Book Reviews

While globalization has led to a well-documented increase in expatriation among managers and corporate executives, increased internationalization and expatriation have not been confined to business organizations alone. Educational institutions are becoming increasingly international with academics also experiencing growing levels of expatriation. However, despite their increasing international mobility, expatriate academics remain a group about which very little is known. Drawing on exploratory research carried out in Singapore and New Zealand, this essay presents several propositions about the experiences of expatriate academics as a hitherto under-researched group. In addition the essay moves towards adding another dimension to the existing expatriate management literature by considering the extent to which it can be used as a framework for understanding expatriate academics. In doing so the essay proposes some of the differences between expatriate academics and expatriate managers. The areas of focus are cross-culture training, expatriate adjustment and the expatriate family.     

Do as the large enterprises do?: Expatriate selection and overseas performance in emerging markets: The case of Taiwan SMEs

This study investigated the less explored expatriation practices of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets. Data for 133 Taiwan SMEs operating in Malaysia and Vietnam revealed that four personality traits of expatriates, i.e., control ability, independence, openness and social ability exert significant influences on overseas performance given that different types of performance require different of expatriate competency. Analytical results also indicated that the widely perceived influence of the favorable evaluation of the expatriate by top managers does not impact the overseas performance of expatriates. Further, the expatriate practices of Taiwan SMEs vary depending on cultural differences between the home country and host countries. Taken together, the findings of this study have valuable implications for both academicians and practitioners in international management.     

The management of expatriates: messages from Europe?

Much of our knowledge of expatriation and the processes of managing expatriates comes from North American researchers analysing the policies and practices of North American multinational corporations. This article uses that base of understanding, but argues that there has been an increasing stream of research into IHRM in Europe, which remains largely “invisible” to the North American specialists. Given the paucity of research in the area in general and the need for a more international understanding which can arise from examining different contexts, the article suggests that commentators outside Europe may find useful insights in the European analyses.     

The dual-career couple: Female expatriates and male trailing spouses

Dual-income and dual-career couples are becoming an increasingly important segment of professional managers in the United States. The difficulties associated with addressing the unique needs of these dual couples is accentuated when attempting to relocate one of the members of the couple overseas. Referral rates for expatriation have increased and the failure rate of those expatriates who are relocated continues to be high. This article examines the issues international human resource executives face when expatriating female managers and how multinational corporations (MNCs) can proactively address the concerns of both the expatriate managers and their trailing spouses. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Building trust in international alliances

Two facts stand out unambiguously in today's global business. One, international alliances are proliferating, underscoring the strategic importance managers increasingly attach to “competition through cooperation.” Two, trust is key to successful international alliances. Together, these two facts point to the need to better understand trust, a task that was attempted in an earlier article (Parkhe, 1998). Yet such understanding, while necessary, is not sufficient. This article, the second of a two-part series, shows how partners can proactively manage an alliance relationship in order to develop trust. Toward this goal, the discussion includes trust generation through process-based, characteristic-based, and institutional-based mechanisms, which are to a significant degree within alliance managers' control. Managers must also be mindful of several critical features of alliance dynamics. These are described in some detail, as is the need to appropriately “calibrate” trust level in an alliance to the lifecycle stage of the alliance. With proper management attention, too much and too little trust can be avoided.     

Research for Practice: The Management of Expatriates

The objective of this article is to identify expatriate management research questions of interest to international human resource (IHR) managers. We conducted an in‐depth literature review, interviewed a small sample of IHR managers, and reviewed commercially available large sample surveys of IHR managers. Results suggest that IHR managers are concerned about determinants of the decision to accept an offer of expatriation, why expatriates show so little interest in training, perceived equity in rewards, and other areas not well studied to date. The article discusses implications for academics wishing to make their research more relevant to IHR managers and global organizations. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Tractable Morality

This article discusses five propositions about managerial moral tractability -- that is, a morality that is amenable to the complexity of managers’ continual pressure to decide and act -- in their customer relations. The propositions come from the comparison of three case studies of different types of managers. To analyze the morality of managers, discursive practices of managers are studied. At the end of the article also some consideration is given to “information strategies” of managers, in relation to their tractable morality.Gjalt de Graaf received his Ph.D. at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He worked for two years as an assistant professor ‘‘strategic management” at the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Currently he works as a post-doc “Integrity of Governance” at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.     

Building industrial cooperation through Japanese strategies

Joint industrial policies undergird Japanese international growth. That policy of “unite and conquer” already has caught on in other Asian countries and in Europe. American companies, although hamstrung by laws that equate “big” with “bad,” are doing their utmost to remain competitive by pursuing Japan's cooperative strategies.     

How socialization tactics affect supplier-buyer co-development performance in exploratory and exploitative projects: The mediating effects of cooperation and collaboration

Drawing on prominent theories of innovation and interorganzational relationship paradigms, this research identifies exploration-exploitation, one of the innovation characteristics of co-development projects, as a boundary condition for the effects of formal and informal socialization tactics on co-development performance. The results suggest that formal socialization tactics enhance co-development performance in exploitative innovation projects, while informal socialization tactics facilitate co-development performance in exploratory innovation projects. Moreover, the research firstly introduces cooperation and collaboration to interpret the mediating mechanisms underlying the relationships above. The findings indicate that cooperation mediates the effect of formal socialization tactics on co-development performance of exploitative projects, whereas the influence of informal socialization tactics on co-development performance of exploratory projects is mediated by collaboration. Based on the results, this research provides practical guidelines for managers who are considering how to employ appropriate socialization tactics to facilitate performance in a setting of co-development.     

The dynamics of exchange rate regimes: Fixes, floats, and flips

The impermanence of fixed exchange rates has become a stylized fact in international finance. The combination of the “mirage” view that pegs do not really peg with the “fear of floating” view that floats do not really float generates the conclusion that exchange rate regimes are, in practice, unimportant for the behavior of the exchange rate. This is consistent with evidence on the irrelevance of exchange rate regimes for general macroeconomic performance. Recent studies, however, show that the exchange rate regime matters. This can be understood by considering the dynamics of exchange rate regimes. We demonstrate that the “mirage” view is somewhat misleading and incomplete. Pegs frequently break, but many do last. Also, there is a high degree of flipping, that is, the re-formation of pegs that have broken. Thus, a fixed exchange rate today is a good predictor that one will exist in the future. We also investigate the quantitative effect of fixed exchange rates. While the “fear of floating” view suggests little actual difference in fixed and floating rates with respect to exchange rate volatility, we show that fixed exchange rates exhibit considerably greater bilateral exchange rate stability than flexible rates, both today and in the future.     

Consumer Choices Under Small Probabilities: Overweighting or Underweighting?

This article provides a theoretical account and identifies boundary conditions for the common beliefs about the “overweighting of small probabilities”. Based on four studies, our results suggest that the weighting of probabilities is context-dependent. When the contrast in value is reduced or not presented in a decision problem, small probabilities are less likely to be overweighted. In addition, as the associated payoffs increase, the weights on small probabilities tend to diminish or even to be “underweighted”. However, there is an “interpersonal difference” in the weighting of probabilities which reflects the particular circumstances of individuals, including their wealth status. Some implications of small probabilities for marketing practices are also investigated and discussed.     

How host organizations prepare for and learn from expatriate assignments

This article reveals what goes on inside host organizations prior to and during expatriate assignments. On the basis of analyzing organizational documents and conducting 43 interviews with host country nationals (HCNs) and expatriates in 30 Vietnamese organizations that host external foreign assignments, we provide a detailed account of HCNs' experiences and unearth sophisticated preparation and management activities designed to maximize these organizations' learning. We depict what we call “a host organization lifecycle” and extract five lessons: (a) host organizations prepare carefully in advance to learn as much as possible from expatriates; (b) HCNs experience quite dramatic adjustments and burdens during expatriates' placements; (c) mutual trust between expatriates and HCNs is a prerequisite for HCNs' learning; (d) most of HCNs' learning occurs informally via interactions with expatriates or observing how they work; (e) host organization managers actively manage HCN–expatriate relationships. Our findings outline a “wish list” of practices that expatriate‐using organizations could consider deploying for expatriate assignments that focus on the benefit of the host organization' development.     

Business groups and profit redistribution: A boon or bane for firms?

This article examines the phenomenon of profit redistribution in Indian business groups and relates redistribution with the underperformance of group-affiliated firms relative to unaffiliated firms. The study also documents that profit redistribution is more pronounced in groups of large sizes and high levels of corporate control. The relative underperformance of affiliated firms persists even after controlling for other explanations such as corporate diversification and resource transfers to unlisted firms. The empirical results of the study lend support for the inefficient profit redistribution explanation of the “business group discount”.     

Career interrupted? The case of the self-directed expatriate

This paper examines the role of individual agency and the perceived value of international experience for self-directed expatriation as an increasingly common career choice. Drawing on a study of British expatriate academics, it reports that themes relating to both agency and structure come into play. Although individual desire for adventure, life change and family concerns were key incentives to expatriate, participants believed that their subsequent international experience would provide a distinct advantage in the academic marketplace. The internationalization of higher education was a key theme in these perceptions. The paper also presents practical recommendations regarding expatriate academics and other self-directed expatriates.     

Challenges in the education of the contemporary U.S. international manager

Failure rates of 30% for U.S. expatriate international managers relative to less than 10% for comparable Japanese and European international managers represent substantial costs to individuals, corporations, and U.S. global economic interests. The authors provide a profile of successful expatriate international managers and recommend four changes: (1) inclusion of international management development as a strategic U.S. corporate issue for global success; (2) alteration of current U.S. corporate selection procedures; (3) expanded implementation of rigorous leading edge international training programs; and (4) a renewed U.S. corporate-academic-government collaborative partnership to enhance international competitiveness.     

International projects'' changing patterns: Sales engineers'' changing roles

Dealing with international projects, a reflexion on recent changes of international environment as well as client expectations suggests to emphasize the importance of two additional types of business relationships which tend to complete the “traditional” big international bi-/multi-laterally supported projects scheme: — (a) big international “self-supporting” projects requiring partnership with client or, even, direct provider's involvement (if not investment), — (b) big multi-national clients developing a huge range of projects of all size worldwide, with a more or less developed need of integration of sourcing.The key issue for the providers lies, in fact, in the organisation of relationships with existing and potential clients in those two developing types of complex international operations. Hence, it suggests to re-define the company contacts systems with the client and, above all, the role and profile of the sales engineers, traditionally in charge of these responsabilities.The purpose of this article is to evaluate the environmental changes as well as their impact on international project features and to make a first attempt to evaluate the consequences of these changes on coordinators'/managers' profiles.     

International knowledge transfers through expatriates

International knowledge transfer processes and related internal stickiness factors have recently been targets of increasing research interest. However, the role of expatriate managers in these international knowledge transfers is not well understood. The objectives of the present study were (1) to analyze what kind of knowledge is transferred within MNCs and what is the role of expatriates in these transfer processes and (2) develop a theoretical framework on internal stickiness factors faced by the expatriates involved in the knowledge transfer processes on the basis of the literature, and test it empirically. The findings indicate that the role of expatriate managers was very central in the transfer processes. Furthermore, support was received for the theoretical framework of internal stickiness factors. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Customer satisfaction study via a latent segment model

The aim of this study is to apply a new conceptual model, and a new technique as an approach to the modelling of customers’ satisfaction, and to develop an overall satisfaction index (OSI). This study evaluates customers’ satisfaction of a certain public organization service, and argues that in order to estimate the global customers’ satisfaction measure we must appeal to methodologies recognizing that satisfaction must be understood as a latent variable, quantified through multiple indicators. Thus, it is natural that we consider the latent segment models (LSM) approach to proceed to the evaluation of customer's service satisfaction. As a result of these models estimation, we selected a three latent segment model, that is to say, the latent variable customer satisfaction has three classes: segment 1, with 50.4 percent of the customers, that represents “The Very Satisfied”, for those to whom everything is very well in the organization service; a segment 2, with 33.4 percent of the customers, representative of the “The Well Satisfied”, not totally satisfied with the quality of the organization, and a segment 3, with 16.2 percent of the customers, “Satisfaction Demanders”, thinking that organizational quality can be improved. Finally, we developed an overall satisfaction index which is important to show how the company as a whole is performing.     

Do social product features have value to consumers?

The present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value that selected consumers place on the social features of products. Experiments were conducted in Hong Kong and Australia using both university students and supporters of the human rights organization Amnesty International. The paper focuses on two classes of social features, “labor practices” and “animal rights and the environment”. The results show that the social features of products can, on average, affect an individuals' likelihood of purchasing a product. Also, this paper finds distinctive segments of ethically orientated consumers.     

Human capital and financial equilibrium

This article investigates the effect of incorporating human capital—an expansion of the investment opportunity set—into the analysis of portfolio investment decisions. The “production function” of human capital displays decreasing returns to scale. The return on human capital is a product of two factors: a “market” return and return unique to each individual. Financial equilibrium results are derived and tested empirically using U.S. data and an international sample. The main findings are that demand for financial assets relates positively to human capital risk and negatively to financial capital risks.