Rating Expatriate Leader Effectiveness in Multisource Feedback Systems: Cultural Distance and Hierarchical Effects

A critical challenge for global firms is to implement assessment tools to develop expatriate leaders who can effectively manage role relationships across different directions (upward, laterally, downward) in cross‐national contexts. Drawing on social categorization and relational demography theories and a data set of 360‐degree ratings of expatriates from 36 countries, we use multilevel modeling to investigate relationships between cultural distance and ratings of leadership effectiveness in task and contextual performance by colleagues with different hierarchical vantage points (subordinates, supervisors, peers). Cultural distance refers to the overall degree of difference in key cultural values identified in the GLOBE study between an expatriate's and coworkers’ countries of origin. Unlike supervisors as a rating group, results show that peer and subordinate raters as a group may be more likely to have their ratings negatively influenced by cultural distance, an effect that may be exacerbated for peer ratings from countries higher in power distance and lower in humane orientation. This study contributes to the understanding of multisource feedback systems to assess expatriate leadership effectiveness by identifying likely group ratings tendencies linked to cultural distance and hierarchical perspectives. Organizations should develop strategies to mitigate possible effects of cultural distance on subordinate and peer ratings of expatriates. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

精益创业理论研究综述与展望

在"5G+工业"时代,创新创业越来越重要,并表现出变革性、高风险性、高回报性的特点。随着"大众创业,万众创新"蓬勃发展,学术界对精益创业理论越来越关注。本文对精益创业理论相关文献进行了系统性梳理,回顾了创业理论演进与精益创业理论的提出,对其概念内涵和精益创业研究架构进行分析,从回归顾客价值和周期性视角分析认知迭代循环过程机理和影响因素,对精益创业实践应用方法和相关实证研究进行归纳,对精益创业理论研究目前存在的主要问题和该理论的未来研究方向进行了展望,以期为后续研究提供参考。     

An optimisation method for complex product design

Designing a complex product such as an aircraft usually requires both qualitative and quantitative data and reasoning. To assist the design process, a critical issue is how to represent qualitative data and utilise it in the optimisation. In this study, a new method is proposed for the optimal design of complex products: to make the full use of available data, information and knowledge, qualitative reasoning is integrated into the optimisation process. The transformation and fusion of qualitative and qualitative data are achieved via the fuzzy sets theory and a cloud model. To shorten the design process, parallel computing is implemented to solve the formulated optimisation problems. A parallel adaptive hybrid algorithm (PAHA) has been proposed. The performance of the new algorithm has been verified by a comparison with the results from PAHA and two other existing algorithms. Further, PAHA has been applied to determine the shape parameters of an aircraft model for aerodynamic optimisation purpose.     

基于工作过程的物流类专业交互式教学探索

根据"工作过程系统化"的思路,从物流专业的培养人才目标出发,进行相关课程的重新构建,利用闭环反馈机制对课程设置进行遂步优化和调整,建立了一套能够对职业环境变化即时反应的"工作过程系统化"机制,从而为高等院校的教学实践提供了有益借鉴。     

证券市场投资策略组合效率研究--基于大样本性质下的概率推导

市场认为将基本面分析和技术分析策略进行组合能有效提高分析准确度，而以往对于策略间组合的效率研究相对空缺。以技术分析流派噪音理论以及行为金融正反馈模型为理论基础，结合概率论的推导证明，在大样本性质下策略的组合难以有效提高分析准确度，且认为组合胜算得到提高的概率并非所使用策略胜算的单调函数，即胜算越高的策略进行组合，其产生的策略组合未必能有效提高分析准确率。     

Improving service quality in public transportation systems using automated customer feedback

In this paper the necessity for standardised automated information exchange between travellers and transportation company is evaluated to improve the service quality of public transport. Therefore the needs and expectations of transportation companies and travellers are defined and the usage of a novel approach for bidirectional information and communication systems in public transport is proposed. As a result, application scenarios for the usage of customer information are described and the advantages of this novel approach, especially for dispatching processes, are highlighted. Furthermore, the benefits for customers and transportation companies in regard to service quality are pointed out.     

Gray markets: past,present, and future

This article conducts a literature review on three gray market areas: strategy, legal issues, and consumer behavior. Previous gray market strategy-based articles do not discuss the impact of the Web on gray market activity, limit their analysis to international gray markets, and do not identify situations where gray market activity is profitable for a manufacturer and its authorized resellers. Like the strategy-based articles, the legal issue-based articles confine their discussion to international gray markets. A current US Supreme Court case that expands the potential for gray market activity is discussed. The third research stream focuses on the impact of brand image and brand equity and the relationship of perceived risk and gray market acceptance by consumers. The authors develop an overall strategy for dealing with gray market activity based on balancing positive and negative issues. In some cases, it is prudent for manufacturers and resellers to view gray markets as an alternative strategy to private labels, second-tier brands, or fighting brands. In other instances, firms need to explore supply- and demand-based strategies to deter gray market activity. Alternative organization formats for gray market surveillance and control are discussed. Difficulties associated with conducting gray market research as well as directions for future research in gray markets are covered.     

The effect of buyer feedback scores on internet auction prices

One of the major roles of Internet intermediaries is to help build trust between buyers and sellers for efficient and safe transactions. The buyer feedback system started in online auctions as one of the trust‐building mechanisms on the Internet. As the buyer feedback system is becoming a standard trust‐building mechanism in other e‐commerce sites as well as in online auction, there is an increasing interest about the impact of the buyer feedback system. On the top of recent studies investigating the effects of buyer feedback scores on auction prices, we provide empirical validations using more sophisticated methods. In this study, we tested the relationship between buyer feedback scores and bidding prices using an empirical data set from a leading consumer‐to‐consumer (C2C) Internet auction site. Data analysis results show a strong empirical validation of previous studies. Negative feedback is a significant price discount factor in the final auction price on the C2C Internet auction market. The results also show that potential buyers are more sensitive to negative feedback when they are considering buying inherently risky products such as used or refurbished products.     

How do managers decide on internationalization processes? The role of organizational slack and performance feedback

This study draws on the behavioral theory of the firm to the postulate relationships between organizational slack and performance aspirations, and internationalization processes. Based on longitudinal data (2000–2008) from 772 publicly listed firms in Taiwan, the findings indicate that organizational slack significantly influences the internationalization processes. Specifically, firms with high organizational slack that have performance that falls below aspirations managers are more likely to exhibit (1) a rapid pace, (2) a wider scope, and (3) an irregular rhythm in their internationalization processes. In addition, we observed an interaction effect between performance feedback and different levels of slack on the internationalization processes.     

Assessing the relationships between Nationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Individualism in Flanders using Bergstrom's approximate discrete model

Although Nationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Individualism in Flanders have been the subject of several studies before, a longitudinal analysis has not been performed on all three concepts simultaneously nor have their relationships and the direction of their relationships been studied in continuous time. In this study we performed a continuous-time state-space analysis on panel data collected from 1274 subjects, in the years 1991, 1995 and 1999. The LISREL program is used for estimating the approximate discrete model (ADM), and for comparison, also the exact discrete model (EDM) is estimated by means of the Mx program. Details of continuous time modeling, especially the EDM and ADM, are dealt with. Individualism and Ethnocentrism turn out to be connected in a moderately strong feedback relationship with the effect from Individualism towards Ethnocentrism somewhat stronger than that in the opposite direction. Both Individualism and Ethnocentrism have small effects on Nationalism. The autoregression functions, cross-lagged effect functions, and mean predictions are shown.