Dan Danes, Patrick van Eijck, Johan P. Lindeque, Mona A. Meyer and Marc K. Peter
Cities remain an understudied unit of analysis for understanding the motives of multinational enterprises’ (MNE) foreign direct investment (FDI), with subnational locations in…
Abstract
Purpose
Cities remain an understudied unit of analysis for understanding the motives of multinational enterprises’ (MNE) foreign direct investment (FDI), with subnational locations in International Business (IB) research to date predominantly captured via the phenomenon of agglomeration. As regional integration projects, such as the European Union and to a lesser degree NAFTA, increasingly reduce the importance of national institutional environments, this paper argues regional and subnational levels become more important for studying MNE location choice. This paper aims to evaluate the explanatory contribution of regional and subnational levels of analysis to understanding MNE location choice.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative deductive bottom-up multiple-case study research design is adopted to study the city location choices and FDI motives of six automotive and six commercial banking companies. These purposefully sampled manufacturing and service MNEs have different home countries and regional orientations. Data on their foreign investments across the extended Triad of Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific were collected for the time period of 2000–2021.
Findings
Findings suggest that different classes of city tend to attract specific types of FDI and that these patterns might vary across sectors and be influenced by the regional strategic orientations of MNEs. Industry-specific findings reveal the importance of related and support industries and partners in a city location for the automotive MNEs, while the commercial banks seek investment opportunities in cities that allow acquisition targets that have an attractive customer based and will improve their local market knowledge.
Originality/value
The findings provide evidence in support of MNEs in manufacturing and service industries perceiving the attractiveness of three city types in different ways across the Triad regions.
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The paper deals with the child benefits system in the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Sweden.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper deals with the child benefits system in the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Sweden.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors describe the systems as the key baseline for subsequent qualitative and quantitative comparison. An essential element is the quantitative comparison of child benefits using their statistically stationarised values.
Findings
The Czech and Slovak systems provide a comparable rate of coverage as the Swedish system regarding the payment of both types of benefits, i.e. child benefits and tax allowances, for the first and second child; however, from the third child, the individual differences are considerable. Albeit the concepts of Czech and Slovak systems are framed by the same historical origins and conceptual approach, they differ significantly, with Slovakia providing the lowest aggregate level of child benefits.
Originality/value
The paper provides insight into the child benefit systems in the respective countries. These systems are at the centre of attention of policymakers who are attempting to maintain birth rates and reduce child poverty. The Czech Republic has the lowest level of at-risk-of-poverty rates for persons under 16 years of age, while natality rates are comparable.
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Managing people in a multinational corporation most often means, communicating across cultural as well as linguistic boundaries. Through the study of Danish expatriates in Saudi…
Abstract
Purpose
Managing people in a multinational corporation most often means, communicating across cultural as well as linguistic boundaries. Through the study of Danish expatriates in Saudi Arabia this paper sets out to investigate the use of language as related to ethnicity and group formation.
Design/methodology/approach
Investigating the use of language in international settings, an ethnographic fieldwork methodology relying on longitudinal participant observations and semi‐structured interviews is applied.
Findings
The relation between language usage and ethnicity is discussed with regard to cross‐cultural management. Based on a case of Danish expatriates, language can be identified as linked to social strategies of inclusion and exclusion.
Practical implications
The analysis indicates that language use should be conceived as a dynamic process linked to social strategies facilitating categorization of groups in the struggle for resources and recognition. It is recommended that the character of language as linked to social strategies is taken into account in international business. Ignoring the important role of language in multinational corporations may lead to loss of resources and hindrances to organizational and managerial development due to the lack of communication and knowledge sharing.
Originality/value
By applying a process‐oriented theoretical perspective combined with an iterative data collection, new insights into the social dynamics of language use in multinational corporations are provided.
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Le thème de la recherche porte sur le trafic des voyages aériens à forfait émis par les Etats membres de la CEAC et en particulier par les douze plus importants. La période…
Abstract
Le thème de la recherche porte sur le trafic des voyages aériens à forfait émis par les Etats membres de la CEAC et en particulier par les douze plus importants. La période d'observation s'étend de 1964/65 à 1974/75. L'analyse intéresse à la fois les voyages aériens à forfait sur vols réguliers (ITX) et sur les vols affrétés (ITC).
Dès le début de son existence l'organisation du tourisme familial s'est exprimée à travers des structures d'hébergement incluant la restauration. Ce fut le cas en Belgique lors de…
Abstract
Dès le début de son existence l'organisation du tourisme familial s'est exprimée à travers des structures d'hébergement incluant la restauration. Ce fut le cas en Belgique lors de la dréation des centres de vacances de tourisme social; ce fut le cas dans les Pays de l'Est avec la construction des Maisons de Repos des travailleurs; ce fut le cas en France avec le développement des Maisons Familiales de Vacances. Ces dernières se virent même dotées en 1954 d'un statut officiel qui imposait la pension complète.
Nancy J. Adler (USA), Sonja A. Sackmann (Switzerland), Sharon Arieli (Israel), Marufa (Mimi) Akter (Bangladesh), Christoph Barmeyer (Germany), Cordula Barzantny (France), Dan V. Caprar (Australia and New Zealand), Yih-teen Lee (Taiwan), Leigh Anne Liu (China), Giovanna Magnani (Italy), Justin Marcus (Turkey), Christof Miska (Austria), Fiona Moore (United Kingdom), Sun Hyun Park (South Korea), B. Sebastian Reiche (Spain), Anne-Marie Søderberg (Denmark and Sweden), Jeremy Solomons (Rwanda) and Zhi-Xue Zhang (China)
The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens…
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.
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Sof Thrane, Martin Jarmatz, Michael Fetahi Laursen and Katrine Kornmaaler
The purpose of this paper is to analyze price decision-making through a practice-based approach. The paper investigates the micro-level practices used to arrive at sales price…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze price decision-making through a practice-based approach. The paper investigates the micro-level practices used to arrive at sales price decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, a qualitative study approach is used to develop findings abductively. The data are gathered through an in-depth case study at two firms: semi-structured interviews, meeting observations, shadowing and pricing documents.
Findings
This paper finds that pricing is a collective decision-making process involving multiple actors across the organization. The case firms work on solving information, coordination and control problems to arrive at sales prices by enacting interlinked practices. Pricing is therefore neither a structure nor a single decision but a process consisting of multiple micro-level practices that enable firms to make pricing decisions.
Originality/value
This paper develops a practice-based approach to pricing that conceptualize the micro-level practices used to to make pricing decisions in the face of information, coordination and control problems. The paper is interdisciplinary and adds to the accounting literature and the market literature, which have tended to study pricing as a decision made by one decision maker, and not as an organizational process where multiple actors share, evaluate, interpret and coordinate information and decisions.
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Kristina K. Helgstrand and Alice F. Stuhlmacher
Followers are assumed to use implicit leader prototypes when evaluating leader behavior. Cross‐cultural theorists suggest that these leader prototypes are influenced by national…
Abstract
Followers are assumed to use implicit leader prototypes when evaluating leader behavior. Cross‐cultural theorists suggest that these leader prototypes are influenced by national culture. To test this relationship, the present study examined leader prototypes in a cross‐cultural study with Danish and American participants. These two cultures have been found to differ significantly on two major cultural dimensions: individualism and masculinity. It was expected that individuals would rate a leader candidate that matched their own culture as more effective and more collegial than a leader that did not match. Unexpectedly, the highest leader ratings were not in conditions with a cultural match between participants and leader candidate. Rather, both cultures saw feminine leaders as most collegial and feminine‐individualistic leaders as most effective.
Si le prospectus local ou, plus exactement, la propagande à l'échelon local, sur laquelle s'appuient propagande régionale et propagande nationale, continue comme par le passé �…
Abstract
Si le prospectus local ou, plus exactement, la propagande à l'échelon local, sur laquelle s'appuient propagande régionale et propagande nationale, continue comme par le passé à constituer aux yeux des chefs de file techniciens du tourisme le fondement indispensable d'une propagande touristique organisée, il n'en reste pas moins que l'époque qui succède à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, stimulée par l'accélération des moyens de transport, nous fait prendre de plus en plus conscience de l'intérêt présenté par la constitution de communautés internationales sur le plan de la propagande touristique. De telles réalisations exigent bien entendu, de la part des participants, la volonté bien arrêtée de renoncer totalement aux pratiques égoïstes qui leur font préférer les avantages particuliers aux intérêts généraux ou tout au moins de les réduire à un minimum. Il se peut parfaitement dans tel ou tel cas que l'intérêt particulier se trouve quelque peu lésé en cours d'action, mais ceci ne doit jamais faire perdre de vue les réactions, seuls éléments déterminants, du groupe de consommateurs auquel on s'adresse. Sur le plan économique européen, les deux blocs — Marché commun et Association européenne de libre échange (AELE ou European Free Trade Association) — nous fournissent de judicieux exemples de résultats pratiques tant positifs que négatifs obtenus par des entreprises de cette sorte.
Muhammad Zeshan, Olivier de La Villarmois, Shahid Rasool and Abdur Rafeh Khan Niazi
This paper aims to show the direct and indirect effects of mindfulness on the employees’ commitment in the employees who perform monotonous work. Moreover, it also shows the role…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to show the direct and indirect effects of mindfulness on the employees’ commitment in the employees who perform monotonous work. Moreover, it also shows the role of basic psychological needs proposed by self-determination theory (SDT), on the relationship between mindfulness and commitment.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper has used a time-lagged approach. Data has been collected from the nurses in public sector hospitals through a survey strategy. Structural equation modeling has been used to validate the measure and to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results of thi study reveal that there is a positive relationship between mindfulness and employee affective organizational commitment. This study also shows that in the existence of a high level of autonomy, mindfulness does have more effect on commitment. Moreover, this study also shows that this relationship is mediated by employee boredom. However, this mediation is not moderated by the satisfaction of the need for autonomy.
Practical implications
This study serves as a guide for frontline managers in situations where they want their subordinates who perform monotonous and boring work to remain committed to the organization. This study also emphasizes the recruitment of employees who may show more trait mindfulness.
Originality/value
This study enriches the literature in the field of organizational behavior by showing how basic psychological needs proposed by SDT collaborate with mindfulness in producing employees’ positive attitudes.