Global managers’ perceptions of cultural competence

To work effectively in the global business arena, managers need a strong set of intercultural management skills. When dealing with clients, co-workers, and other stakeholders at home or abroad, managers with cross-cultural competence have a distinct competitive advantage in the multicultural marketplace. Although generally accepted as a valuable asset for doing business, cross-cultural competence defies easy definition. This study attempts to conceptualize the complex term from the practitioner's point of view. What does cross-cultural competence mean to global managers? From their perspective, which aspects of culture do business people need to understand? From the universe of cultural beliefs, values, attitudes, and country-specific information, what should an executive, with limited time, focus on to develop a basic level of cultural competence? This study asked Mexican managers what they needed to know about culture to do business with the U.S. In the process, they consistently identified certain basic components of cultural competence. Responses were surprisingly similar among the managers, indicating they had a clear picture of which cultural essentials were most important for global executives to learn. The results of the study reveal a working definition of cultural competence for global managers. This research also provides trainers and business educators a content framework for a short-term training program, based on the global managers’ perceptions of cross-cultural competence.     

Undergraduate Education: The Implications of Cross-Functional,Relationships in Business Marketing–The Skills of High-Performing Managers

ABSTRACT

Like other specialty areas in the business school curriculum, marketing management classes emphasize an analytical perspective and provide students with a valuable set of strategy tools, but fail to come to grips with other facets of the managerial work of marketing-namely, the relational skills that are required for managing across functions, reconciling diverse interests, and creating integrated strategies and customer solutions. By serving as an advocate for the customer at various levels of the organizational hierarchy and across functions, the business marketer must initiate, develop, nurture, and sustain a rich network of relationships with multiple constituencies within the firm and within customer organizations. To effectively perform this challenging interdisciplinary role, a unique set of relationship management skills are required. This article explores the collaborative skills that high-performing managers have mastered and examines the resulting implications for the business marketing course. Recent research is examined that reveals the characteristics of reputationally effective managers, isolates the factors that define effective cross-functional exchange episodes, and details the specific behavior that top-performing account managers employ. By exploring the relational competencies that are instrumental to the work of marketing managers, the business marketing course can fill an important gap in the marketing curriculum.     

U.s. Multinational staffing practices and implications for subsidiary performance in the u.k. And thailand

This study addresses two questions about the U.K. and Thai subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals: (1) What is the relationship between a company's staffing policy and subsidiary performance? and (2) When are companies more likely to use an expatriate rather than a local manager? The study concludes that local managers are most effective in subsidiaries located in a developing country, subsidiaries that rely on a local customer base, and subsidiaries with marketing themes similar to the themes used at their U.S. headquarters. Expatriates are more likely to be in charge of larger subsidiaries and those with a marketing theme similar to that of the headquarters. ? 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Emotion As Well As Reason: Getting Students Beyond "Interpersonal Accountability"

The paper notes the recent spread of business ethics courses in American higher education, observing that teachers trained in economics have not readily incorporated ethical notions or theory into regular courses, such as finance, management, accounting, and marketing. The presumed ethically neutral, value-free approach of economists, who dominate business courses, is increasingly inadequate to meet the needs of business managers – or of business students. Technological and political changes, creating an interdependent environment within which managers operate, have eroded older ethics based on tradition and common backgrounds. They have also raised ethical issues of new orders of complexity. With corporate business managers finding ethical concerns more pressing matters than do many teachers, the paper offers some tentative answers to three questions about how to interest business students in ethical issues: What Approach to Business Ethics Gets student's Attention? What Is the Value of Simulations and Games? What Can Be Said About the Business System And Its Values? The answer to the first question is simulations and games. Case method analysis is serviceable, engaging students' intellect, but all too often without emotional involvement or self-revelation. Experiential learning through class-room games accomplish both engagement and involvement in ways that are exceedingly helpful to business students, who have had "less occasion for critical reflection on self and world than have others of their age." The answer to the second question is: They engage the whole student, stimulating the player to examine the source of her ethical strengths and the reasons for ethical lapses. Generating emotional involvement the games leverage and enhance reasoning, allowing students to learn more about their own values and question their own behavior. The answer to the third question is: A socially justifiable (community-legitimated) competitive market system requires of its managerial participants an emotionally informed response – as well as a rational analysis and use of business techniques. Business operates with enhanced effectiveness efficiency at appropriate levels of such virtues as loyalty, trustworthiness and cooperativeness; they ensure externality benefits as well as promote justice for its own ultimate social justification.     

The business of ethics and the ethics of business

This is an essay in personal business ethics of executives as distinguished from the institutional ethics of corporations. Its purpose is to give practical moral guidance to executives for the conduct of their lives both as corporate decision-makers and as human beings. The pivotal concept in this model of personal business ethics is a direct appeal to the self-interest of executives in their being moral. Our thesis is that generally there is a twofold return on investment in ethics (ROIE) for executives. The first one is related to employee output: by becoming a self-actualizing moral type, executives indicate commitment to excellence. Accordingly, they so manage employees that the latter can also live up to their full potential and excell. And that would increase corporate productivity and product or service quality. The second payback of morality is personal: fully developed, self-actualized managers are generally happier people than those whose growth has been arrested. In brief, moral self-actualization is the same as commitment to excellence and there is a payback in being the best. Return on investment in ethics and return on investment in excellence can both be abbreviated as ROIE. We accomplish the purpose and establish the thesis of this essay by seeking answers to the following questions: What business does ethics have in business? What business does business have in ethics? Is there a return on investment in ethics for executives? and Does being moral help executives become more effective managers? In sketching answers to these questions, we first show why executives need a personal business ethics especially in today's world. Then, we sketch the nature of ethics and of business. After these introductory materials, the body of the paper argues for a personal business ethics for executives by correlating elements of management theory with ethics. Specifically, it links a theory of employee motivation with a scale of values, management character types with moral types, and management leadership styles with morality. Then, the practical technique of life by objectives (LBO) is explained. It can help executives manage their lives more effectively in both the business and ethical sense. We conclude by explaining ideals of excellence which can guide executives in their work and development both as managers and as human beings.     

Competence Building and Corporate Renewal

In 1996, the French business publication "Capital" carried an analysis of what it called "the resurrection of the dinosaurs": the revival of corporations that had been viewed as moribund. Examples abound in every industrialised country: Chrysler, IBM or General Electric in the United States and Usinor-Sacilor, Siemens or Fiat in Europe. What strategies are behind these cases of revival? This article describes how, starting in 1993, a French company sought to renew itself by implementing one particular strategy which has been widely discussed among managers and academics alike: competence building. It then discusses the general lessons which can be drawn from the case. In particular, the article aims to reveal empirically the relationship between competence building and the corporate renewal process and then to use the case history to help develop the theory of competence-based competition between firms.     

The role of flexibility in online business

Companies are trying to be more competitive by establishing a presence on the fast-growing Net. At the same time, the Net's business environment is growing more complex and uncertain. Management literature argues that flexibility can enhance corporate responsiveness to such an environment. However, research on e-businesses has focused mainly on the idea of customizing online offerings. Here is a holistic view of flexibility, investigating how online companies can become flexible through the different functional aspects of their business—technology, human resources, operations, marketing, finance, and management. What are the related opportunities and pitfalls? And what guidelines can managers follow?     

Corporate Citizenship: How to Strengthen the Social Responsibility of Managers?

Corporate citizenship challenges the foundations and working of the basic institutions market, state and civil society. These institutional changes complicate the work of the manager, because the responsibilities of management are not only increasing, they are also becoming vaguer and more elusive. In this paper, I will analyze the new, complex responsibilities of management in terms of the scope and the legitimizationof corporate citizenship. What may we expect of individual organizations? Which wishes of which stakeholders should be honored? How can we legitimize the new societal and public role of business firms? The outcome of this analysis will be translated to the practice of management; how can we strengthen the social responsibility of managers? Four options will be discussed. (1) Market regulation, which binds the actions of managers. (2) Professionalization of management, which seeks for better information. (3) Moral management, which incorporates norms and values from outside the market. (4) Stakeholder management, which leaves room for the participation of stakeholders. These options can be schematized according to an internal-external axis and an objective-subjective axis. I will show that stakeholder management fits the best with the idea of corporate citizenship, but has serious risks of failing.     

Comparing Corporate Managers' Personal Values Over Three Decades, 1967--1995

What is the nature of the decision-related personal values of corporate management? Managers' attitudes and behaviors are built upon their personal value systems (PVS). Knowledge about the structure of management's PVS assists in understanding the attributes of corporate decision making. Utilizing a survey instrument developed and used by England (1967, 1975), this article updates this research into corporate managers' personal value systems. England's PVS consists of sixty-six pre-tested values clustered into five groups. As one could expect with personal values, statistical tests reveal that even with dramatic changes in the business environment the overall personal values structure has not changed over the intervening three decades. The results also reveal that corporate managers retain their pragmatic value orientation as discussed by England.     

Traces of foreign retailers – local knowledge-spillovers and strategy adaption within retail internationalization

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s certain retail companies have evolved into some of the largest and most dispersed transnational corporations worldwide. However, within the ‘new era of retail distribution’ retailers are increasingly divesting from foreign markets. This study addresses these recent and under-explored dynamics by revealing the traces transnational retail corporations leave after divesting from a country. It explores the aspect of learning of host market retailers from entering transnational corporations (TNCs) and examines how foreign knowledge is adjusted in the business strategies of these local actors. It takes a fresh empirical slant using qualitative interviews with host market retail managers including former TNCs’ subsidiaries operating under domestic ownership. The emerging economy of Turkey serves as an empirical example. The paper finds that foreign retailers transfer firm-specific resources to the local retail through (1) demonstration and imitation, (2) vertical linkages with suppliers, (3) joint ventures and acquisitions, and (4) labor turnover of TNC trained staff. Certain successful local companies adjust the foreign knowledge based on their local knowledge and strengths, their high level of flexibility and deep territorial embeddedness, and create ‘hybrid’ business strategies. These findings suggest that dynamic capabilities are crucial to successful retailing in an international competitive environment. TNC managers should work with local staff in partnerships of equals and managers of locally operating companies should incorporate new knowledge by hiring TNC trained staff.     

The Motivation of Entrepreneurs: Are Employed Managers and Self-employed Owners Different?

Are managers entrepreneurs? What motivates them to run a firm? Are managers different from self-employed firm owners? In which points do they differ? And why is it that they are different? The following article examines these questions based on a survey of German engineering firms in which managers and self-employed owners answer why they are motivated to run a firm and what hinders their firms from growing more rapidly.     

Customer co-creation projects and social media: The case of Barilla of Italy

This article investigates a social media-enabled, customer co-creation project that employs front-end innovation (FEI) at a well-known, large-scale food manufacturer. It sheds light on the role of social media technology in transforming the characteristics of FEI in terms of boundaries and knowledge distance. What type of exploratory or exploitative innovation ideas does a project of this sort enable? How did the project evolve? What lessons can be learned from this project? A longitudinal case study of Barilla was carried out through two rounds of interviews with marketing, business development and innovation, and digital communication managers. The evidence gathered highlights the emergent evolution of this customer co-creation project from an initial stage of idea exploitation to a more complex and fruitful stage in which both exploitation and exploration were simultaneously accomplished.     

Business @ the Speed of Thought

Bill Gates' first book, "The Road Ahead", focused on the broad impact of technology. His new book, "Business @ the Speed of Thought", asks what this means for business. How should firms organize themselves differently? In what new ways should information flow? What metrics can managers use to judge how far down the path they are to what he calls the "digital nervous system" approach? In this article, Mr Gates comments on some of the themes of the book, including issues within Microsoft itself.     

Navigating Strategic Inflection Points

In this first of the 1997 Stockton Lectures, the speaker reflects on the turning points which can make or break even the strongest of businesses. How can managers distinguish a "Strategic Inflection Point" from the normal hurly–burly of corporate life? What generic series of actions are necessary to convert the threats of change into opportunities? What are the implications for managers as individuals with their own careers and responsibility for the careers of those working under them? Throughout the article the generic issues are illustrated with examples ranging from small–town retailing to X–ray vision.     

The tension of information sharing: Effects on subsidiary embeddedness

This paper investigates the relationship between foreign subsidiary competition and embeddedness in a peripheral area of an advanced country. The study argues that pressure to innovate and unintended private knowledge spillovers compete in explaining the relationship between competition and embeddedness as a result of the tension of information sharing. Such a tension can be relaxed when accounting for subsidiaries’ competence-creating entry motives. Statistical analysis supports this argument. This study contributes to the broad IB field as well as to business network theory and to research on the creation of local linkages by MNEs. Implications for managers and policy-makers are also discussed.     

承钢公司ORACLEERP系统监控平台

通过建立ERP系统运行监控平台,可以将查找问题和解决问题的方法和技巧整合集中在一个系统中,ERP系统运行管理人员及使用单位的业务管理人员可以方便的了解ERP系统的随时运行状态,及时发现异常,并针对问题进行快速定位,减少处理时间,保证系统运行有效,从而让系统更好的为生产服务,为管理人员及时准确提供数据。     

The Impact of Origins of Reverse Technology Transfer on MNC Home‐Country Product Development

Reverse technology transfer (the transferring of multinational corporation [MNC] subsidiaries’ technological knowledge to their home country) deserves more executive attention since the source of competitive advantage of MNCs resides in their capabilities to leverage knowledge from different units across borders. This article examines three salient “origins” of reverse technology transfer—headquarters, local constituents, and subsidiary research and development (R&D) activity—and their impact on MNCs’ home‐country product development. We argue that reverse technology transfer from subsidiary R&D activity is more likely to have a positive impact on MNC home‐country product development than the other two origins because reverse transfer from local constituents requires high integration cost, and transfer from headquarters adds little technological novelty. We also develop two contingency hypotheses for the latter two origins to increase their likelihood of positive impacts on home‐country product development. Using a data set of 1,331 Taiwanese MNCs, our empirical evidence provides two important messages to managers: (1) a subsidiary whose technology mainly relies on its R&D would be an ideal target for reverse transfer; and (2) reverse transfer from local constituents and headquarters can be effective when they fit with an appropriate organizational mechanism, such as governance mode and absorptive capacity. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Knowledge Management in Central and Eastern Europe Through Network Development and Boundary Spanners

ABSTRACT

Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have become a popular research venue due to their transitioning into market based economies. For international business scholars this represents a unique opportunity, as one of the key driving forces is the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Due to the market's great potential, many multinational enterprises are entering CEE countries and realizing that a transfer of market knowledge (i.e., customer tastes, distribution methods/channels, etc.) from the host country to the multinational, as well as from the multinational to the host country (i.e. technology, management/marketing capabilities, etc.), is essential.

The lack of host country skills have made knowledge transfer difficult. Also, the tacit nature of some of the most important knowledge embedded within the host country's organization and the multinational makes knowledge diffusion a daunting task to manage. However, successful knowledge management will assist in positive performance measures so researchers are examining knowledge management and its constructs (acquisition, transfer, conversion, and application).

Our research explores the linkage between knowledge management and performance in host country firms in a CEE country, Croatia. We also explored antecedents of successful knowledge management that of networks and human resources (boundary spanners). Finally we explored whether cultural distance moderates these relationships in the knowledge management process.     

Lack of fit between business community and corporate culture: The case of a multinational company in Venezuela

The conflict between the culture of a multinational corporation and the culture of the local business environment in Venezuela is the focus of this study. Corporate culture serves as an integrating mechanism for a corporation that is expanding globally. At the same time, local Latin American managers have their own guidelines for achieving personal success in business dealings. As the two philosophies may not be in harmony, long-time local managers often experience dissatisfaction, causing them to advance their careers through entrepreneurial opportunities at local firms. This loss of management talent is a cost the multinational experiences by adhering to the headquarters culture rather than allowing some adaptation for differences in local business practices. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Does It Matter What Managers Do?

After half a century of research, we now have a fair idea of what managers do. This differs both from the "heroic self-image" idealisation and from the sanitised "management science" idealisation. Despite IT and all the talk of empowerment, management as a profession in its own right is, if anything, becoming more, not less, widespread. What managers do therefore matters simply because so many people are doing "management" as their main role. But does what managers do matter in terms of its effects on the people being managed, and, if so, how? The answer is obviously yes, but the central message of this article is how little we know through systematic research about this – particularly given how much preaching there is on how to do it well.