Managerial Selection Decisions in Multinational Corporations: Teaching International Business Using Problem-Based Learning

Companies face many challenges as they staff managerial positions in overseas operations, including decisions on whether to staff using expatriates, host-country nationals, or third-country nationals. We developed an exercise—designed to help students understand the differences between these three groups of employees—that requires students to develop a set of criteria that would form the basis for choosing the candidate they deem to be the best one. In addition, the exercise can serve as a springboard to discussion of the different training and compensation requirements for each of the three different types of employee. The steps involved in the exercise are presented together with suggestions for debriefing the exercise.     

Joint Venture Formation and Internationalization: A Japanese MNEs' Perspective

This article examines relationships among top-management-team composition, group processes, and the effects of those processes on cohesion for international joint venture teams in Thailand. For culturally diverse teams, demographic elements (member age, length of team tenure, level of education, functional expertise) and cultural characteristics (country of education, nationality, affiliation with a parent organization, primary language spoken) define heterogeneity. Overall, demographic heterogeneity had a significant influence on openness among team members and on cohesion when mediated by openness. Cultural heterogeneity had a significant influence on openness and cohesion among team members, with loyalty and openness having a significant influence on cohesion.     

Developing a Continuous Improvement Philosophy in a Marketing Organisation: An Examination of Key Events

This paper examines the process of quality improvement in a service and marketing organisation. This commenced with a number of disparate quality initiatives before the strategic business planning process indicated the need for a more structured approach. This two stage approach and the difficulties it caused are described. The company has faced a number of problems in the introduction of TQM, including a lack of senior management understanding of TQM and involvement, departments failing to follow through agreed actions and objectives, lack of support to teamwork and a failure to match up improvement projects to the skills and resources in the project teams.     

Addendum: Are Supermarket Advertisements Designed to Deceive Consumers?

This study builds upon previous research by assessing the magnitude and incidence of experimentally-determined deceptive advertising decisions in supermarket advertisements. In essence, it illustrates the logical second step in a viable approach to estimating the potential for deceptive advertising in other communities and for other types of products.     

Replicating the Effect of Advertised Specials at Regular Price on Food Shopper Price Evaluation

This study verifies a previous finding that food shoppers can correctly identify the advertised price level for items featured at the regular price in the context of a newspaper ad. Morever, advertising regular-priced items in prominent positions did not materially affect their price accuracy scores.     

The Impact of Program Environment on Recall of Humorous Television Commercials

This study investigated the possible effect of television program types on the recall performance of humorous television commercials. An experimental design was developed to test the relative performance of the same humorous and non-humorous ads in three different contextual environments—situation comedy, action/adventure, and documentary. The findings indicate that the recall performance of commercials and of the product or service promoted are both affected by the program environment within which the ads appear.