Use transnational teams to globalize your company

The authors report on their two-year study of successful transnational teams, in which they examined how such teams are designed and managed to help their firms pursue global business strategies. Based on this study, they present a comprehensive model of team effectiveness that includes the key characteristics differentiating a transnational team from other types of work teams. The model shows how transnational teams operate—how they are staffed and led, communicate across great distances, and cope with cross-cultural issues. In closing, they describe how a company's human resources department can help an “international” or “multinational” team become a “transnational” team—one that has successfully transcended the cultural, geographic, and managerial barriers to team effectiveness.     

Formal and Informal Practices of Knowledge Sharing Between Project Teams and Enacted Cultural Characteristics

This article investigates the process of knowledge sharing between project teams and uses a case study approach. This is especially relevant, as organizations face both the needs for separating work into projects and integrating knowledge created in projects into the organization. The results provided by the analysis technique of GABEK^® indicate that, although projects create boundaries, employees and project team leaders use formal mechanisms and develop informal practices for knowledge sharing between project teams. Furthermore, the article identifies organizational cultural characteristics enacted in these practices that can stimulate the discussion in “knowledge culture research” regarding the relationship of organizational cultural characteristics and (specific) knowledge processes.     

Women in the migrant economy. A positional approach to contextualize gendered transnational trajectories

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the life histories of migrant women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and Spain, this article explores the influence of transnational trajectories on their social positions and business strategies. A translocational positional approach enables us to research the transnational strategies of women entrepreneurs more effectively in addition to examining the changes in social positions and gendered identities between the country of origin and the country of destination. This approach contributes to scholarship on ‘context’ by offering a transnational gendered dimension in relation to the effects of social, spatial and institutional factors. Our findings demonstrate how female migrant entrepreneurs redefine their social status in different contexts by establishing a business and challenge, contest or comply with gender relations in their transnational entrepreneurial journeys.     

试论我国对跨国并购的法律应对

方兴未艾的第五次企业并浪潮已席卷了世界各国,跨国并购成为当今国际直接投资的重要方式。本文首先对企业跨国并购的利弊进行了分析,阐述了其他国家对企业跨国并购的法律规制和我国现有规制企业跨国并购的法律体系及不足之处。在此基础上提出了我国在法律上的应对之策。     

Securing Urban Frontiers: A View from Yangon,Myanmar

This article examines how variegated local and transnational interactions are reconfiguring Myanmar's largest city of Yangon. We do this through an analytical focus on frontiers and an empirical focus on how these are secured, drawing on interviews at two Security Expos and street-level observations in Yangon conducted over three years. Yangon thereby becomes a site for critical reflections about complex and multiple imbrications of frontiers, security and the urban with implications for how these may be conceptualized elsewhere.     

The Forever Frontier of Urbanism: Historicizing Persian Gulf Cities

In recent years, Persian Gulf cities have become symbols of the most spectacular forms of the ‘globalization of urbanization’. Current scholarship has sought to situate these cities in transnational processes and linkages with conceptualizations of ‘the global city’ and the mechanisms of ‘worlding’. This article builds on but moves beyond this line of analysis by turning to the histories of this region and its built environment to explore the longue‐durée influence of capital and empire operating across multiple scales. From this perspective, the glittering high‐rises and manmade islands are contemporary manifestations of a century of urban forms and logics of social control emanating from company towns, the struggles of state building, and the circulation and fixing of capital. To grasp how the Persian Gulf region has been remade as a frontier for accumulation, the analysis in this article blurs the boundaries between metropole and periphery, reconceptualizing the region not as an eclectic sideshow, but as a central site for global shifts in urbanism, capitalism and architecture in the twentieth century.     

Multiprofessional Cooperation and Accountability Pressures

Abstract

This article examines how multiprofessional healthcare teams, working as a post-New Public Management (post-NPM) reform, respond to accountability pressure resulting from the implementation of NPM reforms. The team members use three strategies to respond to this pressure: responsibility avoiding that results in conflict; responsibility ignoring that results in parallel work and responsibility sharing that results in cooperation. Depending on how the professionals respond to different contextual factors, the choice of strategies can either foster or inhibit cooperation in multiprofessional teams. Achieving holistic patient care is threatened when accountability pressure increases for teams that have not yet developed their internal routines of cooperation.     

试论我国企业对外直接投资的区位选择

文章在分析了影响企业对外直接投资区住选择的因素基础上，针对我国企业对外投资过于集中于发达国家及新兴工业化国家和地区的弊端，提出今后我国企业对外投资区住选择的策略应是：以发展中国家为主要的投资区域。兼顾对发达国家和地区的投资，积极慎重地发展对独联体和东欧等转轨国家的投资。     

The emergence of small transnational enterprise in Vancouver: the case of Chinese entrepreneur immigrants

This article examines the small transnational enterprises of recent Chinese entrepreneur immigrants to Vancouver, Canada. These enterprises are part of the globalization process and contribute to the economic and cultural integration of certain regions of Asia with large urban areas of Canada. The entrepreneurs are analyzed utilizing a transnationalism framework which is situated in the ethnic enterprise literature. The article explains how these transnational small Chinese businesses are different from the businesses of earlier Chinese in Canada. A detailed analysis of the Canadian Business Immigration Program illustrates how and why small Chinese transnational enterprises have emerged. The primary data comes from extensive in–depth interviews with 61 Chinese entrepreneur immigrants that allows for the delineation of three transnational business types: (1) Asian production–North American distribution, (2) retail chains and (3) import–export. Quantitative data illustrate the major differences between ‘transnational’ and ‘non–transnational’ enterprises along several variables. Other qualitative data provide insights on how family networks are interwoven with firm relations in small transnational businesses, how entrepreneurs perceive interethnic relations and the extent to which they experience barriers to mobility. Evidence is provided of extensive transmigration and, in contrast to the sojourner identity of earlier Chinese, the data here suggests the emergence of a new transnational and cosmopolitan identity amongst entrepreneur immigrants. Cet article étudie les petites entreprises transnationales des récents immigrants chinois de Vancouver (Canada). Celles–ci s’inscrivent dans le processus de mondialisation et contribuent à l’intégration économique et culturelle de certaines régions d’Asie dans d’importantes zones urbaines canadiennes. L’analyse de ces créateurs d’entreprise est faite à partir d’un cadre d’analyse transnationaliste qui se situe dans la littérature sur l’entreprise ethnique. L’article explique en quoi ces petites entreprises chinoises transnationales diffèrent de celles des Chinois arrivés plus tôt au Canada. Une étude détaillée du Programme canadien d’Immigration des Hommes d’affaires explique comment et pourquoi sont apparues ces petites entités transnationales. Les principales données, tirées d’entretiens approfondis avec 61 entrepreneurs chinois, permettent de définir trois types d’entreprises transnationales: production asiatique avec distribution nord–américaine, chaînes de détaillants, et import–export. Des données quantitatives illustrent les grandes différences entre les entreprises ‘transnationales’ et ‘non–transnationales’ en fonction de plusieurs variables. D’autres données quantitatives révèlent de quelle manière les réseaux familiaux s’entremêlent avec les relations professionnelles dans les petites entités transnationales, comment les chefs d’entreprise perçoivent les relations inter–ethniques et dans quelle mesure ils rencontrent des obstacles à leur mobilité. Une importante transmigration est mise en evidence et, par opposition au caractère temporaire du séjour des premiers Chinois, les données suggèrent ici l’émergence d’une nouvelle identité transnationale et cosmopolite chez les immigrants chefs d’entreprise.     

浅析联想并购的技巧

联想并购IBMPC业务后良好的市场表现表明了联想并购的初步成功。探析联想并购成功的原因,可以发现从并购前的聘请国际级中介机构到进行公关游说消除政治化责问,从设法留住管理层和员工队伍到提早实施文化整合,从吸引战略投资到采取灵活的并购策略都表现了联想高超的并购技巧,这些技巧可以为中国企业跨国并购提供借鉴。     

Improving the validity of theory testing in logistics research using correlated components regression

The purpose of this logistics research methods article is to empirically test and introduce correlated components regression (CCR) as a new statistical technique that will improve the accuracy and validity in testing logistics theoretical models and hypothesised relationships. The purpose of the current study is to use CCR analysis as technique to address multicollinearity. Customer satisfaction data with parcel carriers is analysed with using CCR and multiple regression. To determine the best regression model of these two approaches, cross-validation R² values are used. In addition, comparisons are made to examine the standardised beta coefficients from both methods and to assess the possible impact from high levels of multicollinearity. Findings of the analysis suggest that CCR has a significantly higher cross-validation R² value and thus is determined the best model of these two approaches.     

Obstacles to transnational trade union cooperation in Europe—results from a European survey

This article analyses obstacles to transnational union cooperation within Europe. It is based on a survey of unions in 14 European countries and all members of the European Trade Union Confederation. The result shows that ‘hard’ industrial relations factors are generally more important obstacles to transnational cooperation than ‘softer’ factors such as cultural, linguistic, ideological and religious differences and that there are sectoral differences in experiences of obstacles to transnational union cooperation: unions in the manufacturing sector tend to emphasise differences in industrial relations and a lack of organisational resources for transnational union cooperation, whereas low organisational priorities are held to be of more importance in the services sector and for unions for professional workers.     

不同视角下我国石油企业跨国经营风险及防范

本文从资源稀缺性和经济全球化两个角度分析了我国石油企业跨国经营风险的来源,并从缩小与国际大型石油公司的差距、建立风险预警机制、加强人才培养和管理等方面,提出了我国石油企业跨国经营风险的防范措施。     

Extending beyond borders: Multinational companies and the international management of labour

The paper investigates the potential consequences of MNCs' globalizing strategies for the management of labour, drawing on findings from a survey of employee management among MNCs operating in the UK. It finds clear evidence of transnational forms of management organization, including in the personnel sphere. But it also underlines that moves to globalism are uneven. Structures and policies to develop international management teams were found primarily among certain types of MNC. Most striking was the extent to which MNCs are actively engaged in the management of non-managerial employees at international level. Seven out of every ten companies monitored labour performance across sites in different countries. The broader significance of this finding lies in the business decisions which flow from the use of such information. As MNCs develop continental production strategies, pressures on local workforces, keen to attract future investment, for performance improvements are likely to intensify. These developments pose considerable challenges for labour which remains primarily local and national in its organizational focus.     

An empirical analysis of managers' adjustment to working in multi-national project teams in the pipeline and plant construction sector

This article empirically investigates the adjustment of managers to working in multi-national project teams in the pipeline and plant construction industry. The members of such teams come from diverse national backgrounds and there is no single culture dominating the team. While there has been a lot of research on multi-cultural teams, organizational socialization and expatriate issues, so far these areas have been investigated separately. This article contributes to research in these fields by developing and empirically testing a model containing a number of antecedents and consequences of the adjustment of individuals when working in multi-cultural project teams. The findings highlight the importance of cross-cultural sensitivity for individuals' adjustment in such teams, as well as the positive role of adjustment for individuals' satisfaction, commitment and intention to stay with the team.     

Consciousness-Based Management Development

Abstract

Training in meditation is being introduced into corporations worldwide, yet analyses of programs are rare. Case studies document the experiences of members of three top management teams who learned the Transcendental Meditation program in corporate-supported programs and suggest a new trend in management development: Con-sciousness-Based^SM Management Development. This approach, which allows managers to access inner latent capacities, appears to meet criteria described in the literature for an effective management and team development program. The comprehensive changes reported are said to result from unfolding the organizing power of Natural Law in the awareness of the manager.     

Performance appraisal: dimensions and determinants

Abstract

Using a sample of Spanish establishments in the manufacturing sector, this article analyses the determinants of the dimensions of performance appraisal. The dimensions examined are performance measures, who evaluates performance and frequency. The results show that the degree of autonomy of the workforce affects positively the use of subjective criteria. It is also more likely that performance appraisal is carried out by the supervisor in the presence of teams and internal promotions. Regarding the explanation of the frequency, teams affect negatively this dimension of performance appraisal.     

The role of HR managers in international mergers and acquisitions: a multiple case study

The article departs from the existing research treatment of expatriation as an individual-level phenomenon, and looks at the expatriation of work teams. We examine the performance management of expatriate teams brought in from 17 independent organizations to work on a new-product development project. We find that the teams faced diverse stakeholder expectations and that these stakeholders' expectations were a source of tension for the teams. The teams responded by adopting performance management strategies that tended to prioritize their respective home organizations' expectations. We discuss the vulnerability of contextual performance and the relative insignificance of national cultural differences in this expatriation context. We propose practical considerations and an agenda for further international human resource management (IHRM) research on expatriate teams.     

对制造业企业跨国经营的思考

我国在加入WTO以后,正在实施“走出去“战略,制造业企业如何开展跨国经营是其中一个重要的问题。本文主要讨论了我国企业跨国经营的现状、制造企业跨国经营存在的问题和应该采取的对策。指出必须健全、完善政策法规,树立跨国投资的战略意识,正确的战略安排,完善企业治理机制,培养跨国经营的管理人才。作者认为这样做,制造业企业才能打开良好的局面。     

Transnational HR network learning in Korean business groups and the performance of their subsidiaries

This study explores (1) how two distinct dimensions of transnational human resources (HR) network learning, i.e. globally linked and locally leveraged learning, are related to the performance of the foreign subsidiaries of Korean business groups (chaebols) and (2) how strategic HR learning mediates the relationship between these two dimensions of transnational HR network learning and the performance of foreign subsidiaries. We propose that each dimension of transnational HR network learning is related independently and jointly to the performance of a chaebol's foreign subsidiaries. Our results suggest that locally leveraged HR learning has a stronger relationship with the performance of sales subsidiaries, whereas globally linked HR learning has a stronger relationship with the performance of manufacturing subsidiaries. In addition, we find that the interaction between the two dimensions of transnational HR network learning has a weaker positive relationship with the performance of foreign manufacturing subsidiaries than that of foreign sales subsidiaries.