Most recent papers:

• The panacea of culture: the changing fortunes and careers of China’s Dongba priests.
  Zheng Xie, Yochanan Altman.
  Cross Cultural Management. September 21, 2015
  Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 22, Issue 4, Page 649-660, October 2015.
  Purpose – On the background of China’s turn to a market economy and a consumer-driven society, the purpose of this paper is to recount the fortunes of the age-old religion of the Naxi people and their farmer-priests, the dongba. Design/methodology/approach – Detailed ethnography, including participant observation, the collection of life histories and interviews. Findings – The might of the tourist industry dominates the changes in the profession of the dongba priests, from a faith-based practice to a tourist-driven service; aided by a confluence of interests of relevant stakeholders: the Chinese state, the provincial governments, the Naxi elite. At the core is the transformation, in Chinese terms, from a superstitious religion to culture heritage. Research limitations/implications – Like all case studies and common to ethnographic-based research, the small scale of the research poses questions of generalizability. Practical implications – Shedding light on a little known aspect of the world’s largest economy is of high relevance to business and management scholars. Social implications – The transformation of the dongba demonstrates how major societal changes that happen within a couple of decades affect a society and its economy and a central career track within it. Originality/value – The case study testifies to the encounter of a major modern industry: tourism, with an archaic religion in a remote corner of China, and the transformation of the latter as result.

  September 21, 2015   doi: 10.1108/CCM-01-2015-0001   open full text
• Cross-country technology gap in Latin America.
  Kaustav Misra, Esra Memili, Dianne H.B. Welsh, Surender Reddy, Gail E. Sype.
  Cross Cultural Management. September 21, 2015
  Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 22, Issue 4, Page 630-648, October 2015.
  Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing the total factor productivity (TFP) gap between the USA and eight Latin American countries for the period of 1970-2000. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides an explicit application of TFP estimation by employing a growth accounting approach (Solow Residual) in the presence of non-constant returns to scale and a non-parametric approach (DEA – Malmquist Index) while relaxing the scale-related constraint. A macro-based economic model of innovator and follower countries is employed to explore the linkage between technology gaps and innovations, labor productivity, trade openness, foreign direct investment, and adult workforce illiteracy rates. A pooled model and a fixed effects model are used to determine the factors of the technology gap between the innovator and the follower countries. Findings – The results show that the labor productivity gap, adult work force illiteracy rates, patent filing gap, and trade openness are significant determinants of the technology gap between innovator and follower country. Practical implications – Latin American countries would benefit from the technology diffusion from an innovator country; but a minimum threshold of human capital, such as adult workforce illiteracy rates and patent filing has to be met. The authors find government policies on trade openness also have large effects on technology limitations in foreign countries. Originality/value – This paper is of value to researchers, policy makers, and economic development specialists trying to improve the rate of technology adoption and innovation.

  September 21, 2015   doi: 10.1108/CCM-04-2014-0043   open full text
• Relationship of budget participation conflict and job performance of South Korean managers.
  Maria A. Leach-López, William W. Stammerjohan, Eunsuh Lee, Claire Allison Stammerjohan.
  Cross Cultural Management. September 21, 2015
  Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 22, Issue 4, Page 608-629, October 2015.
  Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of budget participation conflict (BPC) on job performance and the mediating effect of job satisfaction and job tenure on this relationship in a South Korean setting. BPC is defined as the difference between a manager’s actual budget participation and the same manager’s preferred level of budget participation. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data, analyzed using path analysis, were used to measure the direct effect of BPC on performance, and the indirect effects between BPC and performance running through job satisfaction and job tenure. Findings – Findings suggest that BPC does not directly impact job performance. Overall, this study suggests that BPC has a negative impact on job satisfaction and that job satisfaction in turn can significantly influence job performance. The authors also find some marginal effect of job satisfaction on job tenure, implying that increasing satisfaction can marginally increase job tenure. Research limitations/implications – Limitations of this study are those usually found in cross-sectional survey research. Originality/value – Despite its limitations, this study has both academic and practical implications. The study adds to the job performance literature in an Asian country which has not been widely researched. The study also finds that managers’ job performance and job satisfaction can be improved by minimizing BPC. Future research should study other variables that influence job performance of South Korean managers.

  September 21, 2015   doi: 10.1108/CCM-02-2014-0026   open full text
• Non-financial performance measures and the BSC of multinational companies with multi-cultural environment.
  Wagdy M. Abdallah, Majbour Alnamri.
  Cross Cultural Management. September 21, 2015
  Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 22, Issue 4, Page 594-607, October 2015.
  Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of financial and non-financial performance measurement practices, including the use of the balanced scorecard (BSC) and the impact of the cultural values on the use of performance measurement systems (PMSs), in multinational companies (MNCs) operating in the Middle East with a special attention to the Saudi Arabian subsidiaries. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using a survey mailed to 180 randomly selected Saudi manufacturing subsidiaries in different industrial cities to collect data on their PMSs including the use of the BSC. Findings – Financial measures are more widely used by most of the companies included in the sample due to the fact they are common, well known, and the most familiar performance measures in the business practice and they are more standardized measures which can be easily understood, implemented, and quantified. Moreover, the use of the non-financial measures was at a very low rate compared with the use of financial measures. The reasons were the difficulty in finding objective measures of the effect of social factors and the avoidance of any disclosure of social problems that are existed in the society. Research limitations/implications – Several variables were not included in this study such as corporate culture, use of information technology, the use of mass number of expatriates in the KSA with completely different cultural values, and several other environmental factors, which might have a significant impact on the choice of multiple performance measures. Practical implications – From a practical standpoint, this study demonstrates that increasing levels of external environmental factors and exposure to American best practices could act as forces to adapt more updated and sophisticated PMSs in the Middle East. Moreover, it will contribute to the knowledge of PMSs in the emerging countries, particularly in Middle East countries. Social implications – Social variables have significant impact on the productivity of employees and they should be incorporated into the performance indictors in objective and practical models. Originality/value – This study illustrates how MNCs in the Middle East are adapting and applying the PMS and the effect of culture on the use of non-financial measures.

  September 21, 2015   doi: 10.1108/CCM-12-2013-0195   open full text
• Effects of learning orientation and team embeddedness on mobility.
  Jung-Nung Chang, Chia-Yi Cheng.
  Cross Cultural Management. September 21, 2015
  Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 22, Issue 4, Page 570-593, October 2015.
  Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of learning orientation (LO) and team embeddedness (TE) on the turnover intention of team members within the context of both culturally diverse and uniform teams. Design/methodology/approach – A structural model was adopted to test the hypotheses with the help of data collected from a survey of 324 foreign and local students of an international university located in Taiwan. To compare the effects of TE and LO in the context of culturally diverse teams (CDT), a multi-group structural equation modeling was employed to investigate individual team behavior. Findings – The LO of team members in a culturally diverse context will positively influence their intention to leave the team. However, such an intention can be reduced by strengthening members’ TE along with the LO. Nonetheless, the direct effect of LO on team turnover intention in the context of same-culture teams was found to be insignificant, leaving TE as the only critical mediator in this case. Furthermore, capability validation, sought by performance-orientated individuals, was found to be an important factor worthy of special consideration for those in a single-culture team context. Originality/value – This study provides evidence regarding the applicability of the concept of job embeddedness to team relationships and the link between goal orientation and team mobility in a multi-cultural setting. Such an approach is helpful for determining ways to strengthen and stabilize team resources in the context of CDT.

  September 21, 2015   doi: 10.1108/CCM-06-2013-0088   open full text
• Culture’s causes: the next challenge.
  Gert Jan Hofstede.
  Cross Cultural Management. September 21, 2015
  Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 22, Issue 4, Page 545-569, October 2015.
  Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that in cross-cultural and strategic management, we must pay attention to the processes creating and maintaining culture. How can everyday interactions give rise to national, “deep” cultures, recognizable across centuries, or organizational cultures, recognizable across decades? Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper using the evidence provided by research about cultural patterns, and using sociological status-power theory to explain the causation of these patterns. Emergence, also called self-organization, is introduced as mechanism connecting individual-level causation with resulting system-level patterns. Cases are used to illustrate points. Findings – Simulation gaming and computational social simulation are introduced. These methods allow “growing” a system, thus allowing to experiment with potential interventions and their unanticipated effects. Research limitations/implications – This essay could have major implications for research, adding new methods to survey-based and case-based studies, and achieving a new synthesis. Strategic management today almost invariably involves cross-cultural elements. As a result, cross-cultural understanding is now strategically important. Practical implications – The suggestions in this essay could lead to new collaborations in the study of culture and organizational processes. Examples include team formation, negotiation, mergers and acquisitions, trans-national collaboration, incentive systems and job interviews. Social implications – The suggestions in this essay could contribute to our ability of proactively steering processes in organizations. In particular, they can provide a check to the notion that a control measure necessarily results in its intended effect. Originality/value – The synthesis of biological, sociological and cross-cultural psychological viewpoints with design-oriented method, using games or social simulations as research instruments, is original in the field.

  September 21, 2015   doi: 10.1108/CCM-03-2015-0040   open full text
• Toward Experimental International Business.
  Arjen van Witteloostuijn.
  Cross Cultural Management. September 21, 2015
  Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Volume 22, Issue 4, Page 530-544, October 2015.
  Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that the time is ripe to establish a powerful tradition in Experimental International Business (IB). Probably due to what the Arjen van Witteloostuijn refers to as the external validity myth, experimental laboratory designs are underutilized in IB, which implies that the internal validity miracle of randomized experimentation goes largely unnoticed in this domain of the broader management discipline. Design/methodology/approach – In the following pages, the author explains why the author believes this implies a missed opportunity, providing arguments and examples along the way. Findings – Although an Experimental Management tradition has never really gained momentum, to the author, the lab experimental design has a very bright future in IB (and management at large). To facilitate the development of an Experimental IB tradition, initiating web-based tools would be highly instrumental. This will not only boost further progress in IB research, but will also increase the effectiveness and playfulness of IB teaching. Originality/value – Given the high potential of an Experimental IB, the Cross-Cultural and Strategic Management journal will offer a platform for such exciting and intriguing laboratory work, cumulatively contributing to the establishment of an Experimental IB tradition.

  September 21, 2015   doi: 10.1108/CCM-06-2015-0075   open full text