Advances in International Management – serie

This series summarizes current thinking in the field of comparative management. The series is intended to make an academic contribution through focused essays, presenting material in a fashion suitable for both scholars and advanced students.

This volume introduces the AICM Distinguished Scholar Award and Research Forum which recognizes individuals who have made outstanding scholarly contributions to the cross-national or cross-cultural study of organizations and management. This volume offers an important article by Professor Harry C. Triandis of the University of Illinois who was the recipient of the 1998 AICM Distinguished Scholar Award, with commentaries by leading researchers in the areas of international organizational behavior and human resource management. Additional articles cover a wide range of management topics with an international focus, including: organizational risk taking, corporate governance, performance appraisal, distributive justice values, strategic human resource management, and expatriate performance. These articles, along with the Research Forum papers, present a rich diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches and represent some of the best thinking in the field.

This new volume publishes four selected articles covering an interesting set of topics in international management studies with a comparative focus, including: organizational control in joint ventures; institutional and cultural effects on subsidiary operations; corporate governance practices; and employee's choice of dissatisfaction behavior display. These articles along with the five Research Forum papers, present a rich diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches. They also represent the state-of-the-art and some of the best thinking in the field.

In this volume, Bartlett and Ghoshal examine the transnational firm, its development and future. Ending their chapter is a debate about the future of international management research involving several individual scholars including Julian Birkinshaw (London Business School), Yves Doz (INSEAD), and Eleanore Westney (MIT). Three leading scholars in the international management field, Michael Kotabe (Temple University), Alan Rugman (Indiana University) and Srilata Zaheer (University of Minnesota) provide comments on Bartlett and Ghoshal's work and on future international management research. The present volume also presents five other articles that make a contribution to the main theme of the book. Together, they cover a set of topics in international management studies including: process issues and the evolution of collaboration in the management of international strategic alliances (alliances), the antecedents and outcomes from international entry modes (market entry), examination of the localization of HRM practices in American and European multinationals (resources), and the cultural, economic and political effects on national entrepreneurial potential (resources). The work in this volume provides a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches and represents the thinking in the field on managing transnational firms focused on resources, market entry and alliances.

This volume includes contributing chapters from authors based in Asia, Europe, and North America to examine an emerging topic in the international management field - managing multinationals in a knowledge economy. They were selected to reflect the influences of three key factors - economics, culture, and human resources - on managerial decisions that affect multinationals and their effective operations. Leading the volume is an invited article by John H. Dunning, "An Evolving Paradigm of the Economic Determinants of International Business Activity." It presents a comprehensive review of his thirty-plus years of research on the eclectic paradigm, and a preview of his most recent work on the role of relational and institutional assets in foreign direct investment.This article, along with commentaries on Dunning's work written by Jose de la Torre, Timothy Devinney, Will Mitchell, and Stephen Tallman, can be found in the Research Forum section. The present volume also includes five other articles selected through a double-blind review process. They complement the Research Forum papers, which focus on the economic determinants of international business activity, by examining critical cultural and human resource issues faced by multinationals.These include: the role of culture in entry mode decisions, the impact of national context on top management teams, cultural attributes of Russian management, the utilization of managerial expatriates, and the bridging of theory and practice in international human resource management research. A review of the volume's ten chapters suggests that, despite all the technological advances in cross-border communication and coordination, social capital and human resources are the most critical factors possessed by multinationals.

The early research on multinational enterprises usually relied on traditional economic theory or relatively simple but powerful theories developed in the field of international business. They were developed to help us understand why firms entered international markets. However, as the field of international management has developed further, with more scholars from adjacent disciplines conducting research on issues of importance to international markets and multinational firms, newer, more diverse and complex theoretical perspectives have been developed. The present volume involves a series of invited papers focused partly on Professor Dozs recent work and on other newer and important theoretical perspectives on the multinational enterprise. These works are authored by a number of top scholars in the field from North America and Europe. The intent of this volume is to highlight and emphasize the new and diverse theoretical foci in this field (e.g., management of large groups in emerging markets, international entrepreneurship and the liabilities of foreignness) and serve as a catalyst to the increasingly important research, designed to help us understand and build a theory of the multinational firm. The book is divided into three parts, with the first focused on the new and visible theory of the metanational firm by Yves Doz and comments on this work and Yves Dozs broader contributions to the field by three top scholars in the international management field. The second part contains two works that examine the evolving nature of theory on the multinational firm in international management research. The third part contains five papers that present diverse yet highly important theoretical perspectives on the multinational enterprise. This work provides a base upon which future excellent research in the field of international management will be advanced.

The decade long period of slow growth in Japan has raised provocative questions relating to theory development in international management. Japans "lost decade" has led to changes in both overall strategy and to increased variety in individual firm responses to slower growth. The combination of internal changes in the Japanese domestic business environment and external changes in the international environment has generated strong incentives for Japanese firms to seek new ways to structure and compete. These adjustments have necessitated changes not only in the management of Japanese firms domestically, but in overseas markets as well. This volume includes contributing chapters from authors based in Asia, Europe, and North America to examine how Japanese firms have responded to the challenge of a slower domestic economy and a more competitive international economy. Articles were selected to address three aspects of this issue: adaptation to domestic environmental changes, adjustments in inter-organizational relations, and the experience in foreign MNCs in Japan and Japanese MNCs abroad.

Two recent developments from globalization have fundamentally altered the nature of work organizations: the workforce has become increasingly diverse in national and cultural origins, and work assignments are increasingly performed by teams consisting of members located in different countries. Together, these changes have resulted in employees increasingly finding themselves working in culturally diverse, geographical dispersed, multinational teams. Yet, relatively little scholarship has been done to study the dynamics of such teams and how they can be better managed. The current volume presents cutting-edge theorizing and research from a multidisciplinary (e.g., psychology-, communications/technology-, organizational behavior-, and strategy-oriented) group of scholars who have been active in studying multinational teams in a global context. This book is divided into three parts. The first includes four chapters focusing on culture and other intra-group factors that affect the effective functioning of multinational teams. The second includes five chapters that examine the effect of technology and other external influences on team processes and outcomes. The third part includes four chapters dealing with leadership and management issues. The two final chapters were written by authors who have been actively involved as organizers of multi-country academic research teams whose life spans many years and continues today. Cumulatively, this book's chapters provide management scholars a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives, at many levels of analysis, and include insights borne from the authors observation-based and/or living-based experience with the culturally-challenging issues they discuss. Additionally, these chapters also provide practicing managers useful ideas on both intra- and external-group dynamics that help increase their understanding about the effective functioning of multinational teams. As a result, this book offers both breadth and depth on the topic of managing multinational teams in a global context that promise to make its contents of interest to many audiences.

This volume provides a more detailed and profound understanding of an important and, until recently ignored, global phenomenon marketplaces where individuals living in poverty buy/sell products and services. It is estimated that as many as 4 billion people with buying power exceeding $14 trillion fall into this market segment. Historically, the research in this area was conducted among consumers from industrialized economies. This research is rooted in fundamental assumptions about literacy and numeracy skills, life stability, cognitive predilections, and consumer access to basic resources such as education, water, and sanitation that often do not hold for poverty-stricken marketplaces. This volume presents a collection of articles that describe this particular group of consumers and entrepreneurs, and inform us on better ways to understand, reach, and empower them. The potential to do well by doing good in these impoverished marketplaces is very high, it is the hope of the editors that this reference will jumpstart the development of new theories, frameworks, and models that address both consumption and entrepreneurship in this particular market. This series publishes conceptual and empirical papers that deal with international topics from all areas within the management field. The organizations studied can be domestic or multinational, and the level of analysis can be macro or micro. Through new theoretical insights, managerial application, methodology, or data, the papers make a significant contribution to advancing knowledge about international management.

The competitive forces generated by globalization act to promote the cross-national diffusion of human resource management 'best practices'. In particular, high performance work practices have come to be viewed as the standard as companies in many parts of the world have endeavored to 'Americanize' their employment and management systems. Yet cultural, institutional, and ideological forces continue to offer resistance to the global convergence of HR practices. This volume contains papers from authors in Europe, Asia, Africa, and US who explore diffusion in a variety of national contexts. Different methodologies and perspectives provide a range of interpretations regarding diffusion and convergence.

In his best selling book "The World is Flat", Friedman (2005) argues that many more countries and companies now compete in global markets than ever before. The effects of globalization are pervasive and are leading to the emergence of new social, political and business models. This flattening of the world represents a fundamental change and requires that managers of organizations throughout the world develop and use a global mindset. A global mindset is 'a set of individual attributes that enable an individual to influence individuals, groups, and organizations from diverse socio/cultural/institutional systems'. The importance of this global mindset suggests that we need to better understand both its theoretical base and its practical relevance. The purpose of this book is to explore the content of a global mindset, how it is developed, when and how it should be applied, and what its consequences are. Therefore, a new source of competitive advantage is emerging: the ability to integrate players from many parts of the world faster and more effectively than others. The challenge to global corporations is increasingly to create seamless globally integrated systems to satisfy diverse customer needs in diverse global markets. Corporations ability to create globally integrated systems depends to a large extent on their success in getting their employees, managers, and executives to understand and adapt to a flat world. Thus, the new competitive advantage of global corporations lies in their ability to shape the minds and actions of their employees to ensure successful performance. The contributions in this volume suggest that the concept of global mindset represents an important competitive tool for today's managers. Corporate leaders are advised to develop, exhibit and act with a global mindset in order for their firms to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in international markets. Without such a mindset, such firms are likely to encounter better prepared and more knowledgeable global competitors, thereby threatening their very survival. This work gives a detailed account of the global mindset as an important competitive tool. It is international in scope and is edited by field leaders. This book series is available electronically at website.

This volume concentrates on the substantive gaps in the IB/IM field and addresses whether these gaps are resolvable with our current theoretical and methodological toolkit. This entails three specific queries about the past and present: Have our theories advanced some combination of explanation and prediction? Have our methods proven to be effective in providing rigorous, robust and consistent evidence with respect to the explanatory and predictive validity of our theories? Have we studied the right phenomena in the right way?

Cross-border flows of goods, services, capital, knowledge, and ideas have substantially increased over the last decades. These developments have increased the interdependencies among previously separated economies, given rise to arguments regarding the flattening of the world. Yet, firms investing overseas continue to experience substantial liabilities stemming from their foreignness. At the same time new locations are appearing on the global map that offers very attractive location-specific advantages. In addition, the range of participants in international competition has widened, in terms of both the number of countries involved and the types of firms competing, to encompass developed market firms expanding beyond industrialized countries, and emerging market firms joining global competition. The focus of this volume is on how the interface between firm-specific advantages, liability of foreignness, and location-specific advantages are spelled out in the more global world.

Advances in International Management (AIM) is a research annual devoted to advancing the cross-border study of organizations and management practices from a global, regional, or comparative perspective, with emphasis on interdisciplinary inquiry that integrates ideas from multiple academic disciplines.It publishes conceptual and empirical papers that deal with international topics from any area within the management field, including strategy, organization theory and behavior, human resource management, business ethics, entrepreneurship, technology management and others. The organizations studied can be domestic or multinational and the level of analysis can be macro or micro. To be accepted for publication a paper must make a significant contribution to advancing knowledge about international management through some combination of new theoretical insights, managerial application, methodology or data.AIM has a particular interest in publishing the following types of manuscripts:Comprehensive, state-of-the-art literature reviews that integrate diverse research streams and identify promising directions for future investigations Analytical essays that offer new conceptual models or theoretical perspectives and use these frameworks as a foundation for developing research propositions Empirical articles that report results from exploratory or hypothesis-testing studies based on quantitative and/or qualitative methodologiesMethodological papers that refine existing methodologies or develop new ones for investigating particular issues or topics central to international management research.

This series summarizes current thinking in the field of comparative management. The series is intended to make an academic contribution through focused essays, presenting material in a fashion suitable for both scholars and advanced students.

This tenth volume in the series discusses a variety of topics in the field of advances in international competitive management. The book examines both studies in the Asian context and studies in the cross-national context.

Institutional theory has been used increasingly by international business and management researchers to explain the behavior and strategies of multinational enterprises. If early international business research was dominated by the application of transaction cost and neoclassical economics, reviews of recent publications and conference programs suggest that the past decade has been dominated by the application of institutional theory. The 2012 volume of the "Advances in International Management" series represents the collection of an eclectic mix of contemporary research by leading and emerging scholars working on institutional theory. The contributions present new theoretical frameworks of institutions and propose interesting ideas that will provide the foundation for doctoral dissertations and research projects.

This volume concentrates on the substantive gaps in the IB/IM field and addresses whether these gaps are resolvable with our current theoretical and methodological toolkit. This entails three specific queries about the past and present: Have our theories advanced some combination of explanation and prediction? Have our methods proven to be effective in providing rigorous, robust and consistent evidence with respect to the explanatory and predictive validity of our theories? Have we studied the right phenomena in the right way?

This volume advances the debate on the past, present and future of international business and management research. A truly international group of experts present their perspectives, and ask the question 'What is it that we know?' when discussing major issues and concepts in the field. This annual collection includes a regular special feature on a leading scholar; exploring in this volume the work of Jean-Francois Hennart and his theories on multinational enterprise and strategic management. Part two addresses international business and international management issues from a philosophical perspective, examining key topics such as post-merger integration, dominant design theory, internalizing firms and the strategy-performance relationship.

The organizational design of the Multinational Corporation (MNC) was a vibrant area of research in the field of International Business and Management during the 1970-1990's. However, since then this research has largely faded from our scholarship. This volume of AIM is designed to spark new life into the research on the organizational design of the MNC. The world - and environmental forces - has changed substantially in the last decades placing new constrains on the MNCs. External shocks have increased and MNCs need to learn how to live with this increased market volatility. Integrating value chains makes MNCs more efficient but also vulnerable. The relentless forces of competition and globalization are forcing MNCs to divide their activities and reach for foreign inputs, markets and partners. By dividing their value chain into discrete pieces -- - some to be performed in-house, while others are outsourced to partner organizations -- - MNCs hope to reduce overall costs and risks, while also reaping the benefits of ideas from contractors or alliance partners worldwide. These challenges call for new research on the organizational design of the MNC. It is our intention with this AIM volume to motivate new research on the proper organizational design mechanisms of MNCs as of today.

Volume 28 of the Advances in International Management focuses on the opportunities and challenges for multinational enterprises that consider emerging economies as their destinations or their homes. Chapters in this volume examine the rise of home-grown multinational enterprises in emerging economies and the challenges they face when they enter developed markets. They also analyze the co-evolution of and the dynamic interaction between market institutions and business organizations in emerging economies. The volume provides a forum for thought-provoking ideas, empirical research, and discussions, and is ideal for researchers and doctoral students whose work touches emerging markets.

The role that small- and medium-sized enterprises play in the economic development and growth of cities, regions and nations has been an increasing subject of debate and study for the last half century. This volume focuses on the opportunities and challenges that entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face in a world of global competition. The papers therein provide an overview of successful strategies that global entrepreneurs and SMEs have employed that have allowed them to establish regional and international footprint and of how local resources, culture and managerial capabilities have contributed to startups’ global success. In doing so it highlights original, edgy ideas and theoretical advances that will provide the foundation for future doctoral dissertations and other research projects on international entrepreneurship.

With intensified global competition, institutional changes and reduced communication costs the propensity of firms to reconfigure their global value chain and separate their activities across national boundaries has increased markedly. It enables firms to combine the benefits arising from specialization and increased flexibility with location advantages. Consequently, large parts of manufacturing and other more standardized activities have been offshored to emerging countries. However, recent developments are challenging this traditional separation between advanced and emerging economies as host of knowledge- and production-intensive activities, respectively. Recent research has emphasized the role of intra-organizational relationships and links among the different parts of the value chain. Innovative and productive activities are affected by strong interdependencies and complementarities, and for some companies the co-location of R&D and manufacturing is critical for development and innovation. This volume will interest scholars in International Business, Economic Geography, Operations and Supply Chain Management, International Economics, and Political Science.