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

national and organizational culture differences and international joint venture performance this study examines the effect of dimensions of national and organizational culture differences on international joint venture ijv performance based on data from a survey of executives from joint ventures between indian partners and partners from other countries we found that the presumed negative effect from culture distance on ijv performance originates more from differences in organizational culture than from differences in national culture

highly skilled and well connected migrant inventors in cross border m as based on a relational view of international business we investigate the role of migrant inventors in cross border mergers and acquisitions undertaken by r d active firms we hypothesize that the migrant inventors international social networks can be leveraged by their employers in order to identify and or integrate relevant knowledge bases of acquisition targets in the inventors home country we nuance our hypothesis by means of several conditional logistic regressions on a large matched sample of deals and control cases the impact of migrant inventors increases with the distance between countries and for targets located in countries with weak administrative legal systems as well as when targets are either innovative or belong to high tech sectors or to the same sector as the acquirer and for full versus partial acquisitions

a cross national comparison of consumer research measures the impact of three factors that affect the psychometric rigor of cross national consumer research comparisons is measured in this study conclusions are also drawn about the interactions among these factors and the resultant deterioration in the psychometric quality of the data

a four nation study of thee relationship between marketing effectiveness corporate culture corporate values and market orientation the aim of this study was to establish the ways in which senior executives in four countries which shared a common language united kingdom united states australia and new zealand characterized both their firm s marketing effectiveness and corporate culture and beliefs results give support to those theorists who advance cultural specificity as the primary moderator of top managerial attitudes but also emphasise that the best predictor of marketing effectiveness is similar in all four nations the primacy of the importance of people and with quality

foreign entry cultural barriers and learning this paper examines the longevity of foreign entries hypotheses are developed on the mode start ups vs acquisitions and ownership structure wholly owned vs joint ventures in relation to cultural distance the hypotheses are tested within a framework of organizational learning using data on 225 entries that 13 dutch firms carried out from 1966 onwards results show that the presence of cultural barriers punctuates an organization s learning cultural distance is a prominent factor in foreign entry whenever this involves another firm requiring the firm to engage in double layered acculturation we also identify locational paths of learning the longevity of acquisitions is positively influenced by prior entries of the firm in the same country similarly the longevity of foreign entries in which the firm has a majority stake improves whenever the expanding firm engaged in prior entries in the same country and in other countries in the same cultural block

maximum likelihood estimation of the revenue function system with output specific technical efficiency in this paper we propose a non radial and output specific measure of technical efficiency which is new in a stochastic frontier model we consider a multi output multi input transformation function formulation that incorporates output specific technical efficiency oste in a revenue maximizing framework starting from the dual revenue function with oste we develop the maximum likelihood method to estimate the parameters of the translog revenue share system as well as predict oste components using some novel results from the closed skew normal distribution

influence of formalization on role stress organizational commitment and work alienation of salespersons a cross national comparative study organizations rely on formalization to coordinate the efforts of employees however this practice has been found to have a negative influence on role stress organizational commitment and work alienation of salespersons though the negative influence of formalization in the united states has been known for some time we still cannot predict if similar relationships would should be observed in other countries because the rationale developed to explain these relationships in the united states did not consider the cultural factors that influence them with such knowledge it would become possible to anticipate the nature of the relationship in different cultural environments such an approach to developing cross national models has been often suggested but seldom implemented by emphasizing the role of culture this study generates practical guidelines for both practitioners and theorists

a financial model of investment with an application to the paper industry the purpose of this study was to develop a model of investment behaviour in manufacturing industiries to discriminate the effect and that of the cost of capital starting from the neoclasical framework this model relaxed the assumption of contrast cost of capital and improved the description of effect of taxes it also replaced the traditional partial adjustments process by an improved model of expecttations the model was tested on the paper industry it explained well investment capacity and prices from 1964 83 and less well the financing of investments simualtions using the model showed that demand shifts were the most important determinants of investment in the paper industry

a cross national investigation of industrial salespeople s ethical perceptions this study examines ethical perceptions of industrial salespeople in the united states japan and south korea marketing ethics in general and selling ethics in particular have experienced increasing research attention many of the empirical studies have focused on ethical situations confronting marketing and sales practitioners despite the abundance of research in the general topic of marketing ethics as well as the globalization of competition in recent years a topic that has been virtually ignored is whether ethical perceptions of sales personnel are consistent across countries this paper reports a cross national comparison of business ethics of industrial salespeople across the three countries the findings indicate that nationality influences salespeople s beliefs about the ethics of selling practices and the need for company policies to guide those practices

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

developing successful trust based international exchange relationships trust is a central construct in relationship marketing yet the literature provides mixed empirical evidence on the trust performance linkage also there is limited research on how to build trusting international buyer seller relations we develop a comprehensive model integrating performance enhancing mechanisms and antecedent processes of trust in import export relationships our survey results from importers trading with overseas manufacturers suggest that existing levels of trust have a positive effect on relationship performance outcomes achieved 1 year later importantly trust takes on greater importance in enhancing performance under conditions of high interdependence whereas in circumstances of low interdependence trust has no discernible effect the findings also indicate that interfirm psychic distance internal uncertainty and exporter transaction specific assets and opportunism are related to importer trust implications for academics and practitioners are addressed

cross border venture capital investments the impact of foreignness on returns against the background of the growing internationalization of venture capital vc investing this is the first global comparison of the returns generated by individual domestic and cross border deals we examine investments worldwide during 1971 2009 and find that cross border investments significantly underperform compared with equivalent domestic investments returns are negatively affected by geographic distances cultural disparities and institutional differences between the home and host countries returns on cross border and domestic deals also decline after the late 1990s international portfolio diversification and the saturation of domestic markets may explain why vc investors make cross border investments despite poor expected returns

nationality and subsidiary ownership patterns in multinational corporations this paper examines the notion that the multinational s nationality influences its foreign subsidiary ownership decisions it identifies theoretically meaningful constructs to represent nationality and examines under carefully controlled conditions their influence on subsidiary ownership preferences in american and european multinationals the paper concludes that there are indeed significant differences in ownership preferences among various nationalities that can be explained using cultural as well as economic variables but that these differences may become weaker in larger multinationals

how does regional institutional complexity affect mne internationalization international business research is only beginning to develop theory and evidence highlighting the importance of supranational regional institutions to explain firm internationalization in this context we offer new theory and evidence regarding the effect of a region s institutional complexity on foreign direct investment decisions by multinational enterprises mnes we define a region s institutional complexity using two components regional institutional diversity and number of countries we explore the unique relationships of both components with mnes decisions to internationalize into countries within the region drawing on semiglobalization and regionalization research and institutional theory we posit an inverted u shaped relationship between a region s institutional diversity and mne internationalization extremely low or high regional institutional diversity has negative effects on internationalization but moderate diversity has a positive effect on internationalization larger numbers of countries within the region reduces mne internationalization in a linear fashion we find support for these predicted relationships in multilevel analyses of 698 japanese mnes operating in 49 countries within 9 regions regional institutional complexity is both a challenge and an opportunity for mnes seeking advantages through the aggregation and arbitrage of individual country factors

national culture and dividend policy this interdisciplinary study examines how national culture affects corporate dividend policies the dividend puzzle is one of the most studied yet unresolved issues in financial economics prior theoretical and empirical research has suggested several explanations of the dividend puzzle that are rooted mainly in agency asymmetric information bird in hand and pecking order theories the main intuition behind our analysis is that dividend policy may be determined not only by an objective assessment of the severity of agency and asymmetric information problems within a firm but also by management s and investors subjective perceptions of these problems which hinge on their national culture using schwartz s national culture dimensions conservatism and mastery we find that conservatism is positively related and mastery negatively related to dividend payouts for a sample of 27 462 firm years from 21 countries between 1995 and 2007 these effects are robust to controls for a wide variety of other determinants of dividend policy including investor protection stock market performance financial system configuration tax advantage economic development and dividend catering premium and to alternative culture proxies and sub period windows our findings that national culture affects perceptions of and responses to agency and information asymmetry have important implications for policymakers and multinational enterprises

the impact of culture on the strategy of multinational enterprises does national origin affect ownership decisions this paper tests the proposition that national origin affects the strategies of multinational enterprises by looking at the determinants of the choice they make between entering the united states through partially versus wholly owned subsidiaries we pool entries into the united states made by firms based in two countries japan and finland which differ both in their cultural characteristics and in their cultural distance to the united states after carefully controlling for the known firm and industry level determinants of subsidiary ownership strategies we find that cultural distance between the home base of the investor and the target country or perhaps political risk exerts a powerful influence on ownership of subsidiaries but cultural characteristics of the home base do not

theoretical justification of sampling choices in international marketing research key issues and guidelines for researchers sampling in the international environment needs to satisfy the same requirements as sampling in the domestic environment but there are additional issues to consider such as the need to balance within country representativeness with cross national comparability however most international marketing research studies fail to provide theoretical justification for their choice of sampling approach this is because research design theory and sampling theory have not been well integrated in the context of international research this paper seeks to fill the gap by developing a framework for determining a sampling approach in international studies the framework is based on an assessment of the way in which sampling affects the validity of research results and shows how different research objectives impact upon a the desired sampling method and b the desired sample characteristics the aim is to provide researchers with operational guidance in choosing a sampling approach that is theoretically appropriate to their particular research aims

cultural differences and cross border venture capital syndication we examine cross border syndication in investments led by foreign venture capitalists vcs focusing on the potential correlation between cultural differences and the formation of vc syndicates contrary to the risk sharing motive we find that a greater cultural disparity between the countries of investors and their companies is actually associated with smaller vc syndicates this is driven largely by lesser local investor representation in foreign vc led syndicates however certain cultural disparity related syndication strategies such as the involvement of locally experienced foreign vcs or syndicate members from culturally similar countries are associated with greater presence of local vcs who provide valuable monitoring services we further show that these culture linked syndication approaches are significantly correlated with vc financing and monitoring strategies in cross border investments and their eventual success

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

the impact of journals and authors on international business research a citational analysis of jibs articles in this paper we use citational analysis to examine the influence of individuals and disciplines on international business research we collected citational data over the ten year period 1984 to 1993 from every issue of the journal of international business studies we found that management economics marketing and finance disciplines have had significant influence on international business research and identified researchers such as dunning porter vernon casson rugman and hofstede as having made significant contributions to international business research

a typology of management studies involving culture as a methodological review this paper delineates 6 approaches to researching cross cultural management issues parochial ethnocentric polycentric comparative geocentric and synergistic for each approach assumptions are discussed concerning the similarity and difference across cultures and the extent to which management phenomena are or are not universal the primary types of management questions which can be addressed using each approach are clarified main methodological issues which must be addressed are listed

managing across borders an empirical test of the bartlett and ghoshal 1989 organizational typology this paper reports an empirical test of the bartlett and ghoshal 1989 organizational typology some 131 senior executives of corporations with worldwide operations classified their organizations as being multinational global international or transnational in nature and evaluated their organizations configuration of assets and capabilities role of overseas operations and development and diffusion of knowledge results provide partial support for the typology as expected transnational corporations were least frequently reported by the respondents the hypothesized practices associated with multinational and global organizations were more consistent with the typology s predictions relative to those of the international and transnational types

fifty years of methodological trends in jibs why future ib research needs more triangulation we analyze methodological trends in empirical research in jibs from 1970 2019 our results point to the prevalence of the following patterns there has been an increase in the use of 1 large scale longitudinal cross national datasets 2 complex analytical techniques including the incorporation of multiple analytical techniques within the same study but 3 a decline in the diversity of methods in use we relate these trends to the underlying social technical and communicative conventions in the journal during the 50 year period the observed patterns are consistent with theory that posits scientific fields entrench a dominant paradigm over time resulting in a restricted set of methodological options being selected such restrictions jeopardize the quality of research because the study of any phenomenon requires the use of multiple methodological procedures to avoid the systematic biases errors omissions and limitations introduced by any single option therefore we propose the use of triangulation as a strategy for building methodological alternatives into research designs institutionalization of this principle in the field of international business has the potential to enhance both the rigor and scope of inquiry of future research

national culture and life insurance consumption this cross disciplinary study examines the way national culture affects consumption patterns of life insurance across countries life insurance is a service that is abstract complex and focused on unsure future benefits because of the uncertainty and ambiguity inherent in the life insurance product consumers are more likely to respond according to their cultural prescriptions our research hypotheses are tested empirically using hofstede s cultural dimensions and data from 1976 2001 across 41 countries the findings show that individualism indeed has a significant positive effect on life insurance consumption whereas power distance and masculinity femininity have significant negative effects the results are robust even after controlling for economic institutional and demographic determinants

intercultural influence a study of japanese expatriate managers in canada this study explored the nature of intercultural influence by examining the influence strategies of japanese managers in canada with their canadian and japanese subordinates theories of inter group behavior and cultural differences were used to predict the influence strategies used by japanese managers with subordinates from their own and another culture there were significant differences in their strategies which were associated with the national culture of their subordinates japanese managers used significantly more influence with canadian than with japanese subordinates including strategies of assertiveness reason sanctions upward appeal and reciprocity the structure of japanese influence differed from that found in prior research we discuss the implications of these differences for managers influencing subordinates across cultures

methodological and theoretical issues and advancements in cross cultural research this paper summarizes the issues and concerns of critics of cross cultural research and discusses how they are being addressed by researchers given the state of the art and the complexity of this field of research the author recommends more inductive research and the pursuit of appropriate but not overambitious sampling designs so as to increase our understanding of cultures and encourage the building of richer theory bases taking an optimistic view of the field the author predicts useful contributions by researchers which will enrich the art and science of cross cultural management

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

state ownership effect on firms fdi ownership decisions under institutional pressure a study of chinese outward investing firms this study investigates the effect of state ownership on chinese firms foreign direct investment fdi ownership decisions it adopts a political perspective to extend the application of institutional theory in international business research specifically it examines firms heterogeneous responses to external institutional processes during foreign market entry while taking into consideration the political affiliation of firms with the external institutions we argue that state ownership creates the political affiliation of a firm with its home country government which increases the firm s resource dependence on home country institutions while at the same time influencing its image as perceived by host country institutional constituents such resource dependence and political perception increase firms tendency to conform to rather than resist isomorphic institutional pressures we tested our hypotheses using primary data for 132 fdi entries made by chinese firms during 2000 2006 and we found that the effects of home regulatory host regulatory and host normative pressures on a firm to choose a joint ownership structure were stronger when the share of equity held by state entities in the firm was high

national culture and expatriate deployment we hypothesize that expatriate deployment is a control function predicted by home country culture dimensions with transaction cost and agency repercussions rather than culture in the aggregate this departure from the traditional conceptualization and measurement of cultural impact also yields a hypothesized asymmetrical effect which is tested for a multi country sample of 236 multinational subsidiaries using multiple measures of national culture hypotheses are supported with assertiveness and power distance confirmed as prime predictors of expatriate deployment

corporate leaders in britain and america a cross national analysis this study tested for the extent of similarity between 1708 american senior vice presidents and those of 418 british counterparts the sample was drawn from the fortune 500 and the times 500 being representative of the top management teams of the largest national companies dominating domestic economies

academic and professional communities of discourse generating knowledge on transnational human resource management increasing global competition is changing the nature of knowledge needed for international human resource management this article assesses the publishing trends in international organizational behaviour and human resource management ob hrm and interprets their implications for conducting transnational business a review of over 28 000 articles in seventy three academic and professional journals identified three important trends in international ob hrm first the focus has shifted from single country and comparative research to studies on international interaction second culture s impact on managerial behaviour has become well recognized and third the community of discourse uniting academics and professionals leads in generating knowledge relevant to transnational firms the first two trends bode well for the relevance of international management research to practising managers the third trend delineates the domain in which the majority of rigorous and relevant research is published and therefore the domain in which knowledge is advancing most rapidly

enjoying the quiet life under deregulation evidence from adjusted lerner indices for u s banks abstract the quiet life hypothesis posits that firms with market power incur inefficiencies rather than reap monopolistic rents we propose a simple adjustment to lerner indices to account for the possibility of forgone rents to test this hypothesis for a large sample of u s commercial banks we find that adjusted lerner indices are significantly larger than conventional lerner indices and trending upward over time instrumental variable regressions reject the quiet life hypothesis for cost inefficiencies however lerner indices adjusted for profit inefficiencies reveal a quiet life among u s banks

cross national empirical generalization in business services buying behavior we examine cross national generalization of the relative importance of factors that affect supplier selection and level of usage for global business services providers tests indicate that the majority of the response coefficients for a model of foreign exchange markets are equal across the four countries studied u s canada u k and germany inter country differences in buyer response seem most related to competitiveness and identifiable country specific institutional factors

leadership behavior and organizational commitment a comparative study of american and indian salespersons many studies have examined the impact of leadership behaviors on salespersons organizational commitment unfortunately little is known about how leadership behaviors impact salespersons organizational commitment in countries other than the united states the lack of research is problematic given that many firms today operate globally this study fills the gap and presents a framework for understanding the role of culture on relationships between leadership behaviors and organizational commitment

the profit function system with output and input specific technical efficiency in a recent paper kumbhakar and lai 2016 proposed an output oriented non radial measure of technical inefficiency derived from the revenue function they proposed a closed skew normal distribution for maximum likelihood estimation but they did not apply the model to data and their technique depends on multiple evaluations of multivariate normal integrals for each observation which can be very costly in this paper we extend their approach to the profit function and we propose both input and output oriented non radial measures of technical inefficiencies although the extension to the translog profit function is trivial many observations in practice may contain negative profits for this reason we provide a nontrivial extension to the symmetric generalized mcfadden sgm profit function we propose and apply to a large sample of us banks bayesian analysis of the sgm model augmented with latent technical inefficiencies resulting in a highly nonlinear mixed effects model using the integrated nested laplace approximation

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

an examination of the psychometric properties of some commonly researched individual differences job and organizational variables in two cultures this study examines the transferability and applicability of selected measures of individual differences job and organizational climate factors across two cultures questionnaires were administered to a sample of 267 white collar bank employees in the u s and 307 bank employees in india the individual difference dimensions examined were four manifest needs sense of competence and locus of control the job factors included variety autonomy identity and feedback the organizational climate factors related to communication stress participation in decision making and self esteem from the workplace the data were analyzed for internal consistency dimensionality and criterion related validity the results showed that the job and organizational climate measures were more reliable and were related more consistently to the criterion measures than the individual difference measures both within and across cultures the results suggested that psychometrically sound measures may be transferable to other cultures

the stampede toward hofstede s framework avoiding the sample design pit in cross cultural research we propose a method to design better multi country samples for international business studies using hofstede s framework and aimed at determining the effects of national culture on various business phenomena we describe typical research scenarios then develop sets of algorithms that calculate indexes reflecting the power of different samples for hypotheses testing the indexes were computed from hofstede s data then rank ordered the top multi country samples are presented in tables for selection when designing studies

diagnosing measurement equivalence in cross national research many researchers have pointed out that it is necessary to ensure measurement equivalence in cross national comparative research three aspects of measurement equivalence translation metric and calibration equivalence are necessary to establish the cross national reliability and validity of items used to measure theoretical constructs this paper discusses these issues and proposes two recently developed empirical techniques multiple group lisrel and optimal scaling for use in diagnosing cross national measurement equivalence these techniques are illustrated by reanalysis of a pioneering u s and japanese study the two techniques yield convergent results indicating measurement equivalence for some but not all ordinal level items under consideration the findings demonstrate that the proposed methods are useful diagnostic tools for exploring measurement equivalence several suggestions for reducing the likelihood of problems with measurement equivalence and a number of methods for dealing with items where lack of equivalence persists are also discussed

bank capitalization and cost evidence of scale economies in risk management and signaling we amend the standard cost model to account for the role of financial capital in banking the cost function is conditioned on the level of capital but we model the demand for financial capital so that it can serve as a cushion against insolvency for potentially risk averse managers and as a signal of risk for less informed outsiders scale economies are then computed without assuming that the bank chooses a level of capitalization that minimizes cost we find evidence of substantial scale economies and that bank managers are risk averse and use the level of financial capital to signal the level of risk

the choice between mergers acquisitions and joint ventures the case of japanese investors in the united states this paper investigates the determinants of the choice between two alternative methods of pooling similar and complementary assets the merger acquisition and the greenfield equity joint venture two theories of the determinants of that choice are tested on a sample of japanese investments in the united states the results show that equity joint ventures are preferred over acquisitions when the desired assets are linked to nondesired assets because the u s firm owning them is large and not divisionalized when the japanese investor has little previous experience of the american market and hence seeks to avoid postmerger integration problems when the japanese investor and the u s partner manufacture the same product and when the industry entered is growing neither very rapidly nor very slowly

equity joint ventures and the theory of the multinational enterprise this paper extends the internalization approach to the theory of the multinational enterprise mne to include an expanded role for equity joint ventures using the transaction cost paradigm of williamson this paper explains why joint ventures may sometimes be preferred over wholly owned subsidiaries also presented is empirical work on joint venture performance in developing countries which demonstrates that under certain conditions joint ventures can be the optimal mode of foreign direct investment

a comparison of canadian and japanese cognitive styles implications for management interaction many american and canadian companies seeking to form joint ventures and alliances with japanese companies or to negotiate contracts with them have discovered that the interaction can be difficult and frustrating value differences and preferences for different management practices have been identified that contribute to these interaction problems however little research has investigated potential differences in cognitive style that might also contribute to intercultural conflict this study compares samples of canadian and japanese mba students using the myers briggs type inventory mbti and links the findings to interaction difficulties reported in the literature

the transaction costs theory of joint ventures an empirical study of japanese subsidiaries in the united states this paper offers the first large sample empirical study of the factors which influence the choice of japanese firms between full or partial ownership of their u s manufacturing subsidiaries it studies for the first time the ownership policies of investors of a single home country in a single host country thus keeping variations within home and host countries constant one methodological improvement over previous studies is the use as independent variables of the relevant characteristics of the investing firms these had been proxied in previous studies by data on u s industries entered the results suggest that the degree of ownership taken by japanese manufacturing investors in their american subsidiaries is driven by the same general transaction costs variables that determine the choices made by their u s counterparts japanese parents joint venture when they need to combine with other firms intermediate inputs which are subject to high market transaction costs an intriguing result however is the lack of significance of two variables which in the u s case strongly push towards full control of foreign subsidiaries in this study neither the japanese parent s r d nor its advertising intensities had any significant impact on their ownership policies

enjoying the quiet life under deregulation not quite summary most empirical studies in the banking literature assume that the alternative profit function is linearly homogeneous in input prices we show that such an assumption is theoretically unwarranted and that its use may yield misleading results we use koetter et al review of economics and statistics 2012 94 2 462 480 as a benchmark to showcase how empirical results can be sensitive to the linear homogeneity assumption contrary to koetter et al we find a positive relation between market power and profit efficiency when this assumption is dropped this relation is slightly weakened after the wave of intrastate and interstate deregulation but not enough to support the quiet life hypothesis copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

confirmation bias in individual level perceptions of psychic distance an experimental investigation in this article we draw from social cognition theory to explore the influence of confirmation bias on perceptions of psychic distance despite the prominence of psychic distance and other forms of distance as potential predictor variables in international business ib research very little work has been done exploring the factors and processes that shape a decision maker s perceptions of distance we argue in this article that social cognition theory can help fill that void specifically we hypothesize that confirmation bias may influence managers processing of information concerning differences between cultures such a bias may cause managers to attend more to information that confirms pre existing beliefs and discount information that contradicts pre existing beliefs thus biasing their perceptions of psychic distance using an experimental approach the impact of confirmation bias on perceptions of psychic distance is confirmed in a sample of 200 australian managers the observed changes in perceptions are also associated with changes in perceptions of risk and preferences for entry modes in a hypothetical business scenario as a result this article demonstrates how the application of social psychology theories and methods can provide new theoretical perspectives to explain when how and why individual level perceptions of psychic distance might diverge from national level averages

the role of expatriates in the management of interdependence complexity and risk in multinational corporations a multilevel analysis of environmental country and organizational affiliate factors is used to explain the differential utilization rates of u s nationals in overseas professional positions of a major u s bank with 84 branches in 43 countries the research suggests that to the extent that the affiliates of a multinational corporation operate in environments with differing levels of political risk cultural distance and competition and have operations with different levels of complexity and interdependence a single staffing policy may be inappropriate

greenfield vs acquisition the strategy of japanese investors in the united states multinational firms can enter a foreign market by taking over existing local firms acquisitions or by setting up new ventures greenfield investments surprisingly there has been limited empirical work on this topic this paper examines the determinants of this choice by looking at japanese entries into the united states by focusing on firms of one country entering a single market we are able to separate the impact of a firm s strategy from that of the characteristics of the target industry or country this paper tests simultaneously a number of competing hypotheses the results suggest that acquisitions are used by japanese investors with weak competitive advantages while investors with strong advantages find that greenfield investments are a more efficient way to transfer these advantages to the u s acquisitions are also chosen to enter industries with either very high or very low growth rates when entry is at a scale that is large relative to the parent and when entry is into a different industry the japanese investor s previous experience of the u s market its financial situation and its status as a follower in an oligopolistic industry have no statistically significant impact on the entry mode neither do u s stock market conditions

intrapreneurship construct refinement and cross cultural validation abstract intrapreneurship entrepreneurship within existing organizations has been of interest to scholars and practitioners for the past two decades intrapreneurship is viewed as being beneficial for revitalization and performance of corporations as well as for small and medium sized enterprises the concept has four distinct dimensions first the new business venturing dimension refers to pursuing and entering new businesses related to the firm s current products or markets second the innovativeness dimension refers to the creation of new products services and technologies third the self renewal dimension emphasizes the strategy reformulation reorganization and organizational change finally the proactiveness dimension reflects top management orientation in pursuing enhanced competitiveness and includes initiative and risk taking and competitive aggressiveness and boldness while differing somewhat in their emphasis activities and orientations the four dimensions pertain to the same concept of intrapreneurship because they are factors of schumpeterian innovation the building block of entrepreneurship the pursuit of creative or new solutions to challenges confronting the firm including the development or enhancement of old and new products and services markets administrative techniques and technologies for performing organizational functions e g production marketing sales and distribution as well as changes in strategy organizing and dealings with competitors are innovations in the broadest sense intrapreneurship theory and measures have an american basis while being considered universal their generalizability has been limited because their cross cultural testing has been extremely limited two main measures of intrapreneurship the entrescale and the corporate entrepreneurship scale were developed independently but lack validity for cross national comparisons and do not tap all four dimensions of intrapreneurship when used independently in order to fill the gaps in previous research these two scales are integrated into a four dimensional measure of intrapreneurship refinement and validation was done by using two samples from two distinct economies slovenia a small transition economy from central and eastern europe with a short entrepreneurship tradition and the united states a large developed and advanced economy that is a leader in entrepreneurship research and practice the refined multidimensional measure of intrapreneurship was developed to be cross culturally generalizable because its refined dimensions scales include only cross culturally comparable items the refined intrapreneurship construct measure showed reasonably good convergent and discriminant validity as well as good nomological validity in terms of expected positive relationships to its antecedents organizational and environmental characteristics and consequences growth and profitability across the two samples that included large medium sized and smaller firms from a variety of different industries manufacturing consumer and industrial goods consumer and business services trade and construction in addition to the generalizability of the refined intrapreneurship construct measure the results of this study support the notion that intrapreneurship is an important predictor of firm growth in terms of absolute growth growth in number of employees and in total sales and relative growth growth in market share in comparison to competition firms that nurture organizational structures and values conducive to intrapreneurial activities are more likely to grow than organizations that are low in such characteristics open and quality communication existence of formal controls intensive environmental scanning management support organizational support and values all help an organization become more intrapreneurial intrapreneurial organizations are those that engage in new business venturing are innovative continuously renew themselves and are proactive in transition economies which are adapting their economies to more developed economies standards of doing business and where growth may not yet be the primary goal intrapreneurship may be even more important for the growth and profitability of existing organizations

improving generalizations from multi country comparisons in international business research in this paper we address the problem of questionable generalizations from comparing small numbers of countries in international business ib research we illustrate the misleading results that can arise from sparse samples whether the relationship between national level variables is strong economic development and corruption or weak population density and trust we show that 35 of recent international comparisons in leading ib journals examined just two or three countries and present an exploratory analysis of 123 variables that reveals typical correlations across countries to be rather moderate average r 0 24 to help interpret extant study findings we provide formulas and graphs based on bayesian analysis and introduce a method of combining results from multiple international comparisons we also describe methods for designing studies to give stronger evidence of relationships between variables our results suggest that a minimum of 7 10 countries may support credible international generalizations but only when overall trends are very strong a key strategy for improving ib generalizations is to use larger samples of countries because research based on common sample and effect sizes may lead to generalizations that the findings do not justify

influence of role stress on industrial salespeople s work outcomes in the united states japan and korea role theory espouses and extensive empirical research has found that role stress can have deleterious effect on work outcomes of sales personnel the findings of these investigations however are predicated on u s based samples of salespeople whether similar results would be obtained with samples of salespersons in other countries has not yet been determined this paper reports the results of a study that examined the impact of role stress on performance job satisfaction and organizational commitment of industrial salespeople from the united states japan and korea tests of cross national hypotheses indicate general consistency in the findings across the three countries

when in rome the effects of cultural adaptation on intercultural business negotiations drawing on social identity and similarity attraction theories as well as empirical studies in intercultural communication hypotheses were developed to test the effects of three degrees of adaptive behaviors during intercultural buyer seller negotiations hypotheses covered both the positive and negative effects of adaptation on the adjudged interpersonal attractiveness of the adaptor these hypotheses were tested in two experimental studies using scenario based manipulations the first study looked at american subjects responses to adaptive behaviors of japanese business people to test the generalizability of these findings to a less familiar culture a replication looking at american subjects responses to adaptive behaviors of korean business people was also conducted the findings partially support the notion that moderate adaptation may be the optimal strategy in intercultural negotiations moderate adaptation was found to improve the adjudged attraction of the japanese business people relative to no adaptation and substantial adaptation however this finding was not replicated with korean business people

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

measurement issues in cross national research substantive inference from cross national studies have important implications for theory e g because they reveal insights into generalizability and boundary conditions and managerial practice e g because they offer guidelines to mnc managers however few empirical studies attend to measurement issues involved in cross national research and still fewer recognize the risk of inferential errors that are likely to occur by overlooking measurement issues we discuss four measurement issues namely 1 standardized versus unstandardized coefficients 2 the impact of measurement error and unequal reliability 3 the overall error rate and simultaneous analysis and 4 construct equivalence using illustrate examples we demonstrate the nature of each of these problems the likely impact they can have on substantive conclusions and approaches for tackling these problems additionally we reanalyze a recently published three nation study by dubinsky michaels kotabe lim and moon 1992 to clarify these measurement concerns highlight a methodological approach and delineate the extent and severity of inferential errors our reanalysis shows that the interactive effects of these measurement issues are pervasive complex and unpredictable we close with implications for cross national research in general

conceptualizing and measuring distance in international business research recurring questions and best practice guidelines distance is a central concept in international business research yet there is debate about the construct as well as its operationalization in this editorial we address three of the most important recurring questions posed by authors editors and reviewers by examining the theory methods and data of distance research we discuss 1 how to theorize on distance and 2 what method and 3 what data to use when constructing a distance index we develop practical recommendations grounded in theory illustrating and supporting them by calculating cross country distance indices for all available country pairs and two of the most used distance indices cultural and institutional we show that whereas a specific method to calculate distance may matter to some extent the choice for a specific cultural or institutional framework to measure cultural or institutional distance has a major impact on country pair distances overall this editorial highlights the importance of matching data and method to the theoretical argument

data equivalence in cross cultural international business research assessment and guidelines data equivalence refers to the extent to which the elements of a research design have the same meaning and can be applied in the same way in different cultural contexts failure to establish data equivalence in cross cultural studies may bias empirical results and theoretical inferences although several authors have encouraged researchers to ensure high levels of data equivalence no study has assessed the status of the field in relation to compliance with data equivalence standards accordingly this study examines three aspects of data equivalence construct equivalence measurement equivalence and data collection equivalence within 167 studies that involve cross cultural data published in the journal of international business studies management international review journal of world business strategic management journal and the academy of management journal from 1995 to 2005 the findings indicate that international business researchers report insufficient information in relation to data equivalence issues thus limiting confidence in the findings of many cross cultural studies to enhance future research a guideline for procedures for researchers to follow and report in establishing data equivalence is offered