Knowledge that Transforms

This paper argues that, given the proliferation of journals within which to publish international business research, authors need to identify objectives for their research and develop a publishing strategy to ensure the appropriate and timely publication of their work. Based on archival data and a survey of journal editors, this study provides information about seventy-nine English language business publications to help authors develop such as strategy.

This research attempts to enhance the obsolescing bargain theory, for manufacturing companies, by statistically testing the effects of nine explanatory variables on the static and dynamic manifestations of bargaining success, with longitudinal, firm-level data. In order to highlight those effects, it develops a conceptual framework that provides a broader context in which the primary variables operate. It demonstrates that the obsolescing bargain took effect in India over a fifteen-year period following restrictive legislation. Unlike previous research, this study measures the effect of benefits received by multinationals from the host government in exchange for equity dilution. American companies are found to retain a smaller share of their foreign ownership over time than British and other European multinationals. Some explanatory variables that have previously been found to influence level of foreign ownership (static bargaining success) are found to be less important, or have a different effect, in explaining proportion of foreign ownership retained (dynamic bargaining success).

The concept of human resources management (HRM) has been much debated in the literature. The concept developed initially from work in the U.S.A. in the 1960s and 1970s and since then has been adopted increasingly around the world. This paper argues that in Europe there is only limited acceptance of the organizational autonomy upon which the concept in based, and that, therefore, different approaches to the notion of human resource management are required. External constraints are analysed and a new model of the concept that would encompass EuroHRM is proposed.

This article offers a critique and extension of recent work by Bruce Kogut and Udo Zander. Kogut and Zander are correct to argue that opportunism is unnecessary to explain the existence of the multinational, but wrong to infer that this indicates an absence of market failure. They have identified an important class of transaction costs and market failure which arises in the absence of opportunism, but do not cat doubt on the market failure approach to the theory of the multinational. Their argument that they have identified an important source of ‘ownership’ advantage is unconvincing and is not supported by the empirical evidence. However, Kogut and Zander's work is of considerable significance, but in areas different from those that they highlight.

Little has been reported on joint ventures between firms from newly industrialized countries and developing countries. This paper examines twelve characteristics of a sample of Korean firms with partners in developing countries (LDCs) and contrasts them with existing research where (a) developed country firms have linked with firms in other developed countries, and (b) developed country firms have linked with local firms in developing countries. As part of the analysis, ten hypotheses were formulated and tested.

This paper examines the preferences of 4405 individuals in forty-three organizations from sixty-eight different countries for four innovation championing roles: the organizational maverick, the network facilitator, the transformational leader and the organizational buffer. The study shows that the cultural value of uncertainty acceptance is significantly associated with preferences for these four championing roles. It suggests that uncertainty-accepting societies may be more innovative than uncertainty-avoiding societies because of the greater legitimacy of those roles.

This paper examines the benefits of portfolio investment in the stock markets of politically risky countries by evaluating the effects of political risk constraints on the performance of a portfolio of international stocks. We use monthly data on political risk ratings and stock returns for a sample of thirty-six countries from April 1982 to December 1991. Ex-post and ex-ante portfolio selection strategies are developed to assess the gains from international diversification. Efficient sets are derived using a quadratic programming technique. We use four ex-ante portfolio strategies whose optimal portfolio weights are those of the equally weighted portfolio, the minimum-variance portfolio the certainty-equivalence tangency portfolio and the Bayes-Stein portfolio. The empirical findings, based on the performance tests of Jobson and Korkie [1981], suggest that diversification among politically risky countries improves the risk-return characteristics of optimal portfolios. However, the most striking benefit of the inclusion of politically risk countries in an international portfolio is the reduction in overall portfolio risk.