Building professional discourse in emerging markets: Language, context and the challenge of sensemaking

Using ethnographic evidence from the former Soviet republics, this article examines a relatively new and mainly unobserved in the International Business (IB) literature phenomenon of communication disengagement that manifests itself in many emerging markets. We link it to the deficiencies of the local professional business discourse rooted in language limitations reflecting lack of experience with the market economy. This hampers cognitive coherence between foreign and local business entities, adding to the liability of foreignness as certain instances of professional experience fail to find adequate linguistic expression, and complicates cross-cultural adjustments causing multi-national companies (MNCs) financial losses. We contribute to the IB literature by examining cross-border semantic sensemaking through a retrospectively constructed observational study. We argue that a relative inadequacy of the national professional idiom is likely to remain a feature of business environment in post-communist economies for some time and therefore should be factored into business strategies of MNCs. Consequently, we recommend including discursive hazards in the risk evaluation of international projects

Entrepreneurial role models, fear of failure, and institutional approval of entrepreneurship: A tale of two regions

Studies on the influence of entrepreneurial role models (peers) on the decision to start a firm ar-gue that entrepreneurial role models in the local environment (1) provide opportunities to learn about entrepreneurial tasks and capabilities, and (2) signal that entrepreneurship is a favorable career option thereby reducing uncertainty that potential entrepreneurs face. However, these studies remain silent about the role of institutional context for these mechanisms. Applying an ex-tended sender-receiver model, we hypothesize that observing entrepreneurs reduces fear of fail-ure in others in environments where approval of entrepreneurship is high while this effect is signif-icantly weaker in low approval environments. Taking advantage of the natural experiment from recent German history and using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Project (GEM), we find considerable support for our hypotheses

Selection system orientations as an explanation for the differences between dual leaders of the same organization in their perception of organizational performance

We investigate to what extent individual managers operating in a dual leadership structure have different perceptions of how well his/her organization is performing. Using selection system theory we develop hypotheses on the relationships between a leader's selection system orientation and his/her perception of performance along multiple dimensions: market performance, expert performance and peer performance. The hypotheses are tested using dyadic data from 59 organizations in the performing arts led by two-hierarchically equivalent-managers. Our results show that dual leaders' differences in terms of market orientation and expert orientation relate positively to perceived performance differences along the same dimensions. This relationship is not found with respect to peer selection orientation. Generally, the relationship between orientation differences and perceived performance differences is stronger if the process of interpreting signals to construct a perception of organizational performance leaves more room for equivocality and uncertainty

The temporal dimension of knowledge and the limits of policy appraisal: biofuels policy in the UK

Biofuels, Chief Scientific Advisers, Learning, New institutional economics, Policy appraisal, Positive feedback, Time,