Characteristics of successful UK international strategic alliances: behavioural and organizational factors

With the current trend toward globalization and the increasing competitive and technological challenges of today’s environment the formation of international strategic alliances between firms have become an important part of many firm’s strategies and have grown in importance as a mode of international business operations. However, experience with international strategic alliances has shown that they face a number of problems which can often result in the termination of the alliance. For this purpose it is important to address the factors that are impacting the success of international strategic alliances. Behavioural and organizational characteristics of interorganizational relationships have been identified as being important to the successful management of the international strategic alliance. However, a clear understanding of their impact on performance in the academic literature is deficient. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to address the behavioural and organizational characteristics of international strategic alliance success. The specific objectives of this study are (i) to provide an empirical analysis of UK strategic alliance activity with firms from Western Europe, the USA and Japan (ii) to determine the successful characteristics of strategic alliances between UK firms and their international partners and (iii) to assess the influence of behavioural and organizational characteristics on the success of UK international strategic alliances. Data was collected using both primary and secondary sources. The creation of a database of UK international strategic alliances through secondary sources was the first stage of the research. This allowed the identification of a number of international strategic alliances used in the second stage of the research, which involved the collection of data through a mail survey. The data was analysed using factor analysis, descriptive statistics, t-tests, multiple discriminant analysis and multiple regression. The results of the study have shown that while both behavioural and organizational characteristics are important to UK international strategic alliances, behavioural characteristics distinguish successful UK international strategic alliances from less successful international alliances. Successful UK international strategic alliances are characterized by higher levels of commitment, trust, coordination, interdependence and communication and lower levels of conflict. Performance of UK international strategic alliances was also found to be positively related to commitment, trust, coordination, interdependence and communication. Relatively few differences were found between successful and less successful alliances in terms of structure and control. Furthermore, very few relations were found between performance and structure and control characteristics

The Effects of Spirituality and Religiosity on the Ethical Judgment in Organizations

Despite the obvious link between spirituality, religiosity and ethical judgment, adefinition for the nature of this relationship remains elusive due to conceptual andmethodological limitations. To address these, we propose an integrative Spiritual-based model (ISBM) derived from categories presumed to be universal acrossreligions and cultural contexts, to guide future business ethics research on religiosity.This article aims to empirically test (ISBM) in the context of Islam. It examines howdifferent Muslims' views of God (emotional component) influence their ethicaljudgments in organizations, and how this process is mediated by their religiouspractice and knowledge (behavioral and intellectual components). Comprising focusgroup and vignette designs, the study was carried out with a random sample of 427executives and management professionals from Saudi. After data collection, the studyhypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). The findingsconfirmed that a view of God based on hope might be more closely associated withunethical judgments than a view based on fear or one balancing hope and fear.Furthermore, religious practice and knowledge were found to mediate the relationshipbetween Muslims' different views of God and their ethical judgments. These resultsprovide unique theoretical insights into religiosity's influence on ethical judgment, withimportant implications for managemen

Muslims’ view of God as a predictor of ethical behaviour in organisations : scale development and validation

While there is a widespread acceptance of the link between religiosity and ethics, there is less certainty how this influence occurs exactly, necessitating further research into these issues. A main roadblock to our understanding of this influence from an Islamic perspective is the absence of a validated measurement tool. The purpose of this study therefore is to develop a Scale of Muslims’ Views of Allah (SMVA). This article discusses how the SMVA was developed through the following five steps: (1) establishment of content and face validity; (2) application of a cognitive interviewing technique to pretest the SMVA with sixteen participants; (3) pilot testing of the SMVA with twelve participants; (4) administration of the SMVA online to marketing and management professionals (n = 472) via a multi-stage cluster sampling process to verify the scale’s reliability and validity; and (5) testing criterion-related validity. The results showed that the newly constructed 13-item scale had adequate psychometric properties. Finally, the implications for organisations, limitations and future research are discussed