Conjoint implications on job preferences: the moderating role of involvement

Attracting qualified staff is pivotal for organizational competitive advantages. However, little is known about which employer characteristics mainly drive job choice, or about how applicants evaluate certain organizational characteristics. Moreover, recent recruitment research hints that the influential weight of organizational characteristics on job choice may be contingent upon applicants' involvement. By using conjoint analysis, we test the impact of different organizational and job characteristics as well as the moderating role of involvement. The results suggest that involvement increases soft factors, while decreasing the effect of payment on job choice.     

Human resource management and early internationalization: is there a leap-frogging in international staffing?

The present study focuses on the international staffing of early internationalizers by linking the Ethnocentric, Polycentric, Regiocentric, and Geocentric (EPRG) concept with the Process Theories of Internationalization. On a dataset of 116 (N) German medium-sized companies, we test whether the determinants which allow firms to internationalize shortly after their inception, namely prior international experience, technological intensity, and networks, influence the firms' international staffing. We further elaborate whether this influence differs between early and late internationalizers. The empirical results show that prior international experience is not associated with the firms' international staffing at all, and thus, does not allow conclusions. Technological intensity increases the probability of the choice of an ethnocentric staffing policy, especially for early internationalizers. In contrast, networks enable firms, especially early internationalizers, to pursue regiocentric or geocentric staffing policies.     

Modeling the Impact of Advertisement‐Image Congruity on Applicant Attraction

This study examines the effects of the perceived congruity of recruitment advertisements and organizational image on organizational attractiveness. Based on Mandler's schema congruity theory (1982) and on recruitment research, we developed hypotheses and tested them on a sample of 1,091 individuals. The results show that recruitment advertisements that conform to the organization's image show a higher degree of attractiveness to applicants, particularly because these advertisements have higher resulting credibility than advertisements with low congruity. Furthermore, applicants’ level of familiarity with the organization moderates the relationship between congruity and organizational attractiveness, as congruent recruitment advertisements lead to more positive effects for well‐known organizations. This suggests that highly recognizable organizations should use congruent advertisements to unleash the full potential of their recruitment efforts. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Effect of Social Media on Reputation During a Crisis Event in the Cruise Line Industry

ABSTRACT

This research evaluates social media’s role in shaping perceptions of reputation during crisis management in a cruise line setting. Data were collected from respondents in the United States and Germany (N = 334) to explore the influence of speed and clarity of corporate response, brand familiarity, and cultural values on the perception of corporate reputation of a cruise line experiencing a crisis. Results indicated that speed of response using social media, brand familiarity, and cultural values of the respondent affected perceptions of corporate reputation of a cruise line after a crisis.     

Are There “Honorable Merchants” in International Marketing Channels?

The starting points of this initial exploratory study are two research questions: (1) could marketing relationships in international marketing channels be predicted by international marketing managers’ behavior reflected by “honorable merchants’” key concepts (ethics and trust) and experiential learning key concepts such as capability and competence?; and (2) can we measure the progress of this research theme in the international marketing literature and understand the nature of this phenomenon? We examine how scholarly research on international marketing managers’ behavior and their marketing relationships evolved from 2003 to 2013 and envisage the shape of this research theme the next years, to uncover current trends and possible research gaps on the ethics agenda in the international marketing education area. We identified the most salient concepts from 2,083 words for 22 key concepts counted in the abstracts of the 327 journal articles of the international marketing literature, in order to innovatively uncover the trends and concepts, explaining the marketing relationships in the international marketing context. We assessed sets of concepts that best reflect the marketing relationships in international marketing channels and indicated prospects for increasing the focus on specific topics, by conducting a series of multiple linear regression analyses and trend analyses. The research results show that the progress of the research theme can be measured. Innovatively, key competences and capabilities of international marketing managers relating to the key concepts of the “honorable merchant” construct are realized as a strong logical basis for the explanation of effective marketing relationships in international marketing channels. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Influence of Trust on the Trilogy of Knowledge Creation,Sharing, and Transfer

This empirical article focuses on the phenomenon of trust and its influence on the trilogy of the following interrelated factors that are crucial to the success of international business cooperations and their economic results: knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge transfer. Trust is expected and desired by many business partners, but it is also abused by others. The term trust, due to its intangible and invisible nature, is often ignored or superficially treated by companies. However, when trust does not exist between international cooperation partners or is not nurtured, negative relationships and financial implications occur. These lacunae could be explained due to the difficulty in quantifying as a financial asset. The article presents qualitative findings (from two empirical research studies): (1) the implications of trust development for knowledge transfer between Russian‐ and German‐speaking companies, and (2) the influence of trust on knowledge sharing in the completion of an Austrian construction project. The authors applied phenomenological interviewing and observations of critical incidents or significant occurrences, combined with comparative content analysis. The positive influence of trust on the aforementioned trilogy results in higher levels of the involved companies’ innovativeness, culminating in higher levels of competitive advantage and profitability. The empirical findings are presented to explain the influence of trust on knowledge creation, sharing, and transfer, which have a bearing on intercultural cooperations. One innovative finding relates to the differentiated perception of emotions and the implications that this entails. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Early internationalization: A transaction cost economics and structural embeddedness perspective

This paper develops and tests a framework for the determinants of early internationalization by drawing on transaction cost economics supplemented with structural embeddedness reasoning. We theoretically explore how asset specificity, prior international experience of the management team, and international network contacts impact early internationalization of the firm. Furthermore, we elaborate how early internationalization is related to foreign market performance. Our results show that asset specificity is negatively related to early internationalization, whereas prior international experience of the management team and international network contacts have a positive impact on early internationalization. Furthermore, our results suggest that early internationalizers are more successful in respect to foreign market performance than companies that have internationalized in later years.     

How early opposed to late internationalizers learn: Experience of others and paradigms of interpretation

Although learning plays a pivotal role in the internationalization context of the firm, studies elaborating aspects of learning of early internationalizers (as opposed to late internationalizers) are largely missing. We address this deficit by examining the process of learning in the entry phase of internationalization. Our empirical results show that learning from direct experience is negatively related to early internationalization, whereas learning from others and learning from paradigms of interpretation have a positive impact on early internationalization. Furthermore, our results suggest that early internationalizers compared to late internationalizers continue to prefer cooperative modes of market penetration and show higher entry-mode stability in the same country.     

Kleptocracy and tax evasion under resource abundance

Evidence has shown that petroleum wealth is associated with less transparency and at the same time less tax collection. In this paper, we find that the two issues are linked through the citizens’ tax evasion behavior. We develop a model to explain this link and conduct extensive empirical tests of its validity. The explanation is that officials tradeoff greater transparency to improve tax compliance against less transparency to increase gains from corruption. Oil windfalls diminish tax revenue needs, causing officials to optimize on less transparency. Seeing this, citizens optimize on a lower level of tax compliance. At equilibrium, both decline with a positive oil shock. We also study the alternative channel in which tax compliance responds to enforcement. Transparency is found to be the more robust channel. Ignoring citizens’ strategic behavior would lead to predicting suboptimal investment in state capacity for tax enforcement. Using giant oil discoveries data combined with oil price data, we develop a dynamic composite instrument and estimate the model with a dynamic panel system generalized method of moments. We find robust support for our explanation and the model's deep structure for 130+ countries and the 1980–2010 period.