Not all international assignments are created equal: HQ-subsidiary knowledge transfer patterns across types of assignments and types of knowledge

Drawing on 50 semi-structured interviews in a case study of a Belgian multinational and its foreign subsidiary in Poland, we develop new insights into how using different types of international assignments (long-term expatriation, short-term expatriation, short-term inpatriation) allows a HQ-subsidiary dyad to transfer different types of knowledge (declarative, procedural, axiomatic, relational), both from and to HQ, during and after the assignment. We show how each type of assignment acts as a unique knowledge transfer channel, and why it is critical that HQ-subsidiary dyads use an appropriate combination and sequence of international assignments reflecting their specific knowledge transfer needs

Expatriate cultural identity negotiation strategies: a dynamic framework

In response to the somewhat paradoxical combination of increasing diversity in the global workforce and the resurgence of nationalism in an era of global mobility, this chapter aims to uncover how employees on international assignments respond to exposure to new cultures. Specifically, the study aims to explicate the underlying psychological mechanisms linking expatriates' monocultural, multicultural, global, and cosmopolitan identity negotiation strategies with their responses toward the host culture by drawing upon exclusionary and integrative reactions theory in cross-cultural psychology. This conceptual chapter draws on the perspective of exclusionary versus integrative reactions toward foreign cultures – a perspective rooted in cross-cultural psychology research – to categorize expatriates' responses toward the host culture. More specifically, the study elaborates how two primary activators of expatriates' responses toward the host culture – the salience of home-culture identity and a cultural learning mindset – explain the relationship between cultural identity negotiation strategies and expatriates' exclusionary and integrative responses. The following metaphors for these different types of cultural identity negotiation strategies are introduced: “ostrich” (monocultural strategy), “frog” (multicultural strategy), “bird” (global strategy), and “lizard” (cosmopolitan strategy). The proposed dynamic framework of cultural identity negotiation strategies illustrates the sophisticated nature of expatriates' responses to new cultures. This chapter also emphasizes that cross-cultural training tempering expatriates' exclusionary reactions and encouraging integrative reactions is crucial for more effective expatriation in a multicultural work environment

Of ostriches, frogs, birds and lizards: a dynamic framework of cultural identity negotiation strategies in an era of global mobility

Purpose In response to the somewhat paradoxical combination of increasing diversity in the global workforce and the resurgence of nationalism in an era of global mobility, this article aims to uncover how employees on international assignments respond to exposure to new cultures. Specifically, the study aims to explicate the underlying psychological mechanisms linking expatriates’ monocultural, multicultural, global and cosmopolitan identity negotiation strategies with their responses towards the host culture by drawing upon exclusionary and integrative reactions theory in cross-cultural psychology. Design/Methodology/Approach This conceptual article draws on the perspective of exclusionary versus integrative reactions towards foreign cultures – a perspective rooted in cross-cultural psychology research – to categorize expatriates’ responses towards the host culture. More specifically, the study elaborates how two primary activators of expatriates’ responses towards the host culture – the salience of home-culture identity and a cultural learning mindset – explain the relationship between cultural identity negotiation strategies and expatriates’ exclusionary and integrative responses, providing specific propositions on how each type of cultural identity negotiation strategy is expected to be associated with expatriates’ exclusionary and integrative responses towards the host culture. Findings The present study proposes that 1) expatriates’ adoption of a monocultural identity negotiation strategy is positively associated with exclusionary responses towards the host culture and is negatively associated with integrative responses towards the host culture; 2) expatriates’ adoption of a multicultural identity negotiation strategy is positively associated with both exclusionary responses and integrative responses towards the host culture; 3) expatriates’ adoption of a global identity negotiation strategy is negatively associated with exclusionary responses towards the host culture; 4) expatriates’ adoption of a cosmopolitan identity negotiation strategy is negatively associated with exclusionary responses, and positively associated with integrative responses towards the host culture. The following metaphors for these different types of cultural identity negotiation strategies are introduced: “ostrich” (monocultural strategy), “frog” (multicultural strategy), “bird” (global strategy) and “lizard” (cosmopolitan strategy). Originality/value The proposed dynamic framework of cultural identity negotiation strategies illustrates the sophisticated nature of expatriates’ responses to new cultures. This article also emphasizes that cross-cultural training tempering expatriates’ exclusionary reactions and encouraging integrative reactions is crucial for more effective expatriation in a multicultural work environment

How to make career advancement in Economics more inclusive

Men are overrepresented in senior academic positions in Economics (Teunissen and Hogendoorn, 2018). While gender inequality in ­academia is universal (Miller et al., 2015), it is especially pronounced in the Economics discipline (Leslie et al., 2015) and in the Netherlands in particular (Miller et al., 2015). In nearly four decades, only six women have ever made it into the ESB Economics Top 40. It is important to note that promoting gender equality is not just a matter of fairness; it is – as should be of interest to Economists – also a matter of ­efficiency. For instance, Hsieh et al. (2018) have argued that no less than a quarter of the economic growth in the US between 1960 and 2010 can be attributed to what they call “the improved allocation of talent” of members of underrepresented groups. For the Netherlands specifically, The McKinsey Global Institute recently calculated that greater gender parity in labor force participation, STEM fields, and senior positions, would add more than 100 billion euros to Dutch GDP (McKinsey, 2018). To shed light on this phenomenon and to present insight into possible interventions, we provide a conceptual and empirical analysis of the factors underlying gender differences in career advancement in Economics, drawing on the latest research in the behavioural sciences

The benefits of being understood: the role of ethnic identity confirmation in knowledge acquisition by expatriates

In this article, we propose that the concept of ethnic identity confirmation (EIC), the level of agreement between how expatriates view the importance of their own ethnic identity and how local employees view the importance of expatriates’ ethnic identity, can explain why expatriates who are ethnically similar to host country employees are sometimes less effective than expected when working overseas. Multinationals often choose ethnically similar expatriates for assignments, assuming these expatriates can more effectively acquire knowledge from local employees. Thus, understanding the specific challenges that endanger the realization of this potential is crucial. Our survey, administered to a sample of 128 expatriate-local employee dyads working in China, reveals that both ethnically similar and ethnically different expatriates acquire more local knowledge when EIC is high. However, the association between ethnic (dis)similarity and knowledge acquisition is direct for ethnically different expatriates, whereas for ethnically similar expatriates it is indirect via their perception of local employees’ trustworthiness. We discuss this study’s important implications and provide recommendations for multinationals on how to provide tailored support to expatriates who face different identity challenges

Do we need to distance ourselves from the distance concept? Why home and host country context might matter more than (cultural) distance

We scrutinize the explanatory power of one of the key concepts in International Business: the concept of (cultural) distance. Here we focus on its effect on entry mode choice, one of the most researched fields in international business strategy. Our findings might, however, be equally be relevant for the field of International Business as a whole. Our analysis is based on a review of 92 prior studies on entry mode choice, as well as an empirical investigation in over 800 subsidiaries of MNCs, covering nine host and fifteen home countries across the world. We conclude that the explanatory power of distance is highly limited once home and host country context are accounted for, and that any significant effects of cultural distance on entry mode choice might simply be caused by inadequate sampling. Entry mode studies in particular, and International Business research in general, would do well to reconsider its fascination with distance measures, and instead, focus first and foremost on differences in home and host country context. We argue that serious engagement with deep contextualization is necessary in International Business research to pose new and relevant questions and develop new and innovative theories that explain empirical phenomena

Can Microsoft Academic be used for citation analysis of preprint archives? The case of the Social Science Research Network

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Scientometrics on 07/03/2018, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2704-z The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Preprint archives play an important scholarly communication role within some fields. The impact of archives and individual preprints are difficult to analyse because online repositories are not indexed by the Web of Science or Scopus. In response, this article assesses whether the new Microsoft Academic can be used for citation analysis of preprint archives, focusing on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Although Microsoft Academic seems to index SSRN comprehensively, it groups a small fraction of SSRN papers into an easily retrievable set that has variations in character over time, making any field normalisation or citation comparisons untrustworthy. A brief parallel analysis of arXiv suggests that similar results would occur for other online repositories. Systematic analyses of preprint archives are nevertheless possible with Microsoft Academic when complete lists of archive publications are available from other sources because of its promising coverage and citation results

Measuring academic research impact: creating a citation profile using the conceptual framework for implementation fidelity as a case study

The “citation score” remains the most commonly-used measure of academic impact, but is also viewed as practically and conceptually limited. The aim of this case study was to test the feasibility of creating a “citation profile” for a single, frequently-cited methods paper, the author’s own publication on the conceptual framework for implementation fidelity. This was a proof-of-concept study that involved an analysis of the citations of a single publication. This analysis involved identifying all citing publications and recording, not only how many times the key paper was cited within each citing publication, but also within which sections of that publication (e.g. Background, Methods, Results etc.). Level of impact could be categorised as high, moderate or low. The key paper had been cited more than 400 times and had a high impact in 25 % of publications based on citation frequency within publications, i.e. the key paper was cited three or more times; and a low impact in 58 % of citing publications, i.e. the key paper was cited just once. There were 41 “high impact” publications based on location of the citations, of which 35 (85 %) were also categorised as high impact by frequency. These results suggest that it is both possible and straightforward to categorise the level of impact of a key paper based on its “citation profile”, i.e., the frequency with which the paper is cited within citing publications, thus adding depth and value to the citation metric

Why and how does shared language affect subsidiary knowledge inflows? A social identity perspective

We draw on social identity theory to conceptualize a moderated mediation model that examines the relationship between shared language among subsidiary and HQ managers, and subsidiaries’ knowledge inflows from HQ. Specifically, we study (1) whether this relationship is mediated by the extent to which subsidiary managers share HQ goals and vision, and the extent to which HR decisions are centralized; and (2) whether subsidiary type moderates these mediated relationships. Building on a sample of 817 subsidiaries in nine countries/regions, we find support for our model. Implications for research on HQ-subsidiary knowledge flows, social identity theory and international HRM are discussed

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