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This article presents abstracts of studies on international management. The paper "Regional Strategies for Service Sector Multinationals," examined the intra-regional sales of all 49 multinational enterprises (MNE) in the retail sector. Data is not available for most other service sector MNEs, especially in insurance and banking. Only one of these 49 retail MNEs is global, defined as operating with at least 20 percent of its sales in each part of the triad. The paper "Market Equilibrium, Cartel or Lack of Strategy? Entry Level Compensation in Japanese Firms," examined the determinants of base pay for entry level college graduates in Japanese firms. In a sense, Japanese firms' compensation strategy for college hiring is to behave as a cartel and to minimize wage competition. The paper "A Comparative Analysis of Indian and Chinese Negotiating Behavior," highlighted the similarities and differences between Indian and the Chinese negotiating behavior. While a lot has been written about the Chinese approach to negotiations the literature on Indian negotiating behavior is relatively sparse. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by providing a comparative contrast of the negotiating styles in these countries. The starting premise of the paper is that institutional environments affect the ease with which value is created, sustained or amplified over time.

This section focuses on several studies presented at a conference on international management. The article, "The Impact of Trade Liberalization Policies on National Patters of Corruption and Software Piracy," focuses on the impact of trade liberalization policies on national patterns of corruption and software piracy. "Repetition of Foreign Market Entry Forms: Managerial and Organizational Drivers," studies the repetition of forms of entry in a foreign market by taking into account not only organizational factors but also the managerial risk determinants of such repetitions. "Foreign Expansion Under Uncertainty: A Strategic Real Options Perspective," investigates the expansion of 30 of the largest global manufacturing companies in 6 industries in China over the last 20 years.

The article presents abstracts on business policy and strategy topics which include the complexities of top management team (TMT) composition, insights about dynamic capabilities observed from simulated evolving competition, and venture capital syndication in China.

The article presents abstracts on research method topics including control variables in social science research, the factor structure of Goldberg's Big Five questionnaire, and job stressors in China.

This study explores the government-oriented public relation strategies and their utilization in firms of China. The results of the content analysis of website news about PR activities of 76 firms indicate the 7 strategies have been used, including visiting strategy, commonweal strategy, participating strategy, publicity strategy, party-related strategy, propagandizing strategy and media strategy. The first four strategies are further explored with more in-depth content analysis of three famous firms websites and the results show that firms focus on various PR strategies to develop relationship with government and top managers are major players in government-oriented PR activities. Differences exist among firms with different ownership regarding to the usage of these PR strategies, government levels targeted, issues related and the role played by top managers. This paper provides new explanation on Chinese firms' government-oriented PR activities beyond traditional "Guanxi" theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethics and internationalization are becoming prominent items on management agendas while information technology is assuming a fundamental role in 21st century life. A multinational and multifaceted research project is investigating a topic that intersects these three trends: international differences in information ethics. Scenarios based on information-related issues identified by Mason (1986) have been developed in order to examine ethical decision making. These scenarios are being used to survey managers on ethical dilemmas related to information privacy, access, property, and accuracy. Specific factors in each dilemma have been designed to reflect different stages in the moral development model developed by Kohlberg (1976). The information ethics of managers from different countries are now being studied. This paper focuses on the responses of managers from the two 21st century superpowers -- the United States and the People's Republic of China -- which have very different prevailing cultures. Although American and Chinese managers reached similar conclusions or outcomes on all but one of the ethical dilemmas, the factors shaping their decision making processes differed significantly. The findings are explained from a cultural perspective and the implications for international managers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FDI research has so far focused on firms' initial investment decisions into a foreign market, paying little attention to subsequent FDI expansion activities. This paper attempts to relate a firm's first entry strategies into a foreign market with its subsequent FDI expansion path in that market. Specifically, we look at the impacts of the timing, equity ownership, and the size of first entries on the probability and speed of making subsequent investments. A sample of Japanese investments in China seems to suggest two alternative paths of expansion: early entry with incremental growth or late entry but with fast expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the workings of Chinese family firms within the framework of ownership, location and internalization advantages. Chinese family firms deviate from the conventional model of the western multinational enterprise in important ways. Nearly 60 million overseas Chinese have built a vast network of highly successful businesses. Many of these companies invest internationally, typically within Southeast Asia and predominantly in China. The majority of the foreign direct investment driving the economy of China has come from overseas Chinese sources. It is estimated that more than 100,000 joint ventures have been established within China by overseas Chinese, mainly in Guangdong and Fujian provinces. Thus many overseas Chinese family firms are operating in effect as multinational enterprises. Most Chinese family companies are owned and controlled by members of a single family. Members of the family or trusted associates supply many of the management functions. Chinese family firms share many of the salient features of other Asian family firms and of family-owned business in general, while manifesting distinctive characteristics that reflect the unique historical and cultural experience of the Chinese people.

Process-based organizational change has attracted considerable attention in recent decades, with the rise of total quality management (TQM) being followed by the emergence of business process reengineering (BPR). Since contextual factors can influence both the adoption and results of these process-based change initiatives, their international popularity has created an imperative to move beyond a culture-bounded perspective. The stark philosophical, economic and historical differences between Americans and the Chinese make the comparison of process-based organizational change in these two societal contexts an important step in the development of a global model. This paper begins by outlining the evolution of process-based organizational change and proposing that BPR be seen as TQM with American characteristics. A selective review of Chinese culture and management systems then highlights five factors that are likely to influence Chinese organizational change. Evidence from field studies and insights from key informants reveals that organizations across Greater China have adopted a distinctive approach to re-engineering. The existence of this BPR with Chinese characteristics prompts a more general examination of how the nature of organizational change may be affected by specific cultural dimensions of the implementation context. By elaborating on an existing typology of change, we provide a foundation for the development of cross-cultural theory and a general model of process-based organizational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an empirical examination of the influence of language on the responses of bilingual Hong Kong Chinese to questionnaire items posed in Chinese (their first language) and English (their second language). Results show significant differences between subjects responding to the Chinese and English versions of the treatment instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes and examines an indirect link between managerial guanxi ties and firm innovation. Empirical results show that knowledge creation processes (knowledge exchange and knowledge combination) fully mediate the relationship between managerial guanxi ties (business ties and political ties) and firm innovation (product innovation and process innovation). While business ties and political ties exert different impacts on knowledge creation processes and firm innovation, knowledge exchange and knowledge combination vary in their effects on product innovation and process innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the intensity of FDI and Chinese labor productivity is studied using industry and province specific data. In low technology industries, the data suggest a curvilinear, "inverted-U," relationship. Unlike previous research, this paper supports a curvilinear relationship for truly international FDI, not just investments from within Greater China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how Chinese SMEs configure marketing, cost-control, and innovation strategies in order to attain better organizational effectiveness. Data collected from 133 small and medium-sized Chinese firms (SMEs) verified our hypotheses that when a strategy configuration was composed of multiple prioritized and related strategies, organizational effectiveness would be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how prior ties between partners contribute to the formation of trust between public and private sectors. Based on data from 244 public-private partnerships in the pharmaceutical industry in China, our findings suggest that prior ties between partners affects inter-organizational trust formation, and this positive relationship between inter-organizational trust and cooperation effects is weaker under high environmental uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-standing insight in social sciences holds that social values affect individuals' entry into entrepreneurship. This paper presents the first systematic empirical examination of how the legitimation of entrepreneurship at societal level dynamically shapes the entrepreneurial entry of individuals from different social strata. Analyzing a nationally representative life history data of the citizens of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1996, we find that high-status individuals (cadres and college-educated) are less likely to become private entrepreneurs before the field achieves full-fledged legitimacy, but they are faster in becoming private entrepreneurs as the field becomes more legitimate. We find that the entrepreneurial entry of individuals in regions with local entrepreneurial culture is less influenced by the regulative or cognitive legitimation processes at national level. Moreover, we find that cadres' entry into private entrepreneurship is amplified only by the regulative legitimation process at national level; Junior and senior high school graduates' entry into private entrepreneurship is amplified only by local entrepreneurial culture; college graduates' entry into the field is amplified by both the regulative and cognitive legitimation processes at national level and local entrepreneurial culture. The implications of the findings for entrepreneurship, neoinstitutional theory, and the market transition literature are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests a new way of operationalising innovation capabilities of firms by incorporating intensity, scope and spillover effects of innovation. Based on panel data estimation of Korean and Chinese listed firms in high technology industries over four years, this study show that patent intensity rather than R&D intensity contributed to financial performance of firms in both countries. It also indicates that the depth of innovation capability in a few specific technology fields leads to better performance in Korea, while the diversity of innovation capability over different technology fields results in better performance in China. Furthermore, the positive spillover effect of neighbouring firms suggests that technologically related innovation efforts of other firms is a significant predictor of the firm's own innovation in both Korea and China as well as financial performance in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how new venture legitimation strategy is influenced by linguistic environment that includes the semantics of change and continuity and their relationship to the social identity of the new venture/entrepreneur. A case analysis of the role of May Fourth social movement in the Chinese Internet industry is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation diffusion theory (IDT) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) are combined to explain intention to adopt technologies in China. Findings suggest that relative advantage, infomediaries, and firm size are good predictors of perceived usefulness. Perceived ease of use is affected by the size of the firm, peer usage, and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the processes linking perceived leader-subordinate goal similarity to employee performance. Data were obtained from 143 subordinate-supervisor dyads in Chinese organizational settings. Results showed that: (i) perceived leader-subordinate goal similarity was related to leader-member exchange (LMX); (ii) LMX fully mediated the relationship between perceived leader-subordinate goal similarity and the performance outcomes of in-role performance, individual-directed (OCBI) and organization-directed (OCBO) citizenship behaviors, and (iii) the perceived leader-subordinate goal similarity-LMX relationship was stronger for low rather than high traditionality individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section focuses on several symposia abstracts presented at a conference on international management. "Transfer of HR Systems and Practices in MNCs" centers on the effects that diffusion of human resource practices has on the management of multinational corporations from a comparative perspective. "Careers Across Cultures: Toward an International Vision of Career Management" focuses on understanding alternatives to the Euro-American model of careers by examining career behavior and management in different national and cultural contexts. The symposium, "Strategy in Chinese Firms: Institutional Antecedents, Processes and Outcomes," is designed to further the understanding of Chinese management with particular emphasis on indigenous Chinese firms' strategies and their continuing internationalization.

This article presents a study that examined the extent to which two major aspects of top management team (TMT) characteristics affect Chinese firm performance. China represents a unique natural laboratory to test the extent to which management theories are universal. Now that China has entered the World Trade Organization, it is becoming increasingly urgent for researchers to understand the factors that affect the performance of Chinese organizations. Reform is needed to ensure that Chinese corporations can compete in the increasingly competitive environment. The TMT is defined as the coalition of the top-level managers of a firm. The TMT is the relatively highest or upper echelon of the organization. TMT primarily formulates strategy and thus the skills and abilities, motivation and effective processes of TMT members are central to a firm's sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore, the qualifications of TMT members themselves and the effectiveness with which TMT members interact are critical factors for achieving a positive organizational outcome. The study found a positive relationship between TMT average age and firm performance. This is different from what might be expected in mature economy firms.

This paper discusses the outlook for increased productivity in Chinese industrial enterprises. Specifically, it seeks to examine three topics relating to performance. These include an assessment of: (1) the factors that affect performance; (2) the Sichuan Experiments; and (3) the potential problems that could adversely affect the prospects for increased productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper found that the exchange theory explained the separate and interaction effects which leadership style and organizational structure had on the supervisor-employee relationships of Chinese people in Hong Kong. In exchange for the actions of a supervisor which provided the employee with increased flexibility or greater consideration of his needs, the employee increased his confidence in the supervisor's ability to make decisions and the employee's willingness to disclose information. The interaction effects of leadership style and organizational structure indicated that a leader who increased the flexibility of his employees in a structure characterized by a need for a high degree of coordination and a clear definition of goals will receive in exchange the employees' confidence. Furthermore, a supervisor who was more considerate of the employee's needs would improve the supervisor-employee relationship in a structure which was descried as containing autonomous relationships. Although these results were similar to those studies which had used American subjects and also tended to confirm the exchange theory, the study indicated a need and possible direction for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the effects of the interaction of leadership style and organizational structure on job initiative are culture-bound by measuring effects this interaction had on the job initiative of Chinese employees in Hong Kong and comparing this result with the findings of studies which used a sample of American employees. A systems model conceptually defined the factors of leadership style and organizational structure. However, a factor analytic technique operationally defined the independent factors of leadership style as: consideration, motivation, structure, and direction. It also defined the factors of organizational structure as: supervisor-employee communications linkages, face to face communications, employee dependence, decision-making process, measure of output, and work evaluation. The leadership style factor of consideration was shown to have a positive and significantly high correlation with job initiative in a structure which frequently utilized the supervisor to relay information among employees in the same work group and in different work groups. In contrast, the correlations between the leadership style factors of direction, structure, and motivation did not differ significantly in an interaction with any of the factors of organizational structure. These results are consistent with the findings of studies which used a sample of American employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the study on the impact of contingent self-worth (CSW) on goal setting. It details how the study was conducted which involved 411 college students in the U.S. and 210 sales people in the real estate sector in China and the testing of two hypothesis. It examines the moderating effect of self-esteem which may affect the tendency of high-CSW people to establish a non-specific goal. The results reportedly revealed that people ares more likely to set non-specific or easy goals if their self-worth is contingent on a domain.

The article offers information on a study based on employee performance management (PM) in the international context of multinational companies which requires localization and standardization efforts. It integrates the employee perspective by asking Chinese, German, and South African participants how the PM should be. Topics discussed include PM of employees in world's leading emerging economies like South Africa and China, employee assessment and promotion criteria of American companies, and country-specific differences in PM.

The article presents a study on the factors that influence corporate immoral recidivism. The researchers used event history analysis to testify the hypotheses, the final sample of which included 1,042 listed firms and their associated observations. They also used the announcement of violation penalty information released by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE), the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to measure the dependent variable OCCURRENCE. They found that an initial immoral behavior is a highly important indicator of subsequent immoral behavior.

The article presents research which focused on the validation and development of organizational creativity in a Chinese context. The researchers gathered data from related literatures which dealt with the concepts of team creativity, corporate creativity and employee creativity as depicted in 145 companies in China and published from March to April 2010. They also consulted with 11 people who were considered experts in the fields of technological innovation as well as service innovation to enlighten them about their findings.

The article discusses the characteristics and practical applications of a Confucian approach to self-regulation within the context of management ethics. China's emergence as an economic superpower is given as a reason for researchers' efforts to define and distinguish a distinct Chinese leadership and business management style. Management scholars have also been paying increased attention to the ideas of managerial ethics in relation to the manager's self-regulation of ethical behavior. The ideas commonly attributed to Confucius in the Analects are addressed. The use of ritual, music, self-reflection and mentoring are described as the practical applications of a Confucian approach to developing self-regulation.

This study emphasizes how firms respond in their foreign market entry strategy when observing FDI failures by other firms in the host market, and how causal ambiguity moderates this process, using a sample of market entries by 839 Japanese Multinationals in manufacturing sector in China over the period 1980-2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses research to determine which variables affect employment turnovers. Most of the research had investigated job attitudes and labor market conditions, but had found that these variables could only modestly predict turnover. Newer research is focusing on the quality and nature of workplace relationships. Researchers look at the effect of employee-to-colleague relationships on the turnover rate in the People's Republic of China. Specifically, researchers look at how constrained or closed networks maintain job incumbency among Chinese nationals. A constrained network develops when an individual's set of contacts communicate with each other or the same third parties, generating redundant and dense interconnections.

In a study based on over 700 observations across more than 35 manufacturing and service industries, we examine the relative local sales performance of leading foreign multinationals from different home countries operating in the six host markets of Brazil, China, India, Mexico (four of the largest developing countries), and Japan and the USA (the two largest developed countries). Drawing on institutional theory we explore whether, beyond firm-specific advantages, experiential learning, and information links emphasized in the existing literature, greater relative similarity in home and host institutional environments is associated with better MNE relative performance abroad. In regressions we run factoring in a variety of controls, home-host institutional similarity is significant and even stronger than firm capability and information links in explaining MNE relative local sales performance. Among proxies constituting institutional similarity, cognitive elements appear most important followed by regulative and then normative elements. Notably, cultural closeness is not a driver. We conjecture that institutional similarity aids MNE strategy implementation and is reflected in relative performance, and, that as host markets become more contested by MNEs from different home countries, international business is set to become more institutional business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last ten years have witnessed an unprecedented transfer of Western management theories and business education pedagogies into China. To gauge the impact of this transfer on the Chinese educational system, we analyze and contrast Chinese MBA cases published before and after this transfer. Our findings indicate that while Chinese cases published after the transfer are generally much improved, they have also lost some of the highly valuable traits of the traditional Chinese culture and exhibit much the same weaknesses and problems as the MBA cases developed in the West. Chinese cases published after the infusion of Western MBA programs are more rationalistic in framework, obsessed with strategy, hero-centered, simplistic in context, individualistic in decision approach, with an unacknowledged managerialist world view. Implications for management educations are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]