U.K. SMEs’ awareness,use, and perceptions of selected government export assistance programs: An investigation into the effect of the internationalization process

This study reports on an empirical investigation into U.K. managers’ behavior toward and perceptions about selected export assistance programs. Specifically, it investigates whether differences exist between managers of U.K. small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in various stages of internationalization in relation to their awareness and frequency of use of the programs, together with their perceptions about the timeliness, reliability, and availability of the assistance schemes. It provides a contribution to the knowledge in the areas of export management and public policy because despite the fact that a body of literature exists on the topics of both export assistance and the internationalization process of firms, there is a need to bring these two research topics together in the form of a single U.K. study to establish whether current export assistance procedures are suitable for managers from firms in different stages of export development. The rationale for such a study is that if managers of U.K. SMEs in different stages of the internationalization process differ in both their behavior toward and perceptions about government assistance programs, U.K. policymakers may need to reconsider the way in which services are provided to avoid wasting scarce resources.     

Ethical Decision-Making Differences Between American and Moroccan Managers

Our research’s aim is to assess the effect of cultural factors on business ethical decision-making process in a Western cultural context and in a non-Western cultural context. Specifically, this study investigates ethical perceptions, religiosity, personal moral philosophies, corporate ethical values, gender, and ethical intentions of U.S. and Moroccan business managers. The findings demonstrate that significant differences do exist between the two countries in idealism and relativism. Moroccan managers tend to be more idealistic than the U.S. managers. There is a strong positive relationship between religiosity and idealism. There were mixed findings in examining the correlates of religiosity and various components of ethical intentions. Moroccan managers were more homogenous in their corporate ethical values than were the U.S. managers. The results demonstrate that (in general) idealism is a good predictor of ethical intentions and behaviors. Additionally, managers from the two countries differed in the degree of relationship between perceptions and intentions in three of the four scenarios. This study’s results confirm other research findings that, in general, female business managers have higher ethical sensitivity in terms of their ethical judgment than their male counterparts. Managerial implications are also discussed.     

A Cross-National Investigation of Product Perception:

Exporting to diverse markets without much informa- tion about how consumers may evaluate products from various countries calls for an investigation of the image of products made in various countries. This article looks at products made in China, Hong Kong, India, and the United States, as perceived by respon- dents from each of these countries. Respondents evaluated products manufactured in these countries along fifteen dimensions selected from the Nagashima (1970) study. Significant differences were found to exist in the perceptions of products from these test countries across the respondent groups. Implications of the findings for gov- ernments and companies interested in promoting international trade, particularly in emerging markets, are discussed.     

Perceptual differences regarding leadership between the store manager and employees and its impact on frontline sales performance: A research note

This study focuses on the bright side of perceptual differences regarding leadership that may exist between managers and employees. Specifically, building on leadership literature, the authors propose that in situations wherein a manager’s perceptions of their own leadership are lower than that of their employees’ perceptions of their managers’ leadership, employees’ sales performance levels are higher. Data were collected from retail store managers and frontline employees in Brazil in three different contexts (e.g., footwear, clothing, and furniture). Based on polynomial regression analyses, the findings suggest that sales performance is generally higher when a manager’s self-perceptions are lower than their frontline employees’ perceptions of managers’ transactional and transformational leadership.     

Legitimacy and accelerated internationalisation: An Indian perspective

This paper extends the institutional theory perspective by examining the strategic behaviour of founders of smaller service firms in a key emerging economy—India. Building on accelerated internationalisation and legitimacy literature in the emerging market context, we provide a new perspective, emerging market aggressiveness, which explains why founders/managers are not always passive recipients of their environment. Their selections of locations are dependent on the vision and stretch goals of the founder and their ability to gain legitimacy quickly to move that vision to a reality. They do not appear to be limited by their potential liabilities of newness, foreignness, emergingness or outsidership. They adopt committed modes of entry from the outset to build their legitimacy and reduce their liability as an outsider. Using a qualitative multiple case study approach, we demonstrate that managers are able to use proactive, planned and unplanned strategies simultaneously, in order to quickly prepare themselves to take advantage of transient international opportunities, ahead of their competitors in advanced markets.     

A cross-national investigation of incentive sales compensation

Why do managers choose one sales compensation form rather than another? Theoretical answers typically focus on the type of plans managers should design, not on the factors that managers actually consider. Managers from various national origins pursue and weigh objectives through experience in a way that theoretical models may not capture. Incorporating conceptualizations from a wide range of disciplines, we specify a model examining the influence of cultural factors on sales compensation decisions of managers (incentive vs. fixed pay and parity vs. equity allocation). The model, tested with data collected from bank managers across six European countries, illustrates the importance of considering national culture when designing sales force compensation policies applied across multiple countries. We also find evidence that most European bank managers accept incentive pay to motivate salespeople but, perhaps paradoxically, overwhelmingly reject equity allocations to achieve control and parity. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on international governance systems and the diffusion of sales force management practices.     

A natural science approach to investigate cross-cultural managerial creativity

As the relative effectiveness of physical resources decreases toward parity with rivals due to their fungibility, the firm's marketplace position, established by managers with a particular set of inter-culturally attuned set of personal values, may be the key antecedent in creating competitive strength in the firm. The research question addressed is how creative are culturally diverse managers; are managers from certain countries more creative than adaptive?We tested hypotheses in a cross-cultural setting based on the survey responses of 1365 managers operating in eight countries located in four culturally diverse regions of the world.Our study shows that managers are both creative and adaptive but the mixture of creative and adaptive behaviour varies depending on region and country and even within countries. Furthermore, the results confirm that creativity among managers in some countries is similar but large differences also exist between countries.     

Ethical Cultures in Large Business Organizations in Brazil, Russia, India, and China

This study focuses on comparison of perceptions of ethical business cultures in large business organizations from four largest emerging economies, commonly referred to as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and from the US. The data were collected from more than 13,000 managers and employees of business organizations in five countries. The study found significant differences among BRIC countries, with respondents from India and Brazil providing more favorable assessments of ethical cultures of their organizations than respondents from China and Russia. Overall, highest mean scores were provided by respondents from India, the US, and Brazil. There were significant similarities in ratings between the US and Brazil.     

Attitudes towards Business Ethics: A Five Nation Comparative Study

Increasingly the business environment is tending toward a global economy. The current study compares the results of the Attitudes Towards Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) reported in the literature for samples from the United States of America, Israel, Western Australia, and South Africa to a new sample (n = 125) from Turkey. The results indicate that while there are some shared views towards business ethics across countries, significant differences do exist between Turkey and each of the other countries in the study. Similarities and differences are discussed in terms of the countries' ratings on the Corruption Perceptions Index (as reported by the Internet Center for Corruption Research) and Hofstede's Theory of International Cultures. Recommendations for managers interacting with employees from differing countries are provided.     

Legitimacy of team rewards: Analyzing legitimacy as a condition for the effectiveness of team incentive designs

This article illustrates how the legitimacy of pay and evaluation processes in teams affect the effectiveness of team-based incentive designs in organizational work teams. We present a theoretical model of the development of legitimacy in team-based incentive designs and propose that the development of legitimacy for both pay dispersion in teams (i.e., difference in allocations of incentives among team members) and for the use of interdependent evaluations of performance promote team effectiveness. Our model introduces a new perspective to theorize about the conditions under which team rewards are an effective incentive design.     

Organizational legitimacy of emerging multinational enterprises: An individual perspective

Drawing on the information processing perspective from psychology, the study builds and tests a conceptual model to explain how the country-of-origin image (COI) and media coverage are associated with the organizational legitimacy of emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs), and how the relationships are moderated by the education level of individuals in a developed host country. This study investigates the relationships by highlighting the multidimensional nature of these concepts. Our findings suggest that affective COI is positively associated with both pragmatic and sociopolitical legitimacy, economic COI is positively associated with pragmatic legitimacy, and political COI is positively associated with sociopolitical legitimacy. The findings also demonstrate that media influence legitimacy; however, the extent to which media influence legitimacy depends on individuals’ education levels. These findings advance our understanding of organizational legitimacy and its antecedents, providing new insights into strategies for building legitimacy in foreign countries.     

The Growth and International Expansion of an Emerging Market Retailer in Latin America

ABSTRACT

This study contributes to the literature on international retailing by addressing a gap in the literature regarding how retailers from emerging markets expand internationally. This historical case study analyzes the growth and internationalization process of Chilean retailer Falabella, which is one of the largest retailers in Latin America and has been able to compete with multinationals from developed countries. The research is based on primary and secondary data sources including 33 oral interviews with company managers and family executives, as well as industry data, corporate reports, and trade journals. Drawing on institutional theory, the findings show that belonging to a family conglomerate, engaging in networks, partnerships, and organizational learning, and having an experienced management team helped Falabella gain legitimacy in all international markets.     

A Comparison of Ethics of Investment Professionals: North America Versus Pacific Rim Nations

This study examines the ethical attitudes and practices of securities analysts and portfolio managers from four Pacific Rim countries – Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Thailand – and compares the findings to a similar study of North American investment professionals to identify significant differences. The findings show that many differences exist due to cultural differences and differences in the regulatory environment between the Pacific Rim countries studied and North America.     

New Service Development Process

Abstract

To continue to grow, more and more U.S. service firms have looked overseas in recent years to find markets for their offerings. Thus, innovation in the global context has become a strategic imperative for many service firms. While the issue of how to foster service innovation has been an area of extensive research, the cross-national comparison of innovation practices particularly between developed and emerging countries has been only a nascent field of research. To address this gap in the literature we conducted a comparative study of new service development process and stages of the financial service firms in an emerging country, India, and a developed country, the United States. The results support the central argument of the article that significant cross-national differences do exist with regard to a firm's new service development process. The findings should be of value to managers faced with the tasks of selecting and managing service innovation in emerging markets, as well as those firms experiencing international competition.     

Integration by Emerging Economy Multinationals: Perspectives from Chinese Mergers and Acquisitions

The integration process of international mergers and acquisitions by emerging economy multinationals is fraught with challenges of liabilities of foreignness and country of origin. We use insights from institutional theory and draw on the experience of Chinese international mergers and acquisitions to explore these challenges faced by emerging economy multinationals during postmerger integration. We find that these challenges, which are primarily caused by informal institutional differences, can be overcome by developing organizational capabilities for integration and employing mechanisms for appropriate control and justice during the integration process. The study contributes to the ongoing discussions about the relevance of sociocultural influences in the successful integration of international mergers and acquisitions. Our framework proposes initiatives that managers from emerging economies can take to overcome postmerger integration challenges. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Ethics Trumps Culture? A Cross-National Study of Business Leader Responsibility for Downsizing and CSR Perceptions

Downsizing remains a topic of great interest to both academics and practitioners. Yet, the impact of layoff decisions on perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has hardly been studied. We examine the impact of responsibility of business leaders making these layoff decisions, and characteristics of the downsizing implementation on convergence and divergence in (1) CSR perceptions, (2) victims’ perceptions of fairness, and (3) survivor commitment, in four countries. Using an experimental design, sixteen scenarios were distributed to (1) 163 managers in Estonia, (2) 152 MBA students in India and 125 MBA students in France, and (3) 186 (non-traditional) undergraduate students in the USA. Results suggest that when top managers are attributed with the responsibility for downsizing, the resulting perceptions of CSR are negative. A similar pattern of results is obtained for victims’ perceptions of fairness and survivor commitment. In addition, although there are differences in effect-size based on differences in power distance, these results hold good (are similar) across the four countries, from four different society clusters. We discuss implications, limitations, and future research directions.     

On the Marketing of Nations

Abstract

Deciding on how and where to begin a new regional expansion is a highly important and complex task for multinational companies. The importance and complexity stems from the fact that these decisions involve relatively high uncertainty (i.e., risk) and, at the same time, require an intensive multidimensional evaluation process. Many countries, however, particularly in emerging markets, work to encourage multinational companies to establish a base of operations there or to enlarge existing regional headquarters. Consequently, multinationals and countries have a common interest in identifying key elements in this multidimensional decision process and estimating the likelihood that a particular country will be more suitable to fill this task than others. In order to gain a deeper understanding as to the attractiveness of a host country for establishing a base of operation (BOO) of multinational corporations, we explore the perceptions of corporate managers of different Mediterranean countries. Our analysis highlights the different country characteristics that contribute to the difference in perceptions. In addition, we find specific attributes that contribute the most to these differences. We conclude with a discussion of actions that can be taken by a specific country to close, or expand, some perception gaps.     

Understanding the formation of psychic distance perceptions: Are country-level or individual-level factors more important?

This study investigates individual managers’ formation of psychic distance perceptions to foreign countries. Adopting a social psychological perspective, we propose that three social-cognitive mechanisms—social comparison, mere exposure, and social learning—help explain why and how country- and individual-level characteristics affect the formation of these perceptions. Based on an international survey of 1591 managers located in 25 countries undertaken between 2003 and 2008, we find that country-specific international experience, formal education, and the use of common language reduce psychic distance perceptions. Surprisingly, and in contrast to conventional wisdom, managers’ international experience and overall work experience do not seem to affect their distance perceptions. Moreover, individual-level antecedents seem to have limited explanatory power relative to country-level factors as predictors of overall psychic distance perceptions, which lends support to the widely-employed practice of operationalizing psychic distances through country-level indicators. In addition to these empirical findings, the study provides a theoretical social psychological framework useful for understanding how psychic distance perceptions are formed.     

Environmental uncertainty and environmental management perception: A multiple case study

This paper seeks to answer two questions about environmental uncertainty. (1) How does environmental uncertainty differ across sectors? (2) How can environmental uncertainty impact on managers’ perceptions of the natural environment as a competitive opportunity? The analysis of the nature, sources and extent of environmental uncertainty serves to identify its different components, which fall into two main categories. These categories associate with the information-related environmental uncertainty approach and with the natural resource dependence theory. A multiple case study helps highlight the similarities and differences in the perceptions of environmental uncertainty of the managers of eight Spanish firms belonging to primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. The findings show that environmental uncertainty is inherent in managerial decisions in two ways: in the changes that managers identify in the business environment; and in the changes that the managers themselves produce as a result of the initiatives they undertake in response to the business environment. The paper finishes with some recommendations for managers.     

Factors Affecting Individual Decisions Based on Business Legitimacy

In this paper, we study customer's legitimacy preferences from the perspective of individual social profiles. By doing this, we aim to determine the influence of the social context on decision-making processes that derive from organizational legitimacy perceptions. Through data collected from a sample of 258 individuals, we relate five individual characteristics to four business legitimacy typologies using regression analysis techniques. Results show that individuals with higher social consciousness are prone to make decisions about organizations that take into account moral and regulatory legitimacy perceptions. However, low-trust customers and customers with high decision visibility are more likely to assess organizations based on cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy considerations.