Integration by Emerging Economy Multinationals: Perspectives from Chinese Mergers and Acquisitions

The integration process of international mergers and acquisitions by emerging economy multinationals is fraught with challenges of liabilities of foreignness and country of origin. We use insights from institutional theory and draw on the experience of Chinese international mergers and acquisitions to explore these challenges faced by emerging economy multinationals during postmerger integration. We find that these challenges, which are primarily caused by informal institutional differences, can be overcome by developing organizational capabilities for integration and employing mechanisms for appropriate control and justice during the integration process. The study contributes to the ongoing discussions about the relevance of sociocultural influences in the successful integration of international mergers and acquisitions. Our framework proposes initiatives that managers from emerging economies can take to overcome postmerger integration challenges. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Should Independent Directors Have Term Limits? The Role of Experience in Corporate Governance

We examine the role of independent directors with extended tenure in board‐level governance, monitoring decisions, and advising outcomes. These directors exhibit a higher level of commitment as they attend more board meetings and take more committee memberships. Firms with a higher proportion of these directors have lower chief executive officer (CEO) pay, higher CEO turnover‐performance sensitivity, and a smaller likelihood of intentionally misreporting earnings. These firms also restrict the expansion of resources under the CEO's control as they are less likely to make acquisitions, while the acquisitions they do make are of higher quality. Efforts to impose term limits on directors may, therefore, be misguided.     

Analysis of Instantaneous and Early Failures in Weibull Distribution

There are many situations in life testing experiment where an item fail instantaneously and hence the observed lifetime is reported as zero. The items that fail prematurely are called early failures. We propose a modified Weibull distribution as a suitable model to represent such situations by mixture of a singular distribution at zero and a two parameter Weibull distribution. We obtain the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters and their asymptotic distributions. The methods are illustrated on drying of woods under different experiments and schedules reported by Vanmann (Research report, 1991:2).     

An integrated fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making model for employees' performance appraisal

Evaluating and ranking the employees working in organisations are challenging tasks involving several factors. Each employee achieves certain skill levels in various factors and the resulting information can be overwhelming. This article demonstrates how an integrated tool like fuzzy multi-attribute decision making (FMADM), with fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP), fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD), is applied as a fair evaluating and sorting tool to support the performance appraisal (PA) system. The fuzzy linguistic approach has the advantage of reducing distortion and losing of information. FMADM focuses on the best practices of employees for the purpose of improving overall performance. Unlike traditional PAs, FMADM searches for the highly skilled employees who will serve as peers. The FMADM process identifies employees who require improvements in certain factor(s), and the magnitude of improvements required. This study supports the ideas that rating formats need re-examination as an alternative to traditional rating methods. Earlier adopted methods have seldom identified and quantified the individual factors for improvement, whereas FMADM could overcome these shortfalls. Based on the results of FMADM, the improvement of employees' performance is possible by way of providing training, talent enhancement and further qualification wherever required.     

Following the breadcrumbs: An analysis of online product review characteristics by online shoppers

Consumer-generated product reviews are a driving force behind online purchases; at the same time, unfavorable reviews can discourage interested online shoppers and eventually hurt the brand. The objective of this exploratory study was to analyze a diverse range of characteristics and the valence of online product reviews that would aid in responding to customer dissatisfaction. Product reviews (N = 1982) from Amazon.com were collected and content analyzed. Some of the key findings include the following: (a) price was the most commonly discussed product feature; (b) online shoppers found two-sided reviews to be most informative, contradicting the commonly held assumption that negative reviews were more informative and diagnostic in nature; and (c) ‘no action’ was the most common end action across two-sided and negative reviews, indicating that varying levels of dissatisfaction might not always lead to a negative end action. Implications for marketers are discussed.     

Informal institutions and international entrepreneurship

This study examines the influence of three informal institutions, performance orientation, self-expression and social desirability, on the extent of internationalization by early stage entrepreneurial firms. We employed multi-level modeling techniques using 20,656 individual-level responses obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey for 39 countries from 2001 to 2008, and supplementing with country-level data obtained from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study. The results demonstrate that high performance orientation, high self-expression, and low social desirability of entrepreneurship in societies increase the extent of internationalization by early-stage entrepreneurial firms. The study promotes new theory and empirical findings on the relationship between informal institutions and entrepreneurial agency.     

Management Resistance to Takeover Bids and Shareholder Response

This paper presents a model of management resistance to takeover bids in which there is both a managershareholder conflict of interest due to perquisite consumption and information asymmetry. The optimal response of shareholders to such resistance is then analysed. The paper highlights the role of information asymmetry and perquisite consumption in explaining the empirical evidence on takeovers and the institutional features of golden parachutes and greenmail.     

‘I owe my life to the kind individual who called the helpline’: exploring the interplay of self-views and social distance in narrative advertising on domestic violence prevention in India and the United States

Abstract

The persuasiveness and popularity of narratives in commercial advertising has gained much attention but its application in inculcating responsible behaviour is severely limited. Domestic violence against women is a global issue and there is a dire need for effective bystander intervention campaigns. This two-part study delved into how narratives could be employed to elicit favourable ad attitudes and encourage bystanders to report instances of domestic abuse in their neighbourhood. Study 1 focused on testing the effectiveness of narratives in two culturally diverse countries – India and the United States. In general, findings showed that narratives (vs. non-narratives) were more persuasive in both countries. As the next step, using culture (interdependence vs. independence) and social distance (parents vs. neighbours), Study 2 found narratives with a socially proximal entity (parents) to be more persuasive in India while no differences between countries were observed for the socially distant entity (neighbours). Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Missing in action: teacher and health worker absence in developing countries.

In this paper, we report results from surveys in which enumerators make unannounced visits to primary schools and health clinics in Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru and Uganda and recorded whether they found teachers and health workers in the facilities.     

“Tax” and “Fee” Frames in Green Advertisements: The Influence of Self-Transcendence in Reusable Bag Usage

Increasing the use of reusable shopping bags is one of many actions that consumers can take to reduce waste and conserve energy. However, this goal is somewhat daunting because it requires a significant behavior change on the part of consumers. Taking their self-transcendence into consideration, the current study used an experimental method to examine which type of message frame best influenced shoppers to use reusable bags: a fee (gain) or a tax (loss). Findings show that high self-transcendent participants were more environmentally conscious and that, overall, a penalty framed as a tax was more effective. Implications are discussed.