organizational trade offs that firms face in choosing between alternative capability building strategies based on the well documented trade off between flexibility and commitment inherent in social systems this paper argues that firms must choose between evolutionary and revolutionary capability regimes empirical evidence drawn from the race of european airlines to develop critical revenue management capabilities is cited to illustrate the theory and practical relevance of capability regimes copyright 2000 by oxford university press

institutional cultural and transaction cost influences on entry mode choice and performance in this study we examine foreign market entry mode choice and firm performance for a sample of european union firms examining both financial and non financial performance measures we attempt to determine if firms that select their entry mode based on transaction cost institutional context and cultural context variables perform better than firms that make other mode choices we found that mode choice did matter firms whose mode choice could be predicted by the extended transaction cost model performed significantly better on both financial and non financial measures than did firms whose mode choice could not be predicted by the extended transaction cost model implications for future research are discussed

which model of capitalism best delivers both wealth and equality capitalism is the dominant economic system adopted throughout the global economy but there are many different models of capitalism practiced depending on what the society decides economic effectiveness is in this study we assert that an effective economy simultaneously achieves two seemingly divergent outcomes it 1 creates economic wealth efficiently and 2 shares that wealth equitably employing insights from whitley s national business systems framework and fuzzy set analysis we examine how national institutions collectively configure with respect to the overall level of equitable wealth creation within 48 developed and developing economies we find that three configurations are associated with relatively high levels of equitable wealth creation and another three are associated with relatively low levels as such our analysis supports the notion of equifinality that there is no one optimal model of capitalism furthermore we begin to demonstrate that these models of capitalism are constantly evolving but their evolution is generally slow even when considering the practice of capitalism before and after the 2008 global economic crisis we discuss the implications of these findings for the study of international business with a special emphasis on considering a more holistic context for exploring how multinational enterprises interact with their institutional environment s

exploiting naivete about self control in the credit market we develop a model of the credit market where competitive lenders oer long term contracts specifying a non linear schedule of possible repayment schedules to borrowers who may dier both in their taste for immediate gratication and their prior beliefs about that taste the equilibrium contract to a borrower with given beliefs is discontinuous it features an advantageous option involving fast repayment and a penalty for deviating and repaying later these predictions seem to resemble some salient features of many credit card and mortgage contracts for fully sophisticated borrowers the discontinuity acts as a commitment device and yields fast repayment but all other borrowers even those with an arbitrarily small amount of naivete end up delaying repayment despite the penalty and receive little benet from commitment furthermore because they believe they will repay early they underestimate the cost of credit and hence borrow too much non sophisticated borrowers cross subsidize sophisticated borrowers while sophisticated borrowers discipline rms by preventing very exploitative contracts we identify natural conditions under which the above results obtain even if

empowerment effects across cultures three studies examined cross cultural variations in empowerment effects study 1 investigated whether hofstede s power distance scores moderated the effect of job autonomy on job satisfaction using world values survey data on 33 nations study 2 surveyed frontline hotel employees from canada and prc to investigate the moderating role of power distance at the individual level in study 3 hotel management students from canada and prc were asked to play the role of a frontline employee who had to handle a special customer request in a scenario experiment these studies show consistently that the cultural value of power distance moderates the effect of empowerment on job satisfaction moreover willingness to accept and exercise the discretionary power allowed by management and desire to satisfy customer needs and wants are two employee conditions that are essential for the successful implementation of the empowerment approach

adjusting to and learning from institutional diversity toward a capability building perspective this paper identifies two main dimensions institutional diversity and dynamism in the research stream that has substantively engaged with the important contribution of jackson and deeg j int bus stud 39 4 540 561 2008 taking into account their core criticism that institutional analysis in international business research is often de contextualized and building on these two dimensions we present two possible paths for institutional analysis that are sensitive to context the first is a methodological shift towards configurational analyses and specifically the analysis of counterfactual scenarios that could reveal new information about decision alternatives the second is a shift away from a focus on costs and towards the possibility of mnes building capabilities in an exploratory manner when confronted with institutional diversity both approaches build on an understanding of mnes as strategic actors that co evolve with their environments

a dual parent perspective on control and performance in international joint ventures lessons from a developing economy this study compares the control performance relationship for foreign versus local parents in international joint ventures in china transaction cost analysis is found more applicable to foreign than to chinese parents both overall and specific controls are associated with performance for foreign parents while only specific control is for chinese parents under goal incongruity chinese parent control is associated with foreign parent dissatisfaction with venture performance but not vice versa having a majority stake improves performance from a foreign parent perspective but not from that of the chinese parent

what do consumers really pay on their checking and credit card accounts explicit implicit and avoidable costs consumers in the united states make billions of transactions each year using cash checks debit cards and credit cards bank and credit card accounts provide consumers with liquidity to clear and settle these transactions in return consumers pay a variety of fees and both explicit and implicit interest charges the importance of retail banking and credit markets to economic activity drives interest in many open policy and research questions do households borrow too much relative to a neoclassical benchmark christopher d carroll 2001 why do many households leave a substantial amount of money on the table in managing their accounts sumit agarwal et al 2006 david gross and nicholas souleles 2002 do firms structure pricing to exploit consumer cognitive biases or limitations stefano dellavigna and ulrike malmendier 2004 xavier gabaix and david laibson 2006 how do learning sumit agarwal john driscoll and gabaix 2008 and disclosure regulation stango and zinman 2009b interact with consumer decision making and firm strategy to determine market outcomes this paper examines some threshold questions that should inform the questions above what do people really pay to use their bank and credit card accounts and which cost components are the largest of all the costs that people pay which could they easily avoid by making different day to day choices and how stable are both the level of costs and the share of costs that are avoidable for a given person over time what do consumers really pay on their checking and credit card accounts explicit implicit and avoidable costs

inventory management based on target oriented robust optimization we propose a target oriented robust optimization approach to solve a multiproduct multiperiod inventory management problem subject to ordering capacity constraints we assume the demand for each product in each period is characterized by an uncertainty set that depends only on a reference value and the bounds of the demand our goal is to find an ordering policy that maximizes the sizes of all the uncertainty sets such that all demand realizations from the sets will result in a total cost lower than a prespecified cost target we prove that a static decision rule is optimal for an approximate formulation of the problem which significantly reduces the computation burden by tuning the cost target the resultant policy can achieve a balance between the expected cost and the associated cost variance numerical experiments suggest that although only limited demand information is used the proposed approach performs comparably to traditional methods based on dynamic programming and stochastic programming mo