holistic ethnography studying the impact of multiple national identities on post acquisition organizations ethnographic research in international business studies focuses mainly on small group case studies ignoring other genres of ethnography and limiting its role i argue based on a study of bmw mini that holistic ethnography allows multiple perspectives on the organization making it particularly useful for studying cross border acquisitions i analyze cross cultural relationships in the organization the interaction of manager and worker perspectives and the expression of national identities within the firm as its culture is negotiated allowing for greater understanding of the conflicts that in its managers view affected the integration of the acquired subsidiary

the making of a construct lessons from 30 years of the kogut and singh cultural distance index the 30 year anniversary of kogut and singh s 1988 groundbreaking study that introduced the concept of cultural distance and its accompanying measure provides the opportunity to take stock of what makes for a good construct we organize our discussion around the issues of concept algorithm and data to clarify and gauge their contribution before highlighting the impact of their work more generally many of the challenges raised by critical observers focus on one of these three dimensions as there is value in looking systematically at the construct from concept to data we set out the argument of the index and discuss the validity of selected lines of criticism we identify a number of emergent and future directions for the conceptualization and measurement of cultural distance to facilitate the continuing advancement of work on international business

optimal electricity market for wind power abstract this paper is about electricity market operation when looking from the wind power producers point of view the focus in on market time horizons how many hours there is between the closing and delivering the bids the case is for the nordic countries the nordpool electricity market and the danish wind power production real data from year 2001 was used to study the benefits of a more flexible market to wind power producer as a result of reduced regulating market costs from better hourly predictions to the market wind power producer would gain up to 8 more if the time between market bids and delivery was shortened from the day ahead elspot market hourly bids by noon for 12 36 h ahead an after sales market where surplus or deficit production could be traded 2 h before delivery could benefit the producer almost as much gaining 7

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

developing acquired foreign subsidiaries the experience of mnes in transition economies drawing on subsidiary evolution and dynamic capabilities research i test how development and growth of subsidiaries recently acquired in transition economies are affected by multinational enterprise mne and target capabilities these subsidiaries often lack important resources their cross border transfer enhancement and exploitation are problematic however data on 170 acquisitions in central and eastern europe confirmed the importance of the pre acquisition experiences of both target and mne for subsidiary growth although cultural differences moderated the predicted effects notably

hydropower water and renewable energy in turkey sources and policy abstract turkey s energy consumption has been growing much faster than its production it forces turkey to make a rapid action to supply energy demand from the viewpoint of primary energy sources petroleum and natural gas turkey is not a rich country but it has an abundant hydropower potential to be used for generation of electricity hydropower is the most important kind of renewable sustainable energy and a proven technology for electricity generation the aim of this paper is to discuss sources and policy of hydropower water and renewable energy in turkey and compares the hydropower application with europe

mars venus marriages culture and cross border m a using a sample of over 800 cross border acquisitions during 1991 2004 we find that contrary to general perception cross border acquisitions perform better in the long run if the acquirer and the target come from countries that are culturally more disparate we use mainly the hofstede measure of cultural dimensions to measure cultural distance but also examine alternative proxies the positive relationship of performance to cultural distance persists after controlling for several deal specific variables and country level fixed effects and is robust to alternative specifications of long term performance cash and friendly acquisitions tend to perform better in the long run there is also some evidence of synergies when acquirers are from stronger economies relative to the targets

towards a more balanced treatment of culture in international business studies the need for positive cross cultural scholarship the results of a content analysis of 1141 articles published in the journal of international business studies over a 24 year time period 1989 2012 reveal that a pervasive tendency exists in the international business ib literature towards emphasizing the adverse outcomes associated with cultural differences more than the positive effects we argue that this imbalance is not an accurate reflection of the reality of cross cultural contact in ib and that it has hindered our understanding of the processes and conditions that help organizations leverage the benefits of cultural differences in a wide range of contexts we offer several explanations for the predominance of the negative over the positive in theory and research on culture in ib and using a positive organizational scholarship lens couched in the context of march s 1991 exploration vs exploitation organizational learning framework highlight a complementary perspective namely the idea that cultural differences can be an asset not just a liability in a range of ib contexts we conclude by offering an integrative framework within which both positive and negative effects of cultural differences can be understood and provide a road map for future research on culture in ib

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

is everything neutral in his well known analysis of the national debt robert barro introduced the notion of a dynastic family this notion has since become a standard research tool particularly in the areas of public finance and macroeconomics in this paper we critique the assumptions on which the dynastic model is predicated and argue that this framework is not a suitable abstraction in contexts in which the objective is to analyze the effects of public policies we reach this conclusion by formally considering a world in which each generation consists of a large number of distinct individuals as opposed to one representative individual we point out that family linkages form complex networks in which each individual may belong to many dynastic groupings the resulting proliferation of linkages between families gives rise to a host of neutrality results including the irrelevance of all public redistributions distortionary taxes and prices since these results are not at all descriptive of the real world we conclude

closing knowledge gaps in foreign markets knowledge and learning are ascribed pivotal roles in firms internationalization processes perceived market uncertainties namely knowledge gaps related to business environments in foreign markets may curb firms inclinations to commit resources to these markets this study explores whether knowledge gaps tend to increase or decrease with time when operating in the foreign market and it discusses which learning components narrow or widen the perceived knowledge gap a theoretical model is developed based on the internationalization process view and the more recent organizational learning perspective including such concepts as overconfidence and absorptive capacity the theoretical model is tested on a set of primary data covering danish and swedish firms and their foreign market operations the results suggest a more subtle relationship between experience and perceived knowledge gaps than the mechanical relationship portrayed by the internationalization process view a relationship in which absorptive capacity and in particular overconfidence play important roles

what goes around comes around effects of offshore outsourcing on the export performance of firms we examine the effect of offshore outsourcing on the export performance of firms building on the theories of international business the resource based view and transaction cost economics we argue that offshore outsourcing helps firms directly or indirectly to export more it may reduce their production costs and enhance their flexibility it may also provide them with new resources and market knowledge however the impact of offshore outsourcing depends on the resources and capabilities of firms to manage a network of foreign suppliers and to absorb foreign knowledge using a database of around 2000 manufacturing mnes in france in 1999 we find that offshore outsourcing increases export performance the effects being stronger in the export markets where firms import intermediate goods we also show that the firm size the organization of intra firm imports and the export experience moderate the effects of offshore outsourcing positively these findings have implications for firms and policymakers journal of international business studies 2011 42 334 344 doi 10 1057 jibs 2010 26

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

returns to education a further international update and implications this paper updates evidence on the returns to investment in education by adding estimates for new countries and refining existing estimates to bring the total number of country cases to over 60 the new cross country evidence confirms and reinforces earlier patterns namely that returns are highest for primary education the general curricula the education of women and countries with the lowest per capita income the findings have important implications for directing future investment in education which for efficiency and equity purposes should concentrate on these priority areas

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

a new approach to data access and research transparency dart recent debates on transparency and replicability suggest that jibs needs to update its approach on data access and research transparency dart we propose a series of initiatives knowing well that there is a balance to be struck there are clear benefits on the one hand chief among these the potential for learning and knowledge accumulation and equally manifest challenges on the other the imperative to respect privacy confidentiality and intellectual property rights without addressing these challenges will there be the high quality data on which the benefits depend we present access and transparency objectives and set out how an actionable and effective approach towards dart will be implemented but also address ethical legal and organizational challenges of concern to us as a scholarly community

the contribution of renewable resources in meeting turkey s energy related challenges abstract the aim of this paper is to point out the importance of renewable energy as a key way for resolving the turkey s energy related challenges as a consequence of economic and social development turkey s energy consumption has risen dramatically over the past three decades at present fossil fuels account for more than 90 of the total energy consumption in the country turkey has no large oil and natural gas reserves and it import nearly all of these fossil fuels turkey s current energy mix is not likely to support development of sustainable energy the energy mix shows a relatively small contribution from renewable energy sources in the country they have the potential to make a large contribution to turkey s sustainable and independent energy future in particular they can help to reach the environmental goals of turkey and to increase the security of energy supply by reducing the dependence on imported fuel supplies

availibility of renewable energy sources in turkey current situation potential government policies and the eu perspective abstract this study aims to explore the availability and potential of renewable energy sources in turkey as well as assessing related government policies financial and environmental aspects of renewable energy projects turkey is a country which has the highest hydropower wind and geothermal energy potential among european countries as a european union eu candidate several incentives were developed in turkey for electricity generation from renewable energy sources by the enactment of law no 5346 in 2005 which was later restructured by law no 6094 in 2010 the most important ones are ease of land acquisition and feed in tariffs which promise purchasing of electricity generated and domestic manufacturing of equipment by the private companies with a price of 5 30 9 69 and 0 3 2 55 c kwh respectively depending on the type of the renewable and the equipment however feed in tariff amounts take reservoir area into account instead of installed capacity for hydroelectric power plants moreover environmental impact assessment eia report is not mandatory for all renewable energy plants according to the multi criteria analysis tool developed in this study to evaluate the renewable energy source res technologies the most appropriate renewable energy alternative for turkey is biomass simply because of the highest social benefit among others

foreign direct investments fdis in turkish power sector a discussion on investments opportunities and risks abstract power sector is important for managing the transition towards sustainable and cleaner energy systems and foreign investments can contribute to overcome the problems encountered in the process despite the vast literature on foreign direct investments fdi in other sectors studies on the power sector have been limited to either developed economies or major developing economies such as china or india therefore this study aims to discuss turkish case by using panel data analysis for 2002 2012 period results have shown that the major drivers of fdi inflows in turkish power sector were privatization and low real effective exchange rate during the period in addition turkey has the potential and opportunities to attract more investments with the recent reforms and increasing incentives for renewable energy technologies however business environment and the quality of institutions may create obstacles for realizing its potential moreover fiscal incentives and macroeconomic stability are important to sustain investments and economic and institutional reforms notably the eu integration process are important for fdi inflows

overview of the photovoltaic technology status and perspective in turkey abstract the republic of turkey located in southeastern europe and southwestern asia that portion of turkey west of the bosporus is geographically part of europe nowadays turkey with its young population and growing energy demand per person its fast growing urbanization and its economic development has been one of the fast growing electrical energy markets of the world for the last two decades unfortunately turkey s energy is largely dependent on foreign countries and the country s energy is imported spending billions of dollars each year on the other hand the effects on global and environmental air quality of pollutants released into the atmosphere from fossil fuels in electric power plants provide strong arguments for the development of renewable energy resources solar energy is one of the best available among renewable energy sources there are possess many advantages of solar energy such as relativity viability silent non polluting little maintenance suitable for remote site application not require any fuel and independent from electricity network turkey has advanced a great deal in the generation of electricity from solar energy because of much higher solar energy potential than lots of developed countries on solar energy applications this study is taken into account that overview of the photovoltaic technology status and perspective in turkey and the contains of photovoltaic power systems utilization and potential status in the world energy consumption and demand in turkey geographic description of the solar energy in turkey pv industry current and potential status in turkey solar energy legislation framework in turkey r d status of photovoltaic industry in turkey future strategy of pv industry in turkey current and future status photovoltaic power systems economics in the world also this paper on the basis of this subjects is analyzed the swot of turkey s photovoltaic industry its advantages weaknesses opportunities and threats

cross border acquisition abandonment and completion the effect of institutional differences and organizational learning in the international business service industry 1981 2001 based on the concepts of north s 1990 political economy of national institutions and economic behavior we investigate how formal and informal institutional features influence the likelihood that a cross border acquisition deal will be completed as well as the time taken for its completion after announcement additionally we study how past experience with completed acquisition deals moderates the effects of institutional differences we focus on a relatively new context the pre completion stage of acquisition processes we test our hypotheses using data from 2389 announced cross border acquisition deals in the international business service industry 1981 2001 we find that differences in national formal and informal institutions explain part of the variation in the likelihood that an announced cross border acquisition deal will be completed as well as the duration of the deal making in addition organizational learning moderates the effects of institutional distance past experience with completed cross border acquisition deals increases the likelihood of a subsequent deal completion in institutionally closer environments but shortens the deal duration in institutionally distant environments

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

widening the lens rethinking distance diversity and foreignness in international business research through positive organizational scholarship the point of departure for the special issue is that current theory and research in international business ib may have overly emphasized a negative view on foreignness distance and differences of all kinds national cultural organizational and institutional with an emphasis on liabilities and adverse outcomes associated with such differences while existing research is certainly valuable we argue that focusing on mostly negative processes and outcomes has hindered our understanding of the dynamics processes and conditions that enable organizations to benefit from diversity in a wide range of ib contexts the goal of this special issue is to promote research that is in line with a positive organizational scholarship perspective which encourages scholars to look at commonly considered phenomena in new ways as well as to explicitly consider positive phenomena in ib research we then introduce the three articles included in the special issue and highlight how they help ib scholars better understand when and how foreignness distance and diversity can enhance organizational effectiveness and performance at multiple levels

the measurement of saving investment and wealth there is probably no concept other than saving for which u s official agencies issue annual estimates that differ by more than a third as they have done for net household saving or for which reputable scholars claim that the correct measure is close to ten times the officially published one yet despite agreement among economists and policymakers on the importance of this measure huge inconsistencies persist contributors to this volume investigate ways to improve aggregate and sectoral saving and investment estimates and analyze microdata from recent household wealth surveys they provide analyses of national income and product account nipa and flow of funds measures and of saving and survey based wealth estimates conceptual and methodological questions are discussed regarding long term trends in the u s wealth inequality age wealth profiles pensions and wealth distribution and biases in inferences about life cycle changes in saving and wealth some new assessments are offered for investment in human and nonhuman capital the government contribution to national wealth nipa personal and corporate saving and banking imputation

merging without alienating interventions promoting cross cultural organizational integration and their limitations foreign direct investment particularly cross border mergers and acquisitions can spawn a range of individual level outcomes from cross cultural adjustment and synergistic learning on the positive side to work alienation on the negative unsuccessful navigation of these individual level outcomes leads to failed integration that can seriously affect the realization of desired organizational outcomes such as successful technology transfer knowledge sharing and the general realization of global growth by means of an iterative between methods triangulation the study surfaces cross cultural work alienation as a phenomenon that can limit the overall success of such ventures and identifies interventions that help to promote successful post merger integration

estimating a household production function heterogeneity the demand for health inputs and their effects on birth weight the household production literature emphasizes that technical or biological processes condition input selection by households in their production activities along with prices and income exogenous variations in health to the extent that they are perceived by individuals heterogeneity lead to correlations between inputs and health outcomes that cannot be used to derive causal conclusions therefore estimates of health technology must be obtained from a behavioral model in which health inputs are themselves choices consistent estimates are reported of the effect of endogenous inputs such as medical care smoking and fertility on birth weight and fetal growth in the presence of health heterogeneity

mitigating risk in international mergers and acquisitions the role of contingent payouts previous internationalization studies have focused on the entry modes employed by multinational firms but have not considered the contractual heterogeneity that underlies each mode it is important to examine these contractual details as the firm may be able to obtain some of the benefits typically associated with one entry mode while selecting another in the case of international mergers and acquisitions m as a key contractual variable is whether the parties agree to a performance contingent payout structure which can mitigate the risk of adverse selection in this paper we examine the antecedents of contingent payouts in the form of earnouts and stock payments the results indicate that firms lacking international and domestic acquisition experience turn to contingent payouts when purchasing targets in high tech and service industries firms tend to avoid contingent payouts in host countries with problems with investor protection and legal enforceability

risks and rewards gary becker s contributions to economics gary becker is one of the most original and influential economists of our age his originality lies in extending the frontiers of economics and broadening the range of important social science problems that are amenable to economic analysis he has gone against the grain of establishment thinking in the economics profession invariably choosing to work on problems that were considered beyond the boundaries of modem economics yet this work made close contact with many of the great economists of the past and many of the concepts he invented and developed are now widely if not routinely used in modem economics several of the approaches to problems he pioneered have evolved into fields and specialities in their own right that becker has had an immense intellectual impact and influence in the economics profession is supported empirically by the voluminous citations to his work over the years and in other ways obviously citation counts have well known difficulties and cannot prove anything by themselves but if used in conjunction with more fundamental evidence they do have the virtue of being quantifiable marshall medoff s 1989 1 recent citation study is one of the best available because citations are weighted by the importance of the journals in which articles appear among non nobel prize economists working in u s universities under 65 years of age becker ranks first in total citations over the 1971 85 period to which medoff s study refers and he is first by a very wide margin though the study is limited to economists in the united states it is clear that becker would rank at or very close to the top of any worldwide list furthermore becker s work is virtually all substantive economic analysis hardly any of it is devoted to the development of methodological tools or to surveys both of which gamer citations more easily and many concepts

a discussion on recent developments in turkey s emerging solar power market abstract market reform energy security and environmental protection are three primary energy policy goals of turkish government although turkey s abundant solar energy resources can directly address the government s energy policy goals turkey has not utilized solar power yet utilization of country s huge solar energy potential would decrease dependence on imported fossil fuels and contribute to fulfill environmental commitments however lack of regulatory and financial support for the development of solar power has considerably delayed the utilization of country s huge solar potential the government has taken only modest steps to promote investment in solar power until the end of 2010 when a new feed in tariff policy was adapted turkey s solar energy potential pv technology status and prospect for concentrating solar power in turkey have been explored in a number of studies yet literature dealing with recent policy developments associated investment environment and opportunities for solar power investors are limited the aim of this paper is to set out the latest legal framework for investment in turkey s emerging solar power market and to provide some guidelines to potential investors who appreciated country s huge solar energy potential

cultural differences and capability transfer in cross border acquisitions the mediating roles of capability complementarity absorptive capacity and social integration this paper presents an integrative model of the impact of cultural differences on capability transfer in cross border acquisitions we propose that cultural differences affect the post acquisition capability transfer through their impact on social integration potential absorptive capacity and capability complementarity two dynamic variables the use of social integration mechanisms and the degree of operational integration of the acquired unit are proposed to moderate the effects of cultural differences on social integration and potential absorptive capacity the implications for acquisition research and practice are discussed