Developing effective intercultural relationships: The importance of communication strategies

As global competition intensifies, it is becoming necessary for organizations to establish strong intercultural relationships with a culturally diverse set of employees, interorganizational partners as well as customers. In order to manage these relationships effectively, organizations need a means to understand and improve global intercultural communications. The complexity of intercultural communications requires management to understand the nature of domains of global relationships and the level of complexity when attempting to communicate with multiple partners having unique national and organizational cultures. In this article, a decision process for developing effective intercultural communication strategies is developed, illustrating the steps necessary for managing a myriad of intercultural relationships. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Knowledge creation capability in MNC subsidiaries: Examining the roles of global and local knowledge inflows and subsidiary knowledge stocks

Grounded in knowledge-based theories of the multinational corporation (MNC) and building on organizational learning literature, this paper develops and tests a model of MNC subsidiaries’ knowledge creation capability as a joint function of knowledge inflows to subsidiaries and their knowledge stocks (i.e., subsidiaries’ internal human, social, and organizational capital). Survey-based data from 106 subsidiaries located in the U.S. suggests that local (i.e., host country) knowledge inflows to a subsidiary are more effective in enhancing a subsidiary's knowledge creation capability compared to global knowledge inflows from other units of the same MNC. Furthermore, results point to a not-invented-here syndrome in the exploitation of knowledge sourced from the parent company; such that when a subsidiary's internal social capital is high, the relationship between global knowledge inflows and knowledge creation capability is negative and when it is low, the relationship becomes positive.     

Effects of corporate social responsibility on customer satisfaction and organizational attractiveness: A signaling perspective

In recent years, many researchers have attempted to determine the mechanisms of how corporate social responsibility (CSR) brings financial benefits to a firm. However, many chief financial officers (CFOs) throughout the world are uncertain about the strategic value of CSR, and no consensus has been reached on defining how CSR creates value. Drawing on signaling theory, we explore the effects of the multidimensional construct of CSR on organizational performance by examining the relationships among CSR, corporate reputation, customer satisfaction, and organizational attractiveness from the perspectives of both customers as well as job seekers. Consistent with the European Commission's view, CSR is defined as having three components: CSR for employees, CSR for customers, and CSR for social public welfare. Data are collected through an online survey of a convenient sample of 500 individuals from different organizations in China. Results indicate that corporate reputation plays a mediating role in the relationship between CSR and customer satisfaction and that between CSR and organizational attractiveness. Further, the impact mechanisms of the three components of CSR are different. For CSR for employees, both cognitive and affective reputation work as mediators, with the former playing a bigger mediating role than the latter. For CSR for customers, only cognitive reputation works as a mediator, whereas for CSR for social public welfare, only affective reputation works as a mediator. This study's findings show that the abovementioned relationships are more complex than previous studies have revealed. These insights provide guidelines for firms to better adjust their CSR strategies to improve customer satisfaction and organizational attractiveness.     

Exploring factors driving social recruiting: The case of Australian organizations

This study identifies key factors driving the organizational adoption of social recruiting technologies, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The Technology, Organization, and Environment (TOE) framework, as an initial exploratory approach, is used to identify underlying factors of new technology adoption. Qualitative evidence collected from 12 Australian firms serves to specifically categorize key determinants of the organizational adoption of social recruiting technologies. It is found that apart from several TOE factors that significantly influence the organizational decision making with reference to social recruiting, top management support is seen as imperative for successful adoption of recruiting technologies. Formalization, comprehensiveness, and strategic orientation of organizational human resource departments are closely linked to adoption of social recruiting at the firm level. In addition, job applicants’ readiness and local success stories have driven firms to adopt social recruiting technologies. The study extends and modifies the TOE model to provide the theoretical foundations of social recruiting in the context of Australian organizations and help human resource professionals and practitioners to gain a better understanding of key drivers of organizational social recruiting.     

Applying career concepts to strengthen the work-attitudes of service professionals

Given the nature of employment relationships today, service organizations can strengthen the organization commitment levels and reduce the turnover intentions of its professionals through providing job features important to their careers. These features include opportunities to perform challenging work, experience trusting relationships with customers/clients, and obtain extrinsic rewards. Using a sample of alumni from a hospitality business program, hypotheses that these features impact organizational commitment and turnover intentions, partially through strengthening professionals’ career commitment, are developed and tested. Findings suggest that challenging work opportunities impact these attitudes both directly and indirectly. So too trusting relationships with customers and clients indirectly impact organization commitment and intent to turnover (ITO). Results also suggest that, as a whole, satisfaction with extrinsic rewards has no effect. However, an analysis of multigroup mediation results revealed that for professionals working in professional service firms, satisfaction with pay reduces both attitudes. Implications for research in organization commitment and ITO, specifically the role and impact of career-based antecedents, are discussed.     

Job allocations as cultural sorting in a culturally diverse organizational context

This study addresses the inadequacy of the career and diversity literatures in explaining the dynamics of job allocations in a culturally diverse organizational context. In order to better understand this topic, we conducted a qualitative study involving personal interviews with 50 Emiratis and international employees who worked in managerial positions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The purpose of the study was to explore the unique challenges associated with managing a culturally diverse workforce and explore the role of culture in allocating jobs among employees with diverse cultural backgrounds. Despite the perceived value of having a culturally diverse workforce, our findings indicate a lack of effective diversity management strategies for dealing with challenges and issues associated with a high level of cultural diversity in the participating organizations. This study provides insights into the impact of cultural/nationality-based stereotypes on job allocations as well as on organizational outcomes. Based on the findings, we discussed implications for research and practice and as well as for policy makers.     

Organizational performance with a broader focus: The case for a stakeholder approach to leadership

In 2019, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and the other 179 CEO members of the Business Roundtable argued that the purpose of a corporation must reflect not only the fiduciary interests of owners but also the varied interests of all stakeholders: employees, customers, partners, and broader society. This idea challenges a decades-old norm of shareholder primacy, so it is reasonable for organizational leaders to wonder whether doing so is truly in their firms’ best interests, and if so, how to implement this approach to leadership. To answer these questions, we draw on over 200 peer-reviewed articles covering leadership research to demonstrate how servant leadership, a stakeholder-focused approach to management, outperforms other leadership approaches across both shareholder and stakeholder criteria. We leverage case studies of organizational leaders from SAS, Zappos, Starbucks, and Jason’s Deli, financially successful organizations that exemplify how managers provide value and sustainability to stakeholders and shareholders through servant leadership. We also include practical steps managers can take to begin putting this form of leadership into practice.     

Social Knowledge Environments

Knowledge management represents a key issue for both information systems’ academics and practitioners, including those who have become disillusioned by actual results that fail to deliver on exaggerated promises and idealistic visions. Social software, a tremendous global success story, has prompted similarly high expectations regarding the ways in which organizations can improve their knowledge handling. But can these expectations be met, whether in academic research or the real world? This article seeks to identify current research trends and gaps, with a focus on social knowledge environments. The proposed research agenda features four focal challenges: semi-permeable organizations, social software in professional work settings, crowd knowledge, and cross-border knowledge management. Three solutions emerge as likely methods to address these challenges: design-oriented solutions, analytical solutions, and interdisciplinary dialogue.     

When Sales Managers and Salespeople Disagree in the Appreciation for Their Firm: The Phenomenon of Organizational Identification Tension

Marketing literature emphasizes the importance of organizational identification in the sales force. However, empirical research has so far focused on the separate analysis of the consequences of either sales managers’ or salespersons’ organizational identification, largely ignoring their interactive effects. This study seeks to address this research void by exploring the phenomena of organizational identification agreement and organizational identification tension in the sales manager–salesperson dyad. In contrast to organizational identification agreement, organizational identification tension occurs in a sales manager–salesperson dyad if the sales manager and the salesperson differ in the strength of their organizational identification. Analysis of a triadic data set using hierarchical linear modeling supports the authors’ hypotheses that increasing the level of organizational identification agreement is beneficial but increasing organizational identification tension can have severe negative consequences for the satisfaction of a salesperson's customers and the salesperson's performance. The study additionally explores how sales managers’ leadership styles (charismatic vs. transactional), combined with the appropriate control system (behavioral vs. outcome control), can be effective in avoiding organizational identification tension.     

Wearables in the workplace: The brave new world of employee engagement

Organizations increasingly introduce wearable devices, hoping to improve organizational performance. Wearables provide new and unique opportunities for engaging employees with their work and their organizational environment. The performance-related feedback these devices provide is supposed to help both employees and managers navigate the work environment more effectively. Despite the compelling benefits of wearables, they may prove to be detrimental to organizational performance unless a number of ethical issues are addressed. This article provides an overview of the benefits that certain wearable technologies can provide employees and managers, as well as the challenges they may create for organizations.     

Work-family conflict and organizational citizenship behavior: the role of job satisfaction and decision authority

Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, Am Psychol 44:513–524, 1989), social exchange theory (Blau, Exchange and power in social life, 1964)and the job demand-control model (Karasek, Adm Sci Q 24:285–308, 1979), this studyuncovers the theoretical mechanism that explains the relationship between workfamily conflict and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). First, this study focuses on how employee job satisfaction mediates the relationship. Then, we investigate the moderating role of decision authority in the mediated relationship. We employ three-wave data collected from 324 employees in 102 teams to test our hypotheses. Results of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) first shows that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between work interference with family (WIF) and OCB. In addition, employees’ decision authority moderates the direct effect of WIF on OCB. Specifically, the negative relationship between WIF and OCB is stronger when employees’ decision authority is high. Moreover, decision authority moderates the indirect effect of WIF on OCB via job satisfaction. Specifically, the negative relationship between WIF and job satisfaction is weaker when employees’ decision authority is high. The results suggest that organizations should give employees enough decision authority over their work, as a high level of decision authority may act as a double-edged sword regarding critical organizational outcomes.     

Harnessing the wisdom of crowds: Decision spaces for prediction markets

The increased metabolism of business in the modern world has served to heighten both the frequency and the difficulty of organizational decision making. Practitioners and academics are constantly looking for decision-making mechanisms that can be used to address these challenges. One recently emerged mechanism is prediction markets: a group decision-making tool that uses a market mechanism to rapidly aggregate information held by large, diverse groups of participants. Prediction markets have a number of benefits and have been demonstrably successful in a number of contexts; however, it is important to recognize that they are suited to some types of decisions and contexts but not to others. This article examines the benefits of prediction markets and develops a framework that can be used to identify in which situations prediction markets can be profitably deployed within organizations. It also provides a roadmap for practitioners to use to guide their own organizational deployment of prediction markets.     

On the role of alliance management capability,organizational compatibility,and interaction quality in interorganizational technology transfer

Interorganizational technology transfer (ITT) is a key component of firms' innovation processes. ITT involves purposeful, goal-oriented interactions between two or more organizations to exchange technological knowledge and/or artifacts and rights. Using the relational view, this study develops and empirically tests a research framework that incorporates key factors of technology transfer success to answer three questions: (1) How do various managerial routines and procedures that as a whole reflect a firm's alliance management capability influence interaction quality in ITT? (2) How does interaction quality in turn influence technology transfer success? (3) Which configurations of organizational and interactional factors contribute to technology transfer success? By examining the causal chain from alliance management capability through interorganizational interaction quality to technology transfer success, this study explains linkages between important antecedents and consequences of interaction quality and thus contributes to a better understanding of the interorganizational exchange processes that determine technology transfer success.     

How Cisco creates new value via global customer service

In Bust the Silos: Opening Your Organization for Growth, Hunter Hastings and Jeff Saperstein offer a new concept for business growth in today's global economy. It is called “demand creation”: the design of new organizational structures and processes to make managing the demand for a product or service a process‐based, predictable, and repeatable science. The challenge is how to harness the capabilities of new productivity tools with new business processes for success. Hastings and Saperstein argue that forward‐thinking organizations must work differently: in roles, not just jobs; in new forms of multifunctional teams, not just departments; in networks, not just rigid structures; and in listening to escalate responsiveness, not just communicating to get the message across. We all now operate in a highly connected, rapidly evolving, customer‐centric, and knowledge‐driven environment. Yet, most of our current management practices, organizational models, and job functions are not effective in serving our customers. Value is created through relationships with customers. Companies must adopt principles and practices that encourage every individual in the diverse groups of employees to have a shared sense of purpose to engage in more effective ways of working together to build customer intimacy and loyalty. This article profiles the Cisco Customer Interaction Network and the transformation of its global operations from call centers to customer‐relationship builders. It addresses the following questions:

• Why is being adaptive necessary for organizational survival?
• How does one design a customer support system that listens and teaches rather than just fixes problems?
• How does one take full advantage of the Web for customer support?
• How does one give front‐line professionals the training and tools to be consultants rather than mechanistic problem solvers?
• How can evolving metrics be a game changer?

The article is adapted from Bust the Silos: Opening Your Organization for Growth by Hunter Hastings and Jeff Saperstein (BookSurge, 2009). © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

What leads to cultural intelligence?

The ability to interact effectively in multiple cultures is not a skill possessed by all; yet, it is becoming more important in today's global business world. Recently, this skill has been labeled cultural intelligence (CQ), and has caught the attention of business leaders and researchers alike. While previous studies have examined potential outcomes of cultural intelligence, possible antecedents are examined herein. This investigation generates some insight regarding the impact of cultural exposure on CQ, as well as developing an understanding of how the depth of cultural exposure influences a person's cultural intelligence. Findings indicate that certain types of exposures to other cultures (such as education abroad and employment abroad) and the level of exposure from these experiences increases cultural intelligence. These findings are critical for multinational firms as managers hire, promote, train, and prepare employees for international assignments. Additionally, some have discussed how cultural intelligence is a critical skill for global business leaders, and it seems likely that CQ will become increasingly important due to the rise of diversity in the workforce.     

Organizational climate for innovation and creativity – a study in Swedish retail organizations

ABSTRACT

Innovation in retailing is under-investigated in academia and yet a highly relevant concern given the current changes in the retail landscape. Although retailing is often characterized by a dynamic and highly competitive environment, retail organizations are not often considered as ‘innovative,’ at least when compared with manufacturing industries, or when using existing innovation frameworks in academic literature. There are many aspects of innovation discussed in literature and a need to consider different ways of looking into retail’s innovativeness. Among them, the importance of organizational climate on influencing creativity and innovation may help explain how to enable innovation in service organizations, such as retailers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the climate for innovation and creativity and examine how retail organizations perceive it. We applied a mixed-methods approach using an established organizational climate survey and semi-structured, one-on-one interviews regarding the innovation climate and other aspects of innovation management in the companies. The study shows that despite retail organizations still struggling to incorporate innovation on a strategic level and move beyond incremental developments in their operations, retailers score positively on being innovative regarding certain dimensions of the organizational climate survey. This indicates that retailers (especially conventional ones) could benefit from challenging current practices and moving towards becoming more active and strategic innovators since their organizational climate to a certain extent allows for it. Respondents within the organizations also express a need for better innovation support, whether it is through established structures and processes or an improvement in the current conditions of the organizational climate. How retailers could enable themselves to become more active innovators – based on what we know that retailers look more towards entrepreneurship and continuous development as a driving force rather than formalized innovation practices per se – is a potential avenue for further research.     

Organizing for disaster: Lessons from the military

Recent global events have highlighted the need for disaster planning by leaders in all types of organizations, civilian and military included. This article illustrates, from both academic and personal viewpoints, lessons learned during relief operations for the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Having participated in this effort, I detail guidance for designing resilient and robust organizational structures that can deal with the uncertainties of a disaster environment. For example, organizations frequently form temporary command centers to improve information flow in a crisis. Consequently, managers are advised to create temporary organizational structures with a common cognitive map to improve sense-making for employees during turbulent times. Other lessons presented include the establishment of a nuanced priority system for assessing potential courses of action, and the need to eliminate bureaucratic barriers to action to improve the speed of response when lives are at stake. This article concludes by pointing out that proper organizational structures need to be considered prior to disaster in order for organizations to be effective and efficient during the course of a mitigation effort.     

Organizational identification as a determinant of customer orientation in service organizations

The marketing literature suggests that frontline employees are the central determinant of how customer-oriented a service organization is perceived to be by its customers. However, little is known about the contingencies of employees’ customer orientation (CO) beyond personality traits and broadly construed work attitudes. Based on the social identity approach, the present article develops a multilevel model whereby CO is the result of identity-based management of frontline employees. Two empirical studies in the travel industry show that employees’ CO depends on employees’ organizational identification and their leaders’ acting as role models of CO.     

Social responsibility in youth service organizations: Hong Kong evidence

The paper attempts to investigate the key factors affecting the social responsibility development in social welfare organizations. The study also measures how social welfare organizations are performing towards the social responsibility objectives. This paper focuses on a study undertaken among a number of youth service organizations in Hong Kong. The results showed that youth service organizations perceive they have supportive organizational culture and the management has been showing strong willingness in promoting social responsibility. The people from a senior level see that the motivating factors are more important than the junior people, but they perceive the ‘social pressure’ is less important than the junior people. The big contrast implies that the management people do not take ‘social pressure’ into serious consideration. The study reveals a significant influence from the management on the adoption and implementation of social responsibility activities. This further confirms the importance on promoting social responsibility at the operational level, with the top management providing clear strategic direction, and supportive resources and environment.     

Language and identity in the shadow: A multi-case study of a Japanese multinational corporation

This paper explores how different organizational identities can be constructed by the use of multiple languages within a multinational corporation’s (MNC) subsidiaries. Scholars are increasingly interested in the importance of language in international business but little is currently known about how identities interact with language across an MNC’s subsidiaries. Applying language and social identity theory, this paper analyses the interactions between organizational identity and the use of multiple languages within the lines of communication in the Thai, Taiwanese and US subsidiaries of a Japanese MNC, focusing especially on communications with customers and headquarters. The findings reveal the range of uses of different languages in the lines of communication and the attendant sharing and shaping of social identities in each subsidiary, thus highlighting the importance of the contexts of subsidiaries. In addition, in a sharp contrast to the approach to linguistic identity assumed in the current literature, the findings reveal how national identity can be sustained independently of the use of language. Moreover, the findings also reveal that perceived identity is influenced not only by actors’ language abilities and ethnicity, but also by their post-colonial views on both parent and host countries, and how this underpins shadow organizational structures.