Does It Really Work? Re-Assessing the Impact of Pre-Departure Cross-Cultural Training on Expatriate Adjustment

Cultural adjustment is considered to be a prerequisite for expatriate success abroad. One way to enhance adjustment is to provide employees with knowledge and awareness of appropriate norms and behaviors of the host country through cross-cultural training (CCT). This article analyzes the impact of pre-departure CCT on expatriate adjustment and focuses on variations in participation, length and the comprehensiveness of training. Unlike previous research, the study focuses on the effectiveness of pre-departure CCT for non-US employees expatriated to a broad range of host country settings. Employing data from 339 expatriates from 20 German Multinational Corporations (MNCs) the study finds CCT has little if any effect on general, interactional or work setting expatriate adjustment. However, a significant impact of foreign language competence was found for all three dimensions of expatriate adjustment. We used interviews with 20 expatriates to supplement our discussion and provide further implications for practice

An organizational impression management perspective on the formation of corporate reputations

Researchers have only recently turned their attention to the study of corporate reputation. As is characteristic of many early areas of management inquiry, the field is decidedly multidisciplinary and disconnected. This article selectively reviews reputation research conducted mainly during the past decade. A framework is proposed that views reputation from the perspective of organizational impression management. Corporations are viewed as social actors, intent on enhancing their respectability and impressiveness in the eyes of constituents

Building inspection: can computer vision help?

Computer vision is forever expanding into new areas, especially in the field of inspection. The work presented here shows how computer vision has the potential to improve the exterior inspection of large buildings. A robot is being developed at City University, London that will perform a number of tests and the initial use of computer vision is to locate the robot thus enabling the position of building defects to be recorded more reliably than at present. A system has been developed that allows the inspector to tag just four points on the building, seen through a camera, to points on a CAD diagram of that building. With that information, a mapping can be found, so that for any new point in the image, and in particular that of the robot, its position on the building can be found. Work has progressed to automate the process such that now the computer uses a number of image processing techniques to extract key features of the building scene. These features are compared and matched to a CAD diagram, from which the mapping between the image and diagram is produced. This then allows the true position of the robot to be found. Results are given for a model building and robot demonstrating the accuracy of the algorithm, together with some results from residential flats, concluding that computer vision can indeed help building inspection.

Factors affecting the structure of buying centers for the purchase of professional business advisory services

International Journal of Research in Marketing93269-279IJRM

Torrenticola trimaculata n. sp. (Parasitengona: Torrenticolidae), a three-spotted water mite from eastern North America: taxonomic history, species delimitation, and survey of external morphology

Fisher, J.R., Fisher, D.M., Nelson, W.A., O'Neill, J.C., Skvarla, M.J., Ochoa, R., Bauchan, G.R., Radwell, A.J., Dowling, A.P.G. (2015): Torrenticola trimaculata n. sp. (Parasitengona: Torrenticolidae), a three-spotted water mite from eastern North America: taxonomic history, species delimitation, and survey of external morphology. Acarologia 55 (1): 71-116, DOI: 10.1051/acarologia/20152155, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/acarologia/2015215