Business-to-business marketing research: Assessing readability and discussing relevance to practitioners

Business practitioners tend to show little interest in academic journals, raising concerns that research-based knowledge potentially relevant to their managerial practice might evade them. The literature suggests academic writing style as one of the major reasons for this lack of interest. Against this background, we quantitatively examine the readability of 150 business-to-business (B2B) marketing research articles published in five leading journals. Our analysis identifies certain variations across journals and categories of papers, implying that it is possible to improve readability. We discuss the possible role of improved readability in encouraging practitioners to read B2B marketing research, while potentially increasing its relevance

Cultural sensemaking of corporate social responsibility: A dyadic view of Russian–Finnish business relationships

International Management (IM) needs a better understanding of how managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make sense of cultural differences in international business relationships, especially regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in relationships between firms from emerging and developed countries. We address this lacuna by uncovering how dyads of Russian and Finnish SME managers, engaged in mutual international business relationships, construct their understanding of CSR. The findings indicate that conceptualizations of CSR are embedded both in SME managers' cultural backgrounds and in the contextual environment. This extends previous research on the role of CSR in IM and respond to calls to study the microfoundations of CSR and internationalization, adding to the sparse knowledge of CSR in cross-cultural SME settings. </p

Cultural sensemaking of corporate social responsibility: A dyadic view of Russian–Finnish business relationships

International Management (IM) needs a better understanding of how managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make sense of cultural differences in international business relationships, especially regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in relationships between firms from emerging and developed countries. We address this lacuna by uncovering how dyads of Russian and Finnish SME managers, engaged in mutual international business relationships, construct their understanding of CSR. The findings indicate that conceptualizations of CSR are embedded both in SME managers' cultural backgrounds and in the contextual environment. This extends previous research on the role of CSR in IM and respond to calls to study the microfoundations of CSR and internationalization, adding to the sparse knowledge of CSR in cross-cultural SME settings.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Knowledge Sharing in Multinational Corporations - A Social Captal Perspective (summary section only)

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are commonly perceived as networks of differentiated units, dependent for their competitive edge on the sharing of different kinds of internal resources. This ‘differentiated network’ view of the MNC strongly emphasizes the crucial role of interunit knowledge sharing, the topic of this thesis. The five essays presented here contribute to the research on interunit knowledge sharing in MNCs by focusing on the roles played by language, identity, and feedback seeking in the knowledge sharing process. While these factors have occasionally been brought up in previous research as potentially relevant for interunit knowledge sharing, they have so far been subject to limited empirical examination – an important omission which this thesis is an effort to redress. Furthermore, the treatment of the topic is anchored in a theoretical framework based on social capital. This perspective contributes to MNC research by providing a comprehensive framework for examining the significance of social relationships in interunit interaction. The findings can be summarized in two main points. Firstly, language skills and shared identity appear to promote the accumulation of interunit social capital. Secondly, high levels of interunit social capital seem to promote interunit knowledge sharing and feedback seeking. These observations raise a number of both theoretical and practical issues of considerable relevance for MNC management

Organizing through and by multilingualism: writing languages into the study and practices of organizations

No abstract available

Shifting the faultlines of language: A quantitative functional-level exploration of language use in MNC subsidiaries

The body of case study-based research on language in multinational corporations (MNCs) is growing, but its findings have as yet been subjected to limited statistical validation. In this paper we use quantitative functional-level data to chart language use in subsidiaries' communication with other MNC units and local partner firms, and to analyze some consequences of these patterns against the background of previous qualitative work in the area. Our findings confirm that MNCs are indeed multilingual, but that language fluency varies significantly across functions and organizational levels. This has important implications for communication, knowledge sharing and the viability of formal language strategies.Language Multinational corporation Multilingualism Language strategies

The Role of Language in International Migrants’ Work Life Experiences

This paper analyses international migrants’ experiences of work life in their new locations specifically from the perspective of how these experiences are (co-)shaped by language. Based on an exploratory qualitative study conducted in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, we identify commonalities and differences between different types of migrants’, ranging from highly qualified self-initiated expatriates to recognized refugees. The findings show that: 1) Limitations on the job market and the need to find a niche as well as the role of the national context, e.g., in the form of prevalent language ideologies, affect all migrants, 2) a hierarchy of languages creates status differences between migrants, which sometimes intersect with nationality- or culture-related preconceptions. We then discuss the implications for conceptualizations of language proficiency and for language expectations towards migrants. Keywords: Migration, migrant, language-sensitive IB, fluency, intersection, employment, work life