international marketing policy a discussion of the standardization construct and its relevance for corporate policy a fundamental question in international marketing concerns the desirability and feasibility of standardizing marketing programs and procedures internationally the primary objective of this paper is to present an overview and evaluation of the standardization debate central issues of interest include a discussion of the standardization construct and an evaluation of the evidence regarding corporate implementation of standardization strategies

what has happened to union recognition in britain this paper examines the determinants of establishment level union recognition status using data from the three workplace industrial relations surveys of 1980 1984 and 1990 our theoretical approach argues that product and labour market variables dated at or around the establishment s setup should be considered the crucial determinants of recognition status confirmation of these predictions is found for private sector manufacturing establishments in the econometric analysis of particular interest are i the nonlinear relationship between historic industry quasi rents and recognition status and the stability of this aspect of the model over the three data sets and ii a marked downward shift in recognition probabilities that occurred during the 1980s which seems to be largely a consequence of the failure to organize new establishments set up in the 1980s

who is on linkedin self selection into professional online networks we analyze a large data set of fully employed individuals gathered through incentive compatible surveys to study who joins professional social network sites sns such as linkedin we test the conf

the effects of human resource management practices on productivity a study of steel finishing lines the authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies the productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices which include incentive pay teams flexible job assignments employment security and training achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach which includes narrow job definitions strict work rules and hourly pay with close supervision their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices

dairy tariff quota liberalization contrasting bilateral and most favored nation reform options we develop a highly disaggregated tariff line source differentiated partial equilibrium model of u s specialty cheese imports to investigate alternative reform options for tariffrate quotas a mixed complementarity framework is used to represent bilateral and multilateral tariff quota administration methods within the u s dairy industry the impact of liberalizing u s specialty cheese imports via bilateral and multilateral tariffrate quota expansions out of quota tariff cuts and simultaneous liberalization scenarios is evaluated we find that the path of liberalization is quite different depending on the reform approach undertaken the results have important policy implications in the agricultural negotiations

sources of intra industry wage dispersion how much do employers matter observed human capital explains less than half of wage variation in bls industry wage surveys establishment based wage differentials controlling for occupation account for 20 70 percent of intra industry wage variation this corresponds to a standard deviation in wages of 14 percent of the mean almost as large as interindustry wage variation investigation suggests that establishment wage differentials are not random variations or returns to usual measures of human capital

on the economic architecture of the workplace repercussions of social comparisons among heterogeneous workers we analyze the impact on a firm s profits and optimal wage rates and on the distribution of workers earnings when workers compare their earnings with those of coworkers we consider a low productivity worker who receives lower wage earnings than a high productivity worker when the low productivity worker derives dis utility not only from his own effort but also from comparing his earnings with those of the high productivity worker his response to the sensing of relative deprivation is to increase the optimal level of effort consequently the firm s profits are higher its wage rates remain unchanged and the distribution of earnings is compressed

language friction and partner selection in cross border r d alliance formation how does language friction affect alliance formation language friction is a form of cultural friction arising from structural differences in the respective languages used by potential partners to reason and solve problems together a little language friction may prompt partners to rethink solutions thereby enhancing collaboration but excessive friction may impede collaboration we develop a language friction index lfi to quantify relative differences in linguistic structure for any language pair utilizing a unique data set of semiconductor design activities 1988 2001 our empirical analysis finds an inverted u shaped relationship between partners lfi and the likelihood of cross border research and development rd 2 the effects of language friction are economically significant and strategically consequential 3 certain aspects of language friction occur independent of language proficiency and persist despite the use of lingua franca to reduce language barriers 4 linguistic diversity is an indirect marker of cognitive diversity which is useful in boosting creativity especially in first time collaborations 5 beyond r d alliances language friction may also influence other types of strategic interactions and organizational processes

standardization preferences a function of national culture work interdependence and local embeddedness both theoretical and empirical studies of professional service employee standardization preferences are relatively scarce using responses from 398 employees of an international public relations firm this study finds that employees from high power distance high uncertainty avoidance and high context cultures prefer greater standardization whereas employees from high individualism cultures prefer less standardization additionally work interdependence is positively associated with standardization preferences whereas local embeddedness is negatively associated with standardization preferences

the role of personality traits in pension decisions findings and policy recommendations many countries need to stimulate pension participation and contribution to ensure their citizens are prepared adequately for retirement identifying at risk groups with tendencies of not joining pe

the wage effects of high performance work organization in manufacturing an unresolved question about now widespread innovative work systems such as teams and quality programs is whether they influence wage determination this study examines that possible association in manufacturing the author uses data from the 1997 national establishment survey that allow examination of how new work systems affected not only employees who were directly involved in them but other workers as well the key finding is that for core blue collar manufacturing employees higher wages were associated with high performance work organization hpwo systems while higher skill levels and computer based technologies were associated with higher wages the key mechanism appears to have been productivity gains independent of skill and technology that were shared via various across the board wage payment systems hpwo systems appear to have increased managers wages as well although through different channels the author finds no evidence that hpwo related wage gains led to greater wage inequality amon

international managerial performance evaluation a five country comparison this study does not support the generally accepted theory that transnational corporations tncs use different criteria to evaluate managers based on their location host or home country if it is assumed that a major tnc strategy is to maximize profits thus maximizing returns to shareholders it follows that management decisions are made with this strategy as the desired outcome current theory does not address the more global view of the tnc where subsidiaries act in concert to maximize profits and therefore can be evaluated in a similar fashion there is some evidence however that specific performance evaluation criteria do vary in importance by country

interpreting societal culture value dimensions societal cultural value dimension scholarship can both learn from and inform the family of interrelated approaches to culture research in ib that appear in recent commentaries it can exchange insights about societal values and meaning systems with neo institutional and institutional logics research it can also exchange insights with dual processing cognition theories that are used to understand individuals in an international context by treating societal culture values and institutional characteristics as essential to interpreting personal values and attitudes rather than merging them integrating culture related specialties by exchanging insights can promote the further development of research in each of these societal and individual level fields

assets and actions firm specific factors in the internationalization of u s internet firms by providing a nearly instant connection among parties at opposite corners of the world and enabling a variety of commercial exchanges the internet emerged as the technology expected to create a truly global market space internet firms faced the challenge of capitalizing on this development in this paper we examine what firm specific factors are associated with the propensity of pure u s based internet firms to enhance their international presence on the internet by developing country specific websites despite the assertion that all internet firms are born global our findings show that the pursuit of internationalization by internet firms is related to the levels of their intangible assets and strategic activity two types of intangible assets reputation and website traffic are positively related to the degree of internationalization so are the levels of competitive and cooperative activity and the interaction effects between reputation and competitive and cooperative activity these findings suggest that ideas from both resource based theory and research on competitive dynamics can contribute to understanding the internationalization of internet firms

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

the intrinsic value of decision rights philosophers psychologists and economists have long argued that certain decision rights carry not only instrumental value but may also be valuable for their own sake the ideas of autonomy freedom and liberty derive their intuitive appeal at least partly from an assumed positive intrinsic value of decision rights providing clean evidence for the existence of this intrinsic value and measuring its size however is intricate here we develop a method capable of achieving these goals the data reveal that the large majority of our subjects intrinsically value decision rights beyond their instrumental benefit the intrinsic valuation of decision rights has potentially important consequences for corporate governance human resource management and optimal job design it may explain why managers value power why employees appreciate jobs with task discretion why individuals sort into self employment and why the reallocation of decision rights is often very difficult and cumbersome our method and results may also prove useful in developing an empirical revealed preference foundation for concepts such as freedom of choice and individual autonomy

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

explaining wage inequality in telecommunications services customer segmentation human resource practices and union decline this study examines factors related to within occupation wage inequality among service and sales workers in the telecommunications industry the author draws on a 1998 survey of a nationally representative sample of 354 service and sales centers in the industry to examine the importance of management practices and union institutions in shaping wage variation the results strongly indicate that business strategies of customer segmentation and human resource practices explain variation in wages over and above that explained by the human capital of the work force in addition despite extensive deregulation and de unionization of the industry the union wage premium is 22

cultural influences on managerial choice an empirical study of employee benefit plans in the united states the objective of this study is to determine the effect of culture on the provision of employee benefits cultural influences have been investigated from a variety of perspectives but not in the context of pension and welfare benefits using unique data this study analyzes the level of coverage of employee benefits in the united states results indicate that culture does have an effect on the provision of these benefits

spatial market policy modeling with goal targets in this paper we show how the theory of variational inequalities can be applied to the formulation qualitative analysis and computation of a new competitive spatial market model in the presence of goal targets the model allows the decision maker to impose supply goals at production locations demand goals at consumption locations and transportation goals between supply and demand locations along with associated penalties for failure to comply this work may be viewed as a contribution to the growing literature on the development of mathematical methodologies for policy modeling

a model of advertising standardization in multinational corporations although there have been several studies concerning the issue of advertising standardization few authors have proposed an integrated model of the determinants of advertising standardization even if the extent of control of multinational corporations mnc over their subsidiaries is often cited as a key element in the determination of the level of advertising standardization adopted by the mncs there is no consistent view concerning the role of this variable this paper attempts to clarify these points by proposing at the mnc level a measurement model and a structural model for the determinants of the degree of advertising standardization in this model the mediation effect of the mnc s degree of control over the subsidiary is tested and validated in addition the measurement instruments used for the determinants are confirmed

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

british unions in decline determinants of the 1980s fall in union recognition this examination of establishment level data from the workplace industrial relations surveys of 1980 1984 and 1990 shows that the proportion of british establishments that is workplaces in both the private and public sector that recognized unions for collective bargaining over pay and working conditions fell by almost 20 between 1980 and 1990 largely accountable for this decline was a much lower rate of union recognition in establishments founded in the 1980s than in previous years particularly in the private sector citing these findings as well as recent structural changes in employment in the british labor market such as the shift from manufacturing to services from manual to non manual employment and from full time to part time work and a government that continues to enact anti union legislation the authors foresee no reversal of unions decline in the 1990s

cross cultural examination of the fishbein behavioral intentions model most of the principal theories associated with consumer behavior have been developed and tested in the united states a question that has been posed by some consumer researchers concerns the applicability of these theories outside of the united states the study reported in this paper is a cross cultural examination of the applicability of the fishbein behavioral intentions model in korea and the united states korea can be characterized as a collectivist culture that is different from the individualist culture dominant in the united states the findings of the study suggest that the fishbein model can be employed to explain consumers behavioral intentions formation in a confucian culture as well as in the united states

explaining personality pay gaps in the uk using the british household panel survey we estimate the effect on pay of each of the big five personality traits for employed men living in the uk we add to the existing literature by estimating the role of factors such as education and occupation in explaining personality pay gaps by allowing the personality traits to affect wage differently across occupations education levels and other workers characteristics and by investigating personality pay gaps for high and low paid workers we find that openness to experience is the most relevant personality trait in explaining wages followed by neuroticism agreeableness extroversion and conscientiousness openness and extroversion are rewarded while agreeableness and neuroticism are penalized but the openness pay gap is totally explained by differences in worker characteristics particularly education and occupation

product and promotion adaptation in export ventures an empirical investigation while the desirability of marketing adaptation vs standardization has long been debated within both academic and business circles empirical studies investigating the conditions under which each strategy becomes appropriate have been rare this article provides a formal investigation of the correlates of product and promotion adaptation in export ventures a conceptual framework of product and promotion adaptation in export ventures is proposed to integrate the diverse perspectives on the issue of standardization versus adaptation the conceptual framework is further specified in a testable form and tested via data collected by a series of in depth personal interviews with export marketing managers the results support the contingency perspective recently emerging in the standardization literature and suggest that the degree of the various aspects of product adaptation i e upon and after entry and promotion adaptation i e positioning packaging labeling and promotional approach are significantly influenced by company product industry and export market characteristics however the profile of the correlates varies across the various aspects of product and promotion adaptation

sorting in the labor market do gregarious workers flock to interactive jobs this paper tests a central implication of the theory of equalizing differences that workers sort into jobs with different attributes based on their preferences we present evidence from four new time use data sets for the united states and france suggesting that workers who are more gregarious as revealed by their behavior when they are not working tend to be employed in jobs that involve more social interactions we also find that workers report substantially higher levels of job satisfaction and net affect while at work if their jobs entail frequent interactions with coworkers and other desirable working conditions

comparative marketing the first twenty five years this article reviews the field of comparative marketing in terms of scope types and depth of studies methodological issues conceptual and managerial payoffs and teaching approaches after its first quarter of a century as an international business topic comparative marketing is still relatively green

the sexual orientation wage gap the role of occupational sorting and human capital using data from the 2000 u s census the authors explore two alternative explanations for the sexual orientation wage gap occupational sorting and human capital differences they find that lesbian women earned more than heterosexual women irrespective of marital status while gay men earned less than their married heterosexual counterparts but more than their cohabitating heterosexual counterparts results of a oaxaca blinder decomposition indicate that the relative wage advantages observed for some groups of lesbians and gay men were mainly owing to greater levels of human capital accumulation particularly education while occupational sorting had little or no influence the relative wage penalties that were observed in other cases however cannot be attributed either to differences in occupational sorting or to human capital an analysis employing a dinardo fortin and lemieux decomposition which allows for variation in the wage gap at different points along the wage distribution broadly confir

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

the impact of psychological and human capital on wages historically economists have taken the position that psychological capital is either unobservable or immeasurable thus heretofore little evidence has been available on the contribution of psychological capital to wages using data drawn from two different waves of the national longitudinal survey of youth we offer evidence that psychological capital has both a direct effect via self esteem and an indirect effect through locus of control on an individual s real wage we find a person s wage is more sensitive to changes in self esteem than to comparable alterations in human capital both relative wages and human capital contribute to self esteem

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

decomposing changes in wage distributions a unified approach over the last fifteen years many researchers have attempted to explain the determinants and changes of wage inequality i propose a simple procedure to decompose changes in the distribution of wages or in other distributions into three factors changes in regression coefficients the distribution of covariates and residuals the procedure requires only estimating standard ols regressions augmented by a logit or probit model it can be extended by modelling residuals as a function of unmeasured skills and skill prices two empirical examples showing how the procedure works in practice are considered in the first example sources of differences in the wage distribution in alberta and british columbia are considered in the second sources of change in overall wage inequality in the united states 1973 99 are re examined finally the proposed procedure is compared with existing procedures jel classification j3 la decomposition des changements dans les distributions de salaires une approche unifee au cours des quinze dernieres annees nombre d etudes se sont penchees sur les determinants et les changements de la distribution des salaires ce memoire propose une procedure pour decomposer les changements de la distribution des salaires en trois elements les changements dans les coefficients de regression la distribution des regresseurs et les changements residuels cette procedure ne necessite que l estimation de regressions par moindre carres ordinaires et d un modele probit ou logit l auteur montre aussi comment modeliser les residus en fonction de competences non mesurees la procedure proposee est mise en application dans le contexte de deux exemples la distribution des salaires en alberta et en colombie britannique et les changements dans la distribution des salaires de 1973 a 1999 aux etats unis le memoire examine aussi comment cette procedure se compare aux methodes proposees par d autres chercheurs

national culture and corporate debt maturity abstract we investigate the influence of national culture on corporate debt maturity choice based on the framework of williamson we argue that culture located in social embeddedness level can shape contracting environments by serving as an informal constraint that affects human actors incentives and choices in market exchange we therefore expect national culture to be related to debt maturity structure after controlling for legal political financial and economic institutions using hofstede s four cultural dimensions uncertainty avoidance collectivism power distance and masculinity as proxies for culture and using a sample of 114 723 firm years from 40 countries over the 1991 2006 period we find robust evidence that firms located in countries with high uncertainty avoidance high collectivism high power distance and high masculinity tend to use more short term debt we interpret our results as consistent with the view that national culture helps explain cross country variations in the maturity structure of corporate debt

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

screening competition and job design economic origins of good jobs in recent decades many firms offered more discretion to their employees often increasing the productivity of effort but also leaving more opportunities for shirking these high performance work systems are difficult to understand in terms of standard moral hazard models we show experimentally that complementarities between high effort discretion rent sharing screening opportunities and competition are important driving forces behind these new forms of work organization we document in particular the endogenous emergence of two fundamentally distinct types of employment strategies employers either implement a control strategy which consists of low effort discretion and little or no rent sharing or they implement a trust strategy which stipulates high effort discretion and substantial rent sharing if employers cannot screen employees the control strategy prevails while the possibility of screening renders the trust strategy profitable the introduction of competition substantially fosters the trust strategy reduces market segmentation and leads to large welfare gains for both employers and employees

applicant screening and performance related outcomes a fundamental problem faced by employers is how to elicit effort from employees most economic models suggest that employers meet this challenge by monitoring employees carefully to prevent shirking but there is another option that relies on heterogeneity across employees and that is to screen job candidates to find workers with a stronger work ethic who require less monitoring we might therefore expect employers who screen candidates more intensively to monitor them less using data from a national sample of us employers we find that employers who screen applicants more intensively for factors that should predict work ethic also monitor employees less and also make greater use of systems such as teamwork where monitoring by supervisors is more difficult this screening is also associated with higher wages higher employee productivity and lower involuntary turnover rates screening for other attributes such as work experiences and academic performance does not produce these results jel codes m51 m54 j30

sensitivity analysis for the general spatial economic equilibrium problem we consider the general spatial economic equilibrium problem where the supplies and demands at each market for each commodity may depend on the price on this as well as other prices of other commodities at other markets and the transportation cost on each link for each commodity may depend on the flow on this as well as other flows of other commodities on other links in the network for this model we perform stability and sensitivity analysis assuming that the supply demand and transportation cost functions are monotone we first show that the multicommodity equilibrium price pattern depends continuously upon the market supply and demand functions and the multicommodity equilibrium shipment pattern depends continuously upon the transportation cost functions we then focus on the delicate question of predicting the direction of the change in the price and shipment pattern and the incurred supplies demands and transportation costs resulting from changes in the supply demand and transportation cost fu

unions collective relations laws and r d investment in emerging and developing countries abstract many scholars argue that workforce unionization leads to a reduction in r d investment because unions appropriate a share of the returns to successful inventive efforts on the other hand it is widely acknowledged that unions may encourage investment in r d because of increased cooperation between workers and management our empirical analysis on cross country firm level data from 23 emerging and developing countries reveals a negative association between workforce unionization and firms r d investment this association is particularly pronounced when unions are protected by strong collective relations laws supporting the notion that strong unions tax the returns to successful inventions our findings have implications for policy makers who seek to improve emerging countries chances of catching up to the technological frontier and for firm leaders concerned about the appropriation of returns to their r d investments

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

are family firms good employers family firms employ about 60 percent of the global workforce while it is widely assumed that they are good employers data about their conduct is mixed in this study we extend stewardship and agency theories to test competing propositions about the impact of family on employment practices using data from 14 961 private belgian firms over a 19 year period higher investments lower dividend payout and higher risk tolerance indicate that family firms are better financial stewards of their companies than nonfamily firms however family firms are worse organizational stewards than nonfamily firms they offer lower compensation invest less in employee training and exhibit higher voluntary turnover and lower labor productivity further and contrary to earlier research we find that financial practices in private family firms do not change over time and that the deleterious influence of family on employment practices rises with both firm age and with heightened family involvement together our findings suggest that a more nuanced understanding of stewardship and agency theory is needed to understand the impact of family on the governance of private firms

does a dollar get you a dollar s worth of merchandise the impact of power distance belief on price quality judgments the role of cultural factors in influencing price perceptions is not understood well in the literature the present research seeks to fill this gap by examining the link between power distance belief the acceptance and endorsement of power disparities in society and the tendency to use the price of a product to judge its quality the underlying processes and boundary conditions three studies show that consumers high vs low in power distance belief have a greater tendency to use price to judge quality because they have a greater need for structure which makes them more likely to discriminate between brands and rank them based on price the relationships held regardless of whether the price to quality relation was assessed using a standard self report scale or via actual product judgments and whether power distance belief was measured or manipulated the effect was found to be independent of self construal holistic thinking and risk aversion was mediated by a need for structure and disappeared when the tendency to order was facilitated impeded by making price more less salient theoretical implications are discussed

the hassle factor an explanation for managerial location shunning this study investigates the widely overlooked phenomenon of multinational enterprise mne location avoidance utilizing a multi method research design and data on 131 foreign investment locations it complements economic choice based location research by adding contextual dimensions at the country level that matter to managers personally and affect decisions at the firm level we provide a connection between international business research the behavioral stream in economic geography and the microfoundations stream in the strategic management literature the results suggest that in addition to traditional location choice criteria including investment potential internationalization strategy and various geographic and psychic distances foreign location decisions in mnes are influenced by how troublesome it is for managers to travel to or live in certain places an 11 item measure composed of travel inconveniences shows a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between foreign direct investment potential and investment intensity the effect is stronger for non resource seeking industries we call this phenomenon the hassle factor

high performance work practices and core employee wages evidence from italian manufacturing plants past research has provided mixed evidence on the relationship between high performance work practices hpwps and wages drawing from more than 1 800 interviews with the hr managers in a stratified

tariffs and quotas in world trade a unified variational inequality framework abstract in this paper we develop a unified variational inequality framework in the context of spatial price network equilibrium problems that captures world trade policies in the form of tariff rate quotas which are two tiered tariffs and that have been applied in practice to numerous commodities the spatial price network equilibrium model allows for multiple supply markets and multiple demand markets in different countries as well as multiple transportation routes the model is qualitatively analyzed and also related to models with trade policies such as ad valorem tariffs and strict quotas a case study on the dairy industry focusing on the united states and france is presented to illustrate the modeling and computational framework with impacts of stricter quotas higher over quota tariffs as well as additional transportation routes assessed the numerical examples reveal that although domestic producers can gain under tariff rate quotas consumers may experience higher prices given the relevance of tariffs to global trade in the world today and discussions concerning the impacts the framework constructed in this paper is especially timely

sourcing strategies of european and japanese multinationals a comparison based on a typology of sourcing strategies this study identifies various sourcing patterns adopted by european and japanese multinational manufacturing firms in serving the u s market the study has found that the product s market performance is not at all related to its life cycle stage in world trade or to production location but is positively related to the internal components sourcing and negatively related to the product adaptation the findings strongly support levitt s call for a global product

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

human resource management as a substitute for trade unions in british workplaces the authors use british workplace data for 1980 98 to examine whether increased human resource management hrm practices coincided with union decline consistent with the hypothesis that such practices act as a substitute for unionization two initial analyses show no important differences between union and non union sectors or between newer workplaces which are likelier to be non union and older ones in the pattern of hrm practices over time and the study s longitudinal analysis picks up no evidence of faster union decline in workplaces or industries that adopted hrm practices than in those that did not not only is the hypothesized substitution effect thus not supported but the authors even uncover some evidence of a complementarity between unions and hrm practices the authors conclude that increased use of hrm practices is probably not an important factor underpinning union decline in britain

personal selling elasticities a meta analysis abstract this article presents a meta analysis of prior econometric estimates of personal selling elasticity that is the ratio of the percentage change in an objective ratio scaled measure of sales output e g dollar or unit purchases to the corresponding percentage change in an objective ratio scaled measure of personal selling input e g dollar expenditures the authors conduct a meta analysis of 506 personal selling elasticity estimates drawn from analyses of 88 empirical data sets across 75 previous articles they find a mean estimate of current period personal selling elasticity of 34 they also find that elasticity estimates are higher for early life cycle stage offerings higher from studies set in europe than from those set in the united states and smaller in more recent years in addition elasticity estimates are affected significantly by analysts use of relative rather than absolute sales output measures by cross sectional rather than panel data by omission of promotions by lagge

does firm size matter anymore the new economy and firm size wage effects researchers have long known that large firms pay higher wages than small firms for workers with similar measured characteristics however an agreed upon explanation for this firm size wage effect fswe has not been reached recent changes in the economy provide new leverage for testing competing theories for the effect while questions about the existence and nature of the new economy provide new motivation for exploring this topic this study uses the 1988 2003 current population survey and finds that the fswe has declined by about one third over the study period examining the competing explanations for the fswe this study finds that while the sorting of workers by traits unions and industry factors all contribute to some portion of the effect in cross section they fail to explain why it has declined over time market power explanations also fail to find support shifts in organizational structures particularly a decline of internal labor markets appear to best fit the results these findings

personality and the gender wage gap in this study we investigate whether personality traits contribute towards a better understanding of the reasons for the gender wage gap we explore whether two of the personality factors put forward by bowles et al 2001 as likely to be incentive enhancing in the employer employee relationship can explain the difference in wages for women and men these are 1 personal self efficacy locus of control loc and 2 time preference we also study the role of the so called big five personality traits extraversion emotional stability agreeableness openness intellect and conscientiousness which have been associated with earnings in several recent studies using a sample of dutch employees we found that 11 5 of the observed gender wage gap could be ascribed to differences in the personality trait scores mainly in agreeableness and intellect while less than 0 5 could be ascribed to gender differences in the returns to the traits the addition of personality traits to a traditional human capital

national culture and the choice of exchange rate regime abstract based on the social analysis framework of williamson we argue that national culture especially the individualism collectivism dimension located in the social embeddedness level can guide behaviors and decisions in a country including the choice of exchange rate regime we argue that individualistic societies are more likely to choose floating regimes because their economic agents are independent overconfident and have higher levels of risk tolerance individualistic societies are also associated with better financial development fewer capital controls and more democratic institutions which are all tied to a higher probability of choosing a floating exchange rate regime we use data on 78 countries over the 1976 2014 period and we control for common determinants of exchange rate regimes we find that individualistic countries have a significantly higher probability of implementing a floating regime than a fixed regime our evidence is robust to using an instrumental variables approach an alternative estimation technique an alternative regime classification alternative proxies for culture a subsample analysis and additional controls we also find that other cultural dimensions uncertainty avoidance power distance and masculinity can influence the choice of exchange rate regime but their effect is weaker than that of individualism

patterns of convergence and divergence among industrialized nations 1960 1988 increased communication trade and travel between countries act to bring them together in many respects the present study examines similarities in macro environmental characteristics of eighteen industrialized nations over a twenty eight year period contrary to the initial research proposition countries were found to be diverging especially in the latter part of the time period in spite of the increased communications travel and trade between countries physical distance remains an important determinant of macro environmental similarity two measures of national culture power distance and individualism were found to be related to change in macro environmental factors

an investigation of gender differences in leadership across four countries this study investigates the emphasis males and females place on leadership behaviors and styles across four countries characterized as two cultural dyads norway sweden and australia u s previous gender comparisons and cross cultural studies of leadership are reviewed a framework for exploring leadership consisting of five leadership behaviors and six leadership styles is then presented and tested with questionnaire data from 209 managers across the four countries results demonstrate significant effects for gender and country but no interaction effects post hoc analyses suggest that across all four countries male emphasize the goal setting dimension while females emphasize the interaction facilitation dimension australians scored significantly differently than leaders in the other countries on interaction facilitation benevolent autocratic style and laissez faire style these findings are discussed in light of gender characteristics and cultural values

an assessment of trends in technology use innovative work practices and employees attitudes in europe several studies of innovative work practices show a positive link with firm performance and employees task involvement organizational commitment and citizenship behaviours one of the recent changes faced by firms is the introduction of information and communication technologies icts although several empirical studies analyse the links between ict use innovative work practices and firm performance employee level analyses are scarce using data from the european working condition survey ewcs this article investigates the relationships between use of the internet and computers and positive attitudes among employees social support job satisfaction extra effort in the european context our empirical results are based on data for more than 9500 employees from 16 european countries in 2005 and more than 14 000 in 2010 among the different effects of ict use based on the results for the 2005 2010 and the pooled 2005 2010 sample and in a within cohorts change analysis we find that internet use

determinants of non life insurance expenditure in developed and developing countries an empirical investigation the determinants of non life insurance expenditure in a panel data set covering 36 developed countries and 31 developing countries for the period 2000 2011 are analysed results of our instrumental variable analysis indicate that economic freedom income bank development urbanization culture and law systems are the key drivers of the non life insurance expenditure across countries however their impacts differ significantly between the groups of developed and developing countries suggesting that the heterogeneity among countries in terms of the level of development plays an important role the global financial crisis is also found to influence the direction of those effects especially in developed countries the article yields useful policy and economic implications for governments and multinational non life insurance companies with regard to the development of the non life insurance sector an important engine for economic growth and prosperity

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

interpreting wage gaps of disabled men the roles of productivity and of discrimination using the uk labour force survey we study wage gaps for disabled men after the introduction of the disability discrimination act we estimate wage gaps at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution and decompose them into a part explained by differences in workers and job characteristics a part that can be ascribed to health related reduced productivity and a residual part the large original wage gaps reduce substantially when we control for differences in education and occupation although significant residuals remain however when we isolate productivity differences between disabled and nondisabled workers the residual wage gap becomes insignificant in most cases

opening the box information technology work practices and wages using 1994 95 survey data on customer service representatives in 303 u s bank branches the authors investigate the effects on wages of information technology it of work practices and of those two factors in combination offline high involvement practices measured by the presence of quality circles were related positively to wages as was more extensive use of it that supports sales efforts where it was used more extensively to automate routine processes wages were lower in branches that did not have high involvement work practices the effects are partially explained by higher education requirements and more extensive introductory training in higher wage jobs

process standardization across intra and inter cultural relationships theory suggests that culture may hinder the ability to effectively standardize the process of relationship development strategies across intra and inter cultural relationships construct relationships between trust commitment conflict and satisfaction in manufacturer distributor relationships are examined intra i e within a single cultural type and inter culturally i e between different cultural types with a sample of distributors from canada chile mexico and the united states results support theoretical differences in the consequences of the trust commitment relationship between intra cultural and inter cultural relationships the results suggest process standardization based upon cultural type

environmentally sustainable innovation expected attributes in the purchase of green products in a capitalist economy the principles values and behaviors of a great part of the population are centered on buying things on having goods thus in order to achieve sustainable development emphasis should be given to the creation and the promotion of environmentally sustainable products in view of that the present study investigates consumers purchase decision process regarding environmentally sustainable products this study sought identifying what the green product and process expected attributes are in automobile and furniture purchases as well as what the expanded and reduced risks are in offers with these characteristics to reach these objectives a qualitative research was initially performed and subsequently a quantitative research was carried out with the aim to confirm the mapped data in summary the results obtained indicate as important green attributes for automobiles items such as economy engine and new technologies regarding furniture important green attributes design origin label and origin of the raw material were indicated as important furthermore it could be verified that the purchase of green products may increase performance and time risks and mitigate financial and social risks in short this study allowed for advances in the theoretical comprehension regarding green products and decision making processes with medium and high involvement levels however once external factors such as culture and ethnicity tend to influence buyers decision making processes and considering the fact that this study was executed in brazil distinct results may be found in other countries

how immigrants fare across the earnings distribution in australia and the united states this paper investigates determinants of the earnings distribution for native born workers and immigrant workers in two countries the authors using data from the 2000 u s census and 2001 australian census employ a methodology quantile regression that facilitates measurement of the native born immigrant earnings differential and the partial effect of explanatory variables such as schooling and experience at each decile of the earnings distribution they find evidence that schooling and labor market experience had stronger earnings effects at higher deciles the native immigrant earnings gap varied by decile and in particular increased in the united states at higher deciles the results suggest that in the united states minimum wages compressed earnings at low deciles whereas in australia the minimum administered wage system compressed earnings across the entire distribution a pattern of higher earnings for immigrants than for the native born at the lowest earnings decile in australia may reflect favorable selectivity in migration

incentive enhancing preferences personality behavior and earnings suppose there is a principal agent relationship between employer and employee in which effort is not contractible but is elicited through employer incentive mechanisms we term preferences that allow the employer to elicit effort at lower cost incentive enhancing we analyze how such preferences affect earnings nd then provide evidence that one of the relevant behavioral traits efficacy as well as other psychological aspects of individuals are significant influences on earnings we conclude that measures of cognitive performance are not sufficient indicators of the effectiveness of schools in promoting student labor market success incentive enhancing preferences are irreducibly heterogeneous incentive enhancing preferences help explain the persistence of poverty over generations within families and unlike cognitive skills incentive enhancing traits need not be welfare increasing for their bearers

national culture and financial systems countries differ in the way their financial activities are organized in anglo saxon countries such as the us and the uk financial systems are dominated by stock markets whereas in continental europe and japan banks play a predominant role why do countries differ in the configuration of their financial systems we argue that national culture plays a significant role we find that countries characterized by higher uncertainty avoidance are more likely to have a bank based system

unions work practices and wages under different institutional environments the case of canada and england using data collected in 2003 2004 in national telephone surveys of 750 canadian and 450 english workers the author finds that alternative work practices awps such as autonomous teams quality c

do high performance work practices exacerbate or mitigate the gender pay gap the impact of performance oriented work practices on the gender pay gap has been the subject of considerable conjecture but little empirical investigation using the 2004 and 2011 british workplace employment relations surveys the analysis finds that whilst average earnings are significantly higher for men and women across private sector workplaces that have introduced so called high performance work practices the presence of such practices is not associated with a narrowing of the gender pay gap and if anything tends to exacerbate the differential in earnings between men and women data from the 2004 survey suggest that women are more likely to work in high performance workplaces but this is not the case for 2011 there is no evidence that gender segregation is significantly less in high performance workplaces than in workplaces taking a more traditional route policy makers and employing organisations therefore need to be careful in reconciling their performance and equality strategies in particular they need to examine whether the former are truly gender neutral this requires additional measures possibly the introduction of human resource audits in the public and private sectors

is environmental innovation embedded within high performance organisational changes the role of human resource management and complementarity in green business strategies abstract this paper investigates whether firms joint implementation of organisational innovation and training may foster their adoption of environmental innovation ei and if this correlation falls within porter hypothesis ph framework we study the relationship of complementarity between strategies of high performance work practices hpwp and human resource management hrm when ei adoption is the firms objective using an original dataset on 555 italian industrial firms regarding ei hpwp and hrm coherent with the last cis2006 2008 survey results show that sector specificity matter the only case in which strict complementarity is observed in organisational change concerns co 2 abatement a relatively complex type of ei but this is true only when the sample is restricted to more polluting and regulated sectors this evidence is coherent with the porter hypothesis complementarity related adoption of ei is an element of organisational change in firms that are subject to more stringent environmental regulations nevertheless the fact that strict complementarity is not a diffuse factor behind the adoption of all environmental innovation indeed does not come as a surprise at this stage in the development of green strategies the share of eco firms is still limited even in advanced countries that are seeking tools for a new competitiveness the full integration of eis within the internal capabilities and firm s own assets is far from being reached even in advanced and competitive industrial settings

australian and japanese value stereotypes a two country study australians and japanese working in australian and japanese organizations in both countries were involved in a research project that estimated stereotypical views of national culture respondents rated the importance of cultural values in australia and japan using the list of values lov instrument the results of a discriminant analysis suggested that potentially detrimental misunderstandings about their respective cultures may exist between australians and japanese engaged in mutual international business

collectivism and corruption in bank lending this paper examines how national culture and collectivism in particular influences corruption in bank lending we hypothesize that interdependent self construal and particularist norms in collectivist countries lead to a higher level of lending corruption through their influence both on the interactions between bank officers and bank customers and on the dynamics among bank colleagues using a sample covering 3835 firms across 38 countries we find strong evidence that firms domiciled in collectivist countries perceive a higher level of lending corruption than firms domiciled in individualist countries in terms of economic magnitude the effect of collectivism is substantially larger than the effects of other cultural dimensions uncertainty avoidance masculinity and power distance and institutional factors identified in prior studies bank supervision bank competition information sharing and media monitoring we further find that the positive relationship between collectivism and lending corruption is not driven by endogeneity and that it is robust to different measures of bank corruption different measures of collectivism and different estimation methods finally we find that the link between collectivism and lending corruption cannot be explained by the role of the government in the economy political connections biased responses from disgruntled borrowers or relationship lending