Leveraging the common and outsourcing the distinct: institutional difference and multinational company identity in emerging economies

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the challenges of outsidership faced by multinational companies (MNCs) accessing emerging economies. The paper departs from popular conceptualisations of culture drawing instead on social identity theory as part of an institutions-based view, to explain how employing a singularities approach can allow the identification of commonalities of Indianness and Australianness that can be leveraged to ameliorate negative socially embedded business norms that pose a challenge to MNC success in emerging economies. This study shows that despite recognised formal (regulatory) and informal (cultural) differences, managers of Australian MNCs operating in India were able to innovatively identify and exploit cultural commonalties/singularities to ease cultural adjustment and mitigate intergroup conflict, allowing them to achieve an innovative institutional fit. The paper discusses how, using this approach, sole-venture MNCs can access many of the benefits provided by collaborative entry modes while preserving MNC identity. We further propose that the singularities approach can provide a valuable starting point to develop culturally appropriate competence training initiatives.     

Complex Thinking and Computing Organization Facing Contingent Problems

Public Organization Review - Facing the reflexive modernity, social wealth production is systematically correlated with the production of social and technical problems. Due to the complexity...     

Unspanned Macroeconomic Factors in the Yield Curve

In this article, we extract common factors from a cross-section of U.S. macro-variables and Treasury zero-coupon yields. We find that two macroeconomic factors have an important predictive content for government bond yields and excess returns. These factors are not spanned by the cross-section of yields and are well proxied by economic growth and real interest rates.     

Approximate Bayesian computation with composite score functions

Both approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) and composite likelihood methods are useful for Bayesian and frequentist inference, respectively, when the likelihood function is intractable. We propose to use composite likelihood score functions as summary statistics in ABC in order to obtain accurate approximations to the posterior distribution. This is motivated by the use of the score function of the full likelihood, and extended to general unbiased estimating functions in complex models. Moreover, we show that if the composite score is suitably standardised, the resulting ABC procedure is invariant to reparameterisations and automatically adjusts the curvature of the composite likelihood, and of the corresponding posterior distribution. The method is illustrated through examples with simulated data, and an application to modelling of spatial extreme rainfall data is discussed.     

Association of sexual abstinence in adolescence with mental health in adulthood

We examined whether adolescent sexual abstinence predicts better adult mental health. 1,917 adolescents, recruited from middle schools at age 13, were surveyed at ages 13, 18, 23, and 29. In bivariate analyses, adolescent sexual abstinence was associated with better mental health at age 29 for females, but not males; three adolescent factors, educational prospects, family bonding, and unconventionality were investigated as explanatory variables of this relationship. The abstinence-mental health relationship was nonsignificant when educational prospects was included in multivariate models, and marginally significant when family bonding and unconventionality were included; all three explanatory factors accounted for significant proportions of the variance in adult mental health. Girls who are uninvolved in school, have weak family backgrounds, and exhibit unconventionality may have poor adult mental health, whether or not they abstain from sex in adolescence. Interventions that strengthen adolescents' connections to families and schools may reduce risk for long-term mental health problems.     

Home study methods for evaluating prospective resource families: history, current challenges, and promising approaches

Every state requires a home study before the placement of foster children for adoption. This article examines the history of home studies, presents results from expert interviews on the changing processes and purposes of home studies, and explores current challenges for the field. The article also introduces the Structured Analysis Family Evaluation (SAFE), a uniform home study format that encourages consistent family evaluations across workers, agencies, and jurisdictions. The article clarifies how SAFE may address challenges facing foster care and adoption practice.     

The Last Rogue of History: Picaresque Elements in Sasha Sokolov’s Palisandriia

This article takes a detailed look at the way in which the Habsburg Monarchy’s policy towards Serbia subtly shifted between 1881, when the Monarchy forced a secret treaty of alliance on the Serbian government, and the end of the Serbo-Bulgarian War of November 1885. Gustav von Kálnoky, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, inherited a policy largely shaped by his Hungarian predecessor, Count Gyula Andrássy, which relied on controlling Serbia through the person of its ruler, the wayward Milan Obrenovi?. The Austrophile and highly unpopular Milan, however, was a disastrous instrument of Austro-Hungarian control, and by the end of the Serbo-Bulgarian conflict, by which point Milan was pleading to be allowed to abdicate, Kálnoky had come to the conclusion that this “personal policy” was a failure, and that the Monarchy was better off relying on the outright coercion of Serbia. The article reconsiders some of the key stages in this development, in particular Andrássy’s memorandum of 24 November 1885, and Kálnoky’s reassessment of the value of the secret treaty of 1881, which depended solely on the guarantee of the Serbian monarch and, as a result, threatened to become worthless without his presence on the throne.     

Vulnerable young people and substance misuse: expanding on the risk and protection‐focused approach using social psychology

This paper critically reviews recent research exploring risk and protective factors for the development of problematic substance use in populations of young people. Specific populations of young people who are most vulnerable to developing problematic patterns of use are identified, and alterations to methods of data collection which would improve the ability of local authorities to monitor these populations and more efficiently target them for early preventative interventions are highlighted. It is argued that social‐psychological research techniques and approaches should be used to complement a risk and protection‐focused approach in order to improve the design and evaluation of interventions, and provide decision‐aids for practitioners when assessing the needs of vulnerable young people. Examples are provided to demonstrate the utility of social psychology in this regard, and the paper concludes with specific recommendations for future research and services. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Causality and interdependence analysis in linear econometric models with an application to fertility

This paper is an applied analysis of the causal structure of linear multi-equational econometric models. Its aim is to identify the kind of relationships linking the endogenous variables of the model, distinguishing between causal links and feedback loops. The investigation is first carried out within a deterministic framework and then moves on to show how the results may change inside a more realistic stochastic context. The causal analysis is then specifically applied to a linear simultaneous equation model explaining fertility rates. The analysis is carried out by means of a specific RATS programming code designed to show the specific nature of the relationships within the model.     

Labour Underutilisation and Gender: Unemployment Versus Hidden-Unemployment

As labour markets have become more complex there has been increasing interest among researchers in understanding the ways that social and labour market processes and contexts impact on various labour market states. One important area has been in understanding the differences between unemployment and hidden unemployment. This paper considers the ways in which these two labour market states differ for a sample of male and female respondents to the Household Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) survey. It presents data related to the reasons why respondents in these two labour force states consider they are jobless and analyses the characteristics of male and female respondents in the two labour market states to consider differences in outcomes. The findings suggest that there are differences in the two states of labour market outcomes and that these are further complicated when one considers processes for males and females.