Sibling rivalry: implications for the family business succession process

This paper deals with sibling rivalry dynamics and their impact on the succession outcome within family enterprises. While sibling rivalry plays a critical role in the succession process, there is only limited literature that addresses this important subject. This theoretical study reveals valuable insights on this topic and contributes to the existing literature. Particular attention is placed on parental behavior and attitude during childhood, sibling characteristics and the perception of parental fairness by the successors, which we advocate are the principal factors conducive not only to the emergence of rivalry among heirs but also to influencing the effectiveness of the succession outcome.     

The international business cycle and gold-price fluctuations

Drawing on recent empirical research, we study whether the international business cycle, as measured in terms of the output gaps of the G7 countries, has out-of-sample predictive power for gold-price fluctuations. To this end, we use a real-time forecasting approach that accounts for model uncertainty and model instability. We find some evidence that the international business cycle has predictive power for gold-price fluctuations. After accounting for transaction costs, a simple trading rule that builds on real-time out-of-sample forecasts does not lead to a superior performance relative to a buy-and-hold strategy. We also suggest a behavioral-finance approach to study the quality of out-of-sample forecasts from the perspective of forecasters with potentially asymmetric loss functions.     

Supply management and family business: A review and call for research

Family-owned enterprises dominate global business, generating 70–90% of the world's gross domestic product. Existing management research has validated that family businesses often behave differently than non-family businesses, primarily by focusing on idiosyncratic non-economic goals that are not typically assessed in traditional business research. Extant supply management literature has yet to investigate the influences of family business, thus overlooking a potential significant source of variation in our research as well as limiting our managerial relevance. The objective of this paper is to introduce supply management scholars to family business, including its prominence and unique characteristics. Applying socioemotional wealth as a theoretical lens, we develop a research agenda from existing supply management and family business literature by offering propositions for future research where family business influences may permeate contemporary supply management topics including strategic supply management, sourcing strategy, supplier relationships, sustainability, risk, and e-procurement. In doing so, we provide an initial foundation for supply management scholars to both incorporate family business effects into research and launch new research streams. This is one of the first papers to our knowledge that introduces the field of family business to supply management scholars.     

International entrepreneurship and the small business

The topic of ‘international entrepreneurship’ is becoming increasingly popular with researchers concerned with examining how international and entrepreneurial activities intersect when people in organizations engage in pro-active brokering and risk-taking behaviour in cross-border contexts. Some caution is needed in over-generalizing the meaning and significance of international entrepreneurship – especially in relation to small businesses. Not all entrepreneurial risk-taking, brokering and opportunity-seeking activities lead to internationalization (as the statistics on small business international activities indicate). This might suggest then that the only truly internationally entrepreneurial firms are those that are ‘born global’. However, their entrepreneurial activities are more ‘spatial’, concerned with what can be constructed again in relation to global markets rather than in relation to the local/regional context in which the business is located. For small firms that internationalize a few years after start-up (late starters), processes of international entrepreneurship are different. For ‘later starters’, international entrepreneurship is distinctive in that it is characterized by extending and modifying entrepreneurial understandings and practices that have been socially constructed in relation to the local and regional context in which the small firm is located.     

高等商学教育国际标准的变化趋势——AACSB新标准对中国商学教育的启示

介绍了AACSB标准变化情况,通过对AACSB新旧标准的对比研究,分析高等商学教育国际标准的变化趋势,指出未来我国的商学教育发展需要强调创新与特色、重视教学与科研的平衡与联系、重视学术与实践的联系、重视社会影响与商业伦理.     

A cybernetic view of environmental management: the implications for business organizations

Current environmental management practice is judged to be mechanistic and based on previous experience with health and safety and with quality management systems. In support of the claim that systems approaches to management are required, the question is asked: what is the systemic nature of environmental management and will it lead an organization towards some concept of sustainable business practice? To try and answer this question the Viable System Model (VSM) developed by Stafford Beer was used to analyse current environmental management practice from a systems perspective in seven manufacturing organizations. The findings suggest that significant structural changes in organizations will be necessary as well as changes in management practices (core competencies) and attitudes if organizations are to become viable. Tomorrow's business strategy is likely to be driven much more by cooperation rather than by competition. Some possible implications for business are: (1) Corporate portfolios will be organized around the supply chain (or flows of energy and materials) instead of products and markets. (2) Strategy will not only continue to be made at the corporate and business unit levels but also at the industry level. (3) Such developments will require much higher degrees of integration and cooperation than is currently practised between companies. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The benefits of global teams for international organizations: HR implications

Abstract

In this special issue we aim to advance the theoretical, conceptual and empirical knowledge about the relationship between global teams and human resource management in international organizations. We argue that although the prevalence of global teams in international organizations is rapidly rising, simultaneously affecting the management of firms on global, regional and local levels, the response of firms and scholars alike to such changes has been slower, especially in the area of IHRM. The HR function in organizations could play a vital role in understanding, managing and leveraging the benefits of global teams to ensure that they contribute positively to the performance of firms, organizational units, and people. We demonstrate that there is still a disconnect in this respect and we highlight several areas in which the increasing use of global teams may challenge our conventional understanding of IHRM issues, and at the same time offer solutions for improvement in international organizations. The selected articles in this special issue provide both theoretical and practitioner implications by highlighting the need to explore the relationship between global teams and IHRM more generally and fully, as well as the need for HR practitioners and IHRM scholars to focus more on the ‘human’ and less on the ‘resources’ aspect. We trust that readers of this issue will agree that the articles all offer novel insights into key issues that open new avenues for further research in this nascent yet promising area.     

The international drivers of domestic airline mergers in twenty nations: integrating industrial organization and international business

The domestic airline merger phenomenon of the late 1980s and early 1990s sparked a great deal of Industrial Organization (IO) literature; yet, that literature neglected non‐US domestic mergers and potential for international competitive gains. Using an International Business perspective to complement an IO analysis, I argue that factoring international competitive incentives helps explain domestic airline merger activity. A Cournot model of airline competition illustrates that domestic mergers, via enhanced domestic networks and reduced domestic competition, generate international competitive gains. Further, empirical tests—using a structural equations approach on panel data covering interhyphen‐national city‐pair market segments—support domestic mergers improving international competitiveness. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Precedence diagramming method: Some unusual characteristics and their implications for project managers

The Precedence Diagramming Method, with its activity-on-node network and additional precedence relationships, offers an easier and more flexible network approach to modeling large projects than conventional PERT/CPM. But the new relationships (start-to-start and finish-to-finish constraints) can change some of the basic notions of critical path methodology, including the concept of a critical path itself. Calculations of early and late job start times are affected, along with total slack. Traditional methods of shortening a project by crashing jobs on the critical path can occasionally have anomalous effects. These little-known characteristics of PDM are discussed, along with their implications for project managers, analysts, and other users of network methodology. Suggestions are made for improving the information available in computer printouts of PDM networks and for avoiding some of the anomalous effects. While PDM improves the project planner's ability to more simply and accurately model large projects, users should be aware of and able to effectively deal with its sometimes peculiar characteristics.     

国际工程项目劳务管理工作的探索与思考

文章介绍了国际劳务管理,通过巴贡、班谷、甘再、布维项目劳务管理的总结,分析了国际项目劳务的重要性,并对各种类型劳务管理的优缺点和适用性进行了阐述,以期为促进我国国际业务的拓展,劳务管理走上规范化、制度化的轨道作为借鉴作用。     

Career success across 11 countries: implications for international human resource management

This qualitative study examines perceived meanings of career success across 11 countries. The results show that people define career success in ways that enrich and illuminate the basic dichotomy of objective and subjective career success and establish their relative strengths across countries. Juxtaposing our data with human resource management (HRM) practices, we contribute to the universalist versus contextualist debate in HRM by adding the career management angle. We shed light on the relative importance of cultural and institutional factors for HRM in the area of careers and add a global perspective to the discussion about agentic careers. In our discussion we offer practical suggestions for multinational companies including how to individualize HRM to address diverse views of career success.     

Limited participation in international business cycle models: A formal evaluation

In this paper, we argue that limited asset market participation (LAMP) plays an important role in explaining international business cycles. We show that when LAMP is introduced into an otherwise standard model of international business cycles, the performance of the model improves significantly, especially in matching cross-country correlations. To perform formal evaluation of the models we develop a novel statistical procedure that adapts the statistical framework of Vuong (1989) to DSGE models. Using this methodology, we show that the improvements brought out by LAMP are statistically significant, leading a model with LAMP to outperform a representative agent model. Furthermore, when LAMP is introduced, a model with complete markets is found to do as well as a model with no trade in financial assets – a well-known favorite in the literature. Our results remain robust to the inclusion of investment specific technology shocks.     

The international business traveller: a neglected but strategic human resource

There has been considerable research over the past two decades into the various aspects of traditional expatriate assignments. However, this research has overlooked an important category of international operator: the international business traveller, also known popularly as globetrotter or frequent flier. In this paper, we report on the results of a study of ten Australian and Danish international business travellers (IBTs). The aim was to explore the roles and activities of IBTs and the factors, such as level of organizational support that may intervene in the performance of their roles. We conclude that IBTs often are a neglected resource, particularly in terms of skills and knowledge transfer.     

Cultural distance in international business and management: from mean-based to variance-based measures

Extant practice in international management is to measure cultural distance as a nation-to-nation comparison of country means on cultural values, thereby ignoring the cultural variation that exists within countries. We argue that these traditional mean-based measures of cultural distance should take within-country cultural variation into account. Therefore, we propose the use of variance-based measures of cultural distance. To illustrate our argument, we examine total US foreign affiliate sales in more than 40 host countries over the 1983–2008 period, complemented with data from the World Values Survey. We analyze the effects of three cultural distance measures: the Kogut and Singh (1988 Kogut, B., and Singh, H. (1988), ‘The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode,’ Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 411–432.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) mean-based index of cultural distance, the Kogut and Singh (1988 Kogut, B., and Singh, H. (1988), ‘The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode,’ Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 411–432.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) index conditioned by host-country cultural variation and a variance-based measure that takes into account both home- and host-country cultural variation. Our findings indicate that, when within-country cultural variation is taken into account, the explanatory power of the Kogut and Singh (1988 Kogut, B., and Singh, H. (1988), ‘The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode,’ Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 411–432.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) index is substantially decreased. In addition, our variance-based measure of cultural distance outperforms the Kogut and Singh (1988 Kogut, B., and Singh, H. (1988), ‘The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode,’ Journal of International Business Studies, 19, 411–432.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) measure in the explanation of foreign US sales. We therefore suggest to move from mean-based to variance-based measures of cultural distance, thereby taking the cultural variation within countries into account.     

The performance of international returnee ventures: the role of networking capability and the usefulness of international business knowledge

This paper sheds light on the international new ventures led by returnee entrepreneurs and investigates the influence of networking capability and the usefulness of international knowledge for the overall performance of so-called international returnee ventures (IRVs). By integrating network theory with a capability view of firm performance, it advances six hypotheses that form a structural model, which is tested with LISREL on a sample of 194 IRVs from China. The findings show that international networking capability has a positive influence on the provision of international business knowledge, which in turn is positively related to the innovation performance, but they have a negative impact on the financial performance. Hence, this study presents a discussion of the usefulness of knowledge gained from the international network relationships of emerging market returnee entrepreneurs.     

国际工程承包风险分析

在国际上承包工程受到政治、经济、商务、建设环境、社会等多方面因素的影响,如何分析和评价这些因素对承包商进入国际市场并获取利润至关重要,本文利用AHP来分析和评估这些因素,计算因素发生可能性的大小,为承包企业进行决策提供依据.     

Enigmatic exchange mechanisms in modern societies: Community and business barter and international countertrade

Modem domestic barter systems are operating in Australia and other high-income countries at the local community level, and at the national level for business exchanges. Both governments and firms practise countertrade at the international level. These exchange regimes appear to have become institutionalised in a macromarketing system which is organised on the primacy of market exchange based on price as the coordinating device. In this paper, explanations for this enigma are presented with a particular emphasis on the Australian context.