Culture and Crisis Communication: Nestle India's Maggi Noodles Case

Extant theoretical paradigms in the field of crisis communication are organization-centric and do not adequately recognize the role of culture. The purpose of this essay is to analyze a crisis faced by Nestle India using the framework of global public relations which defines culture broadly to include political, economic, media, societal, and activist cultures. Our analysis revealed that a multinational corporation with over a century of presence in the country struggled to align itself to the complexities of the cultures of the host country. In the case of Nestle India, whereas environmental variables such as political economy and Westernization of urban India boosted the growth of its instant noodles, the multinational also struggled to cope with the rise of media corporatization, activist pressure and the vagaries of regulatory enforcement not to speak of cultural nationalism. It is evident that Nestlé's crisis response was governed more by its traditional corporate culture than by an ability to keep pace with the changing demands of its environment, leading to the amplification of an issue into a crisis. The study concludes that multinationals that ignore culture will be forced to pay a heavy price both in terms of reputation and the bottom line.     

Corporate Governance in Russia:: towards a European, US, or Russian Model?

This article analyzes Russia’s emerging corporate governance system taking into account both foreign and domestic influences. It discusses influences on Russia’s corporate governance from other countries, particularly the US, Germany, and France. Aspects of Russian culture and traditions are then examined to see how they might influence the country’s evolving corporate governance system. Although Russia will continue to be influenced by international standards and systems of other countries, the article concludes that Russian corporate governance will evolve into its own unique model reflecting the country’s traditions, values, and culture. Implications for Western investors are discussed.     

Corporate planning—a conceptual critique

Corporate planning is accepted by some as being an effective, efficient, and feasible means of charting the path an enterprise takes through the future. In this paper the author questions both the concept and the contribution of corporate planning. The author examines not only the problem of budgetary analysis within a planning process but also questions the ability of corporate planning to provide the necessary perspective of the future in any identifiable or probabilistic sense. The author postulates ‘the guts of corporate planning’. In the author's own word conceptual critiques ‘may be defined as setting up your own straw man in place of the other fellow's sawdust totem’. However, this paper presents some controversial yet fundamental criticisms of the current concepts of corporate planning. It is for the reader to judge whether the straw or the sawdust is deepest.     

Does China receive more regional FDI than gravity would suggest?

It is an empirical regularity that the activities of multinational corporations are concentrated in their home region. This has been shown to be the case for a majority of the 500 largest multinationals as well as for subsets of this 500 sorted by region or industry. The analysis has also been applied to the activities of a sample of all US and OECD multinationals, aggregated by country. These concentrations have been explained using theories, such as region-bound FSAs which constrain the ability of multinationals to internationalize, as well as transactions costs which make doing business outside a multinational’s home market more costly. To date, there has been no analysis that focuses on the regional and global character of multinational activity destined for China. This paper works to fill that void. Using data on FDI into China from each investor country over the period 1995–2005, this paper documents a significant regional concentration of Asian multinational activity operating within China. This regional concentration is sustained even after the special relationships with Hong Kong and (other) Offshore Financial Centres are accounted for. The evidence therefore extends the evidence of regional concentrations of MNE activities found elsewhere to China and its relationship with Asia.     

Developing new innovation models: Shifts in the innovation landscapes in emerging economies and implications for global R&D management

Over the past two decades, there has been a substantial shift in the global innovation landscape. Multinationals from developed economies are increasingly globalizing their R&D activities and are developing an “open innovation” model to source innovations from outside the firm, including from emerging economies such as those in Asia. In addition, emerging economy firms, which traditionally have played a secondary role in the global innovation landscape, have now begun to catch up in developing their own innovative capabilities. This study explores the implications of this new innovation landscape for CEOs of multinationals and emerging economy firms, as well as for international management scholars and educators. While the multinationals might appropriate rents from their existing capabilities and source new ones in emerging economies, they may be threatened by weak intellectual property rights regimes and unintended knowledge spillovers to local firms, creating potential competitors. Firms in the emerging economies can learn from and catch up with investing multinationals, but to do so they need to develop their own innovative capabilities and move from a process to a product focus and from imitation to innovation.     

Objectives, missions and performance measures in multinationals

This article examines performance evaluation systems of fifteen multinationals — five German, five UK and five US — and how they relate to corporate strategy or mission statements in each case. The technique of analysis used is the multilayered case study approach, and includes ‘face-to-face’ interviews.The results, by authors Jeffrey Coates, Edward Davis, Stephen Longden, Raymond Stacey (Aston University) and Clive Emmanuel (University of Glasgow), are very instructive. The cases show a consistent use of missions/strategies, objectives and performance measures within the companies, but wide variation between them. Detailed tables are presented which show clearly the range of variation between the companies and countries concerned.     

Technological change and technology monitoring process: Evidence from four Italian case studies

Technology monitoring (TM) may take on different meanings in a company’s day-to-day activities. In some cases it can be interpreted as a technology intelligence methodology, while in others it is understood as technology forecasting or even as technology assessment. These different interpretations are confirmed by an analysis of the literature. This case study examines the technology monitoring process in four Italian companies.For each of the cases considered, first we analysed the way technology monitoring is carried out and then we tried to understand what factors influence the company approach to technology monitoring. Four factors that can be expected to influence a company’s technology monitoring approach came out of this empirical research study: the industry a company operates in, the business model it uses, the importance of technology in the corporate culture, and the level of its R&D resources.     

Corporate planning at Dunlop

It has often been said that corporate planning is an art which, like all art perhaps, means all things to all men. As other papers have attempted to do this approaches the concepts of corporate planning in an analytical manner and illuminates a number of approaches which the author considers to be preferable. The problems of corporate planning in Dunlop Limited are then analysed and the author's own experience of corporate planning in that company are utilized describing a practical and comprehensive system.     

Corporation taxes and the debt policy of multinational firms

This paper analyzes the impact of corporate taxes on the capital structure of foreign subsidiaries of multinational firms. The empirical investigation employs a large micro-level panel dataset of German multinationals covering 31 countries over a 10-year period. A special feature of this dataset is that it allows us to distinguish between internal and external debt financing. Our results confirm a positive effect of local tax rates on both types of debt. Moreover, while adverse local credit market conditions are found to reduce external borrowing, internal debt is increasing, supporting the view that the two channels of debt finance are substitutes. Our findings suggest that internal credit markets give rise to significant advantages and enhance multinationals?? opportunities to use debt as a tax shield.     

Intellectual Property Abuses: How Should Multinationals Respond?

This article illustrates the causes of piracy and pinpoints piracy associated with registrations and with production and distribution. Based on interviews with British and American multinational managers working in China, the authors elaborate 10 corporate actions to counter the spread of the ‘inevitable curse’. In order to implement these 10 strategies, the authors recommend that firms treat piracy as a challenge, be corporately proactive, be aware of the repertoire of possible strategies, investigate co-operative action with other companies, agencies and government and be continuously alert to the dynamic nature of piracy. The problems reflected here are common to multinationals operating businesses around the world, and the destructive nature of piracy is likely to encourage more academic study to yield further insights for practice.     

How does job-related diversity affect boards' strategic participation? An information-processing approach

More than ever, corporate leaders consider the presence of different skills, knowledge, and experience in their boardrooms being important for boards' involvement throughout the whole strategy process. However, even though of great practical relevance, we have limited knowledge about how such diversity affects boards' active contribution to corporate strategy. Applying information-processing theory, we explore how job-related diversity may be an important determinant for boards' strategic participation. Using a survey database collected in Norway, we find that job-related diversity contributes to boards' strategic participation through directors' use of knowledge and skills.     

Organizing for Global Competition

Global information technology (i.e., computer hardware, software, and data communications shared across country boundaries) can support the multinational firm as it seeks to coordinate global operations, diffuse innovations worldwide, or provide integrated service to a global corporate customer. The current study uses information processing theory as the basis for examining alternative organizational designs for information technology in a globally competing firm. Mail survey data gathered from information technology managers in 109 multinationals provide evidence that multinational firms use different and distinct ways of organizing their global information technology activities. The survey data also reveal that in nearly half of the organizations, the way information technology activities are organized is inconsistent with the way the organization is reportedly structured. A follow-up interview-based study sought explanations for these misfits. Several contingency variables were identified that may shed some light to the misfits. These included factors from both the firm's internal and external environments.     

The competitive advantage and strategic configuration of knowledge-intensive, small- and medium-sized multinationals: a modified resource-based view

This study employs a modified resource-based approach to examine the competitive advantage enjoyed by knowledge-intensive, small- and medium-sized multinationals (KI-SMMs). While the resource-based view addresses superior capabilities only, this paper examines both superior and inferior capabilities and their resulting sustainable competitive advantage.Compared to larger knowledge-intensive multinationals, KI-SMMs possess more inferior than superior core capabilities. Despite this handicap, the paper demonstrates how KI-SMMs compete globally by leveraging their relatively superior R&D capabilities and by choosing a strategic configuration that allows them to compete internationally despite their relatively inferior capabilities in marketing and production activities.Our results show that KI-SMMs internalize R&D activities, which are their core capabilities, externalize production activities, in this case noncore capabilities, and internalize marketing activities, for which they have an inferior capacity, but which are, arguably, core capabilities. KI-SMMs compensate for their inferior capabilities in marketing activities through the use of a unique business model which focuses repeat sales to customers with whom a low number of high-value transactions can be maintained.     

An Empirical Investigation of Corporate Citizenship in Australia and Turkey *

This paper describes a study of corporate citizenship practices and its relationship to dimensions of internal and external corporate culture, customer loyalty and organizational commitment. Empirical data was collected from a cross‐industry sample in Turkey and Australia using a questionnaire form developed and validated for other cultures. It was shown that Australian and Turkish firms' practices differed significantly on a number of important variables, but also that it is possible to compare corporate citizenship practices in a way that is not culture‐specific.     

A Corporate Culture Pattern to Manage Business Ethics

Within the general frame of proposals for an adequate management of business ethics, this paper is based on the vision of corporate culture as a pattern to achieve such purpose. If we consider ethics as a specific value of corporate culture, we may resort to the mechanism of cultural change and implementation in order to manage ethics. Despite the difficulties it entails in terms of time and money investment, this procedure is one of the safest ways to reach ethical values which are known, shared and then practiced by all the members of a corporation, whatever the category. From this central standpoint, and basing ourselves on our own proposal for the management of culture, we shall describe which specific steps must be taken in order to achieve a set of ethical values which are both realistic and furthermore shared by all collaborators of an organization.     

Making quality a fundamental part of strategy

All that is known about strategy and strategic planning indicates that quality is a major factor in gaining competitive advantage. It is cost effective, profitable, promotes corporate longevity and builds an important company value system. The authors argue that is too important a factor to be left solely to quality control personnel or planners and is a fundamental part of the chief executive's responsibility for the development of strategy.     

Earnings per share is a poor indicator of performance

One of the greatest dangers in corporate financial planning is failing to separate investment decision making from financial policy, because poor quality investments can appear to be desirable as a result of the particular financing vehicle employed. Management's focus of attention should not be rates of growth and earnings per share or return on net worth. Rather, the most important measure of corporate performance is the rate of return on total capital employed. The paper identifies the dangers of employing an earnings per share criterion for evaluating corporate performance, and suggests an alternative: focusing on a company's free cash flow, net operating profits after taxes minus the amount of new capital investment required in order to generate future profits. The author presents an analytical framework employing his free cash flow concept which can be applied to pricing and financing acquisitions.     

组织文化和领导风格对知识管理的影响

组织文化是组织知识管理的推动力,知识支持型和知识共享型的组织文化会对组织中的知识管理具有正面影响;金字塔形的组织文化会对组织中的知识管理具有负面影响。领导风格既直接作用于组织的知识管理,又通过影响组织文化的形成和组织文化的内容对知识管理产生间接影响。研究发现,领导风格对于在组织中建立知识支持型文化具有十分重要的作用,鼓励和支持知识管理的领导需要拥有更多的专家权利,并推崇参与型管理风格;领导的支持行为将有助于知识支持型组织文化的形成和发展,并有利于组织中的知识管理活动。     

A Corporate Culture Pattern to Manage Business Ethics

Within the general frame of proposals for an adequate management of business ethics, this paper is based on the vision of corporate culture as a pattern to achieve such purpose. If we consider ethics as a specific value of corporate culture, we may resort to the mechanism of cultural change and implementation in order to manage ethics. Despite the difficulties it entails in terms of time and money investment, this procedure is one of the safest ways to reach ethical values which are known, shared and then practiced by all the members of a corporation, whatever the category. From this central standpoint, and basing ourselves on our own proposal for the management of culture, we shall describe which specific steps must be taken in order to achieve a set of ethical values which are both realistic and furthermore shared by all collaborators of an organization. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Comparing products using data envelopment analysis

Using an application of linear programming known as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a method is described to compare products which vary in excellence along a number of dimensions, and for each of which there might be a number of associated “costs”. The method is illustrated by comparing published benchmarks of 37 computer printers. Potential uses of a DEA analysis of products might be: to assist corporate buyers who may need to reconcile a diversity of present and future uses in one standardised purchase; in competitor analysis; in determining unexplored market niches; and as a normative model of product excellence against which product purchasing behaviour could be compared.