Ethical turnarounds and transformational leadership: A global imperative for corporate social responsibility

A company's social responsibility grounded in appropriate ethical values. Accountability for this foundation lies with the corporate leadership, which is responsible for establishing organizational values and culture. When a breach occurs in this leadership process, or when a transition‐economy organization is entering the global arena, an ethical turnaround is generally needed. We created this term to describe the leadership process needed to regain, or initially establish, corporate credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders. These leadership requirements go beyond those needed in a strategic turnaround since they must help resuscitate an organization's cusses transformational leadership during ethical turnarounds in developed economies (focusing on Tyco) and in transition economies (focusing on Troika Dialog in Russia). We conclude with implications for business leaders in both economic settings. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Understanding IJV performance in a learning and conflict mediated context

Determinants of international joint venture (IJV) performance are examined within the context of cross-border learning. Using a structural equation model, we test the multifaceted interactions among strategic goal congruency, national culture differences, learning and conflict. Cross-border learning is recognized as a kernel variable which is influenced by matching strategic motives, national culture differences, and conflicting relations, and which affects the performance of IJVs. In particular, we hypothesize that interpartner goal congruency and national culture differences have an indirect effect on IJV performance through cross-border learning and conflict; previous studies established their direct relationship. The test results show that congruent strategic motives and cultural similarity had a positive effect on cross-border learning, which was reinforced by learning capacity, and which in turn led to better performance. Conflicting relations between partners and heterogeneous cultural backgrounds were shown to discourage cross-border learning.     

Knowledge complementarity,knowledge absorption effectiveness,and new product performance: The exploration of international joint ventures in China

Firms use international joint ventures (IJVs) to access and learn from partners’ knowledge and thus enhance their new product performance, especially when the partners have complementary knowledge bases. Most of the existing literature assumes that knowledge complementarity can directly lead to enhanced new product performance, while ignoring the mediating role of knowledge absorption effectiveness and moderating effects of organizational structure and organizational culture to integrate and manage knowledge complementarity. Using dyadic data from 119 IJVs in China, this article suggests that knowledge complementarity influences IJV new product performance through the full mediation of knowledge absorption effectiveness. Also, the results suggest that an IJV's departmentalization of organizational structure significantly hurts the effect of knowledge complementarity on knowledge absorption effectiveness, while a strong learning culture of the IJV can significantly enhance such effects.     

Organizational Culture,Innovativeness, Market Orientation and Firm Performance in South Africa: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

ABSTRACT

For a sample of South African firms, this paper analyzes the relationships of firm performance and a set of organizational measures which includes organizational culture and climate, market orientation and innovativeness. These organizational measures are drawn from three different disciplines–organizational behavior, strategy and economics. The replicative study is framed in an extended model of competing organizational values which have been used in 13 countries including three transition economies (Vietnam, China and Russia). The work has also been done under a variety of conditions–for example, the US in a period of study growth, Thailand during the Asian Crisis and Hong Kong after the handover to China. Comparisons are made between South African results and those of firms from a group of five industrial countries. Market Orientation is the most important explainer of performance of the South African firms, and Innovativeness is also important. Specific elements of Organizational Culture are apparently less important in South Africa than elsewhere.     

Perceived cultural congruence’s influence on employed communication strategies and resultant performance: a transitional economy international joint venture illustration

Employing effective communication strategies is critical for international joint ventures (IJVs) operating in economies in transition. Theory suggests perceived cultural congruence enhances the effectiveness of communication in international relationships. The influence of perceived national culture congruence on the communication strategies (frequency, modality, direction and content) employed by an IJV partner and its influence on self-reported IJV performance is examined within a sample of Kazahkstan–foreign IJVs. Findings indicate the more culturally congruent a firm perceives its IJV partner to be, its communications employed become less frequent and more influential in terms of content. Further, results indicate that the more frequent and more formalized communication strategies employed by an IJV partner, the greater IJV partner’s self-reported IJV performance. Implications and directions for future research are addressed.     

Are we on the same page?: Justice agreement in international joint ventures

This study examines the organizational and personal level conditions under which boundary spanners in an international joint venture (IJV) tend to disagree with each other regarding procedural justice. Nested within the logic of boundary spanning and building on the integrated justice theory and joint venture theory, this study develops an overarching framework explaining organizational- and individual-level factors impacting the level of disagreement. Our analysis of 182 IJVs in a large emerging market suggests that such disagreement increases with objective gap, ownership asymmetry, and environmental uncertainty but decreases with mutual familiarity between cross-cultural partner firms. Disagreement is also reduced when boundary spanners have more experience in managing IJVs and a longer period working together.     

3M: Role model for emerging markets

This article focuses on the role of multinational companies in transferring advanced human resource management practices to post‐Communist countries. It reviews the lessons learned from the complex cultural and historical configuration of a transitional economy. The authors analyze 3M's experience in Russia and the results of interviews with the company managers. They summarize innovative solutions in hiring, training, motivating employees, and creating organizational culture, and discuss the company's position as a role model for emerging markets. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Strategic orientation of high-technology firms in a transitional economy

Strategic orientation is a critical factor for a firm's competitiveness in a transitional economy context but it is understudied in the current literature. This article examines the antecedents of strategic orientation from both the socio-cognitive and resource-based view perspectives. The study posits that the strategic orientations of firms in a transitional economy context are influenced by the top managers’ cognitions and organizational resources. Based on a national survey of high-technology firms in China, the study finds that a stronger market-focused strategic orientation was facilitated by managerial cognitions about the future of the industry and current operation and performance of the firm, as well as organizational resources including an R&D infrastructure, technological alliance, and top managers' foreign experience. The study confirms that strategic orientations should be examined from multiple theoretical perspectives.     

Microfoundations for learning within international joint ventures

IJV research highlights the importance of learning in international joint ventures (IJVs) but has not indicated how to achieve it. We combine organizational learning and internationalization process research within a microfoundations framework to understand learning in IJVs. We study a Samsung–Tesco IJV that successfully learned retail practice from one partner and applied it in a South Korean context known by the other. The managers used many learning processes, not just experiential learning emphasized in international business research, and used many more knowledge sources than assumed in prior research, including the IJV partners’ other subsidiaries. To build absorptive capacity, IJVs need appropriate microfoundations at individual, process and structural levels, and coherent interlinkages between them, especially by having IJV managers’ with extensive experience and orientation to learn who are given structural and process autonomy to invest in learning.     

The paradox and change of Russian cultural values

Existing studies on Russian culture using the dominant dimensional theory of culture (e.g., Hofstede’s), in general, offer “stereotypical” characterization of that country’s societal culture but fail to capture the dynamics of cultural values that exist in Russian business and society. We argue that this weakness stems from the either/or logic associated with such an approach. We echo the call for improving the quality of cross-cultural research by going beyond Hofstede (Tung & Verbeke, 2010) through studying cultural paradoxes and their embedded contexts (e.g., Osland & Bird, 2000) in historical and contemporary Russia. To this end, we have applied Faure & Fang’s (2008) framework which builds on the holistic, dynamic, and paradoxical Yin Yang thinking to unravel the paradox inherent and changes to Russian cultural values over time. We find that underlying paradoxical values that traditionally coexisted in Russian culture during the Communist regime have been further reinforced as a consequence of Russia’s interactions with the rest of the world. In post-Communist Russia, traditional values have not disappeared; rather, they coexist and interact with new values as a result of cultural learning and knowledge transfer in global economy. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research.     

Time Perspectives in International Joint Ventures:

This paper recognizes a new era for international joint ventures (IJVs) in which venturers must agree to center the venture's efforts in developing new products, regardless of its previous primary purpose. After the reasons behind the cyclical evolution in the purposes and motivations of the venturers is reviewed, the paper argues that time is a multi-dimensional variable which every organization enacts in a unique fashion. IJVs must entrain the respective time reckoning systems of the partners if the venture is to avoid strategic and operational difficulties. Assuming that the venturers' temporal asymmetry yields asynchrony in the venture, the venturers' divergent time horizons are used to demonstrate the likely impact on marketing issues. This concept extends the literature on problems unique to IJVs by identifying an element which will help assess the compatibility of potential IJV partners throughout the life cycle of the venture's industry as well as provide a neutral issue on which all entities may operate for better results in all phases of the industry's life cycle.     

Public policy influences on the formation of international joint ventures

The literature on international joint ventures (IJVs) devotes little attention to the influence of public policy on the formation of such alliances. This paper examines the influence on the recent growth in IJVs of U.S. and foreign governments’ antitrust, trade, and technology policies. Little evidence supports the claim that U.S. antitrust policy is a critical influence on the decisions of U.S. firms to collaborate with foreign enterprises. IJVs are rarely substitutes for the collaboration among U.S. firms that might develop in the absence of antitrust restrictions. The recent interest by governments in “strategic technology policy” and the growing importance of “managed trade” in some high-technology industries both have created new incentives for the formation of IJVs. There are some important parallels between recent international joint ventures and the international cartel agreements of the interwar period, but modern IJVs do not yet appear to have reproduced the cartelization associated with the international patent-sharing agreements of the interwar period. Nevertheless, the influence of these market-distorting government interventions on the incentives to form IJVs means that the effects of these alliances on economic welfare may be mixed and should be monitored carefully.     

Time to Enlarge Sino-Russian Cooperation

China and Russia have passed through different phases of development and growth in a variety of fields such as politics,economy, culture and many other areas since they first established a bilateral strategic partnership in 1996. In 1996 and again in 2007, China and Russian inaugurated the Russian and Chinese-themed national year activities, which have greatly improved the mutual understanding between the two nations and the people. Especially in the fields of trade and business, during the decade from 1998 to 2007 the amount of bilateral turnover increased nearly tenfold, This year it will break through the US$50 billion barrier; it is predicted that the bilateral trade volume will soon reach US$60 or even US$80 billion. Recently,     

The impact of firm and environmental characteristics on international joint venture (IJV) marketing performance in Thailand

International joint ventures (IJVs) have become an important means of market entry for many firms, particularly those seeking entry into Asia (Lin & Germain, 1999). This study examines firm and environmental characteristics that impact the overall satisfaction with marketing performance and economic performance of IJVs in Thailand. The data for this study were collected via a mail survey of 1,047 Thai‐foreign IJVs in Thailand. The analysis indicated that IJV marketing performance was influenced by market characteristics, commitment, marketing orientation, and organizational control and that these variables differentially impact overall satisfaction with marketing performance and economic performance. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

How long will the marriage of Sino-Foreign JVs in China last? A theoretical and empirical investigation

This paper studies the factors affecting the longevity of international joint ventures (IJVs) in China and investigates the strategic interactions of the players in an IJV (foreign parent, local parent and IJV management) by adopting game theory and using empirical analysis based on national perceptions of time horizons. The theoretical part shows equilibria for the games played by the parents. The empirical evidence, based on a sample of Chinese-US and EU IJVs, as well as Chinese-Japanese and South Korean IJVs, is consistent with the propositions derived from our theoretical models. Our empirical findings show that the longevity of an IJV is affected by senior management control. Access to local knowledge is also a crucial factor affecting longevity. Furthermore, the degree of long-term orientation (LTO) of the parents influences the longevity of Sino-Foreign IJVs. The contributions made by both foreign and local parent firms are also found to influence the longevity.     

Family economics in Russia: women's perspectives on the transition to a market economy

Abstract This study of family economic variables is based on in-depth oral interviews conducted in the spring of 1995 with 95 women living in Moscow, Russia. The survey explored family economic life in a variety of socioeconomic settings. Data gathered include an overview of the household economy, family income and expenses, satisfaction with current economic situation, patterns of consumption, work culture and women's culture. In addition, the subjects were asked to comment on the current status of women in Russia, the state of the economy and the role government should play in the economy. The analysis contributes to an understanding of the relationship between the reproduction economy and the macro/production economy in a time of major economic upheaval.     

The merchant prince

Executive Summary Youssef Mohammed has returned to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia after completing a Ph.D. in Business. He is expected to take a leadership position within a family business that is experiencing a multitude of operational and strategic problems. For Youssef, the problem is whether to accept a position where he directs an organizational‐change effort or as a detailed, hands‐on manager as family tradition commands. In addition, Youssef wonders if the Western‐management principles he has learned would be effective in the Kingdom. The case provides background information on doing business in Saudi Arabia, highlighting differences between U.S. and Middle‐Eastern business practices. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

How do ownership control position and national culture influence conflict resolution strategies in international joint ventures?

In this study, we investigate the relationship between ownership control position, national culture, and selection of conflict resolution strategies (CRS) of multinational corporations (MNCs) in their attempts to solve conflicts with local partners in international joint ventures (IJVs). The empirical evidence is based on a survey of 89 Nordic MNCs. The results show that MNCs select their CRS depending on their national culture and their ownership control position in IJVs. In addition, interesting results were found related to the interaction effects on the choice of CRS of national culture and ownership control position as well as of the trust between partners and national culture.     

Organizational culture,innovation, and performance: A test of Schein's model

Innovation is the key to organizational survival and therefore the study of processes that support innovation should be of interest to researchers and practitioners alike. Schein's multi-layered model of organizational culture offers a useful framework for thinking about processes that foster innovation. A defining characteristic of the model is the subtle but important distinctions between the varied “layers” of organizational culture (i.e., values and norms, artifacts and behaviors). The basic assumption of this study is that Schein's model offers a tractable explanation of cultural processes that support organizational innovation, especially in service firms. Despite the intuitive appeal and practical value of Schein's conceptual framework, empirical research in relation to the model is limited. This paper develops a rationale for an empirical model based on Schein's conceptual model; the study reports a test of an empirical model. Data collected from approximately 100 principals of law firms provides a suitable empirical context for a test of the model. The findings generally support the hypothesized relationships. A key result is how layers of organizational culture, particularly norms, artifacts, and innovative behaviors, partially mediate the effects of values that support innovation on measures of firm performance. The findings have implications for theory and practice, especially in relation to building an organizational culture within professional service firms that fosters innovative behavior.     

Organizational context and knowledge acquisition in IJVs: An empirical study

This article investigates the impact of organizational context on the acquisition of explicit and tacit marketing know-how from foreign partners in an IJV. A structural equation model is developed and tested using survey data from 219 IJVs in Vietnam. The organizational factors investigated include management commitment, teamwork, relationship strength and cultural distance. The results show that these factors have different effects on explicit and tacit learning.