Cultural distance and customer orientation strategy of Chinese service MNEs under the belt and road initiative

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore mechanisms of cultural distance in the base of Chinese Service Multi-National Enterprise (MNE) settings. When attempting to enter overseas markets, many service MNEs face challenges caused by the cultural distance between the home and host countries. Culture distance attracts much attention in academia and industry. However, there are few empirical works to examine how cultural distance affects customer orientation strategies in a global supply chain. This paper aims to answer the following research question: How is the effect of cultural distance on customer acquisition and customer retention strategies, and the effect of customer orientation strategies on the performance of service-oriented MNEs controlled by Chinese capital along the Belt and Road Initiative?Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines the effect of cultural distance on the customer acquisition strategy and customer retention strategy, and the effect of customer orientation strategies on the performance of Chinese Service MNEs. A large-scale empirical study of Chinese Service MNEs operating in overseas markets is performed and questionnaires were distributed and collected. This paper uses Hofstede's method (Hofstede, 2010), Schwartz's method (Schwartz, 2003) and House et al.'s method (House et al., 2004) to calculate cultural distance. By using each kind of method, this study calculates the absolute culture distance and relative culture distance respectively.FindingsThe results suggest that cultural distance negatively affects customer orientation strategy, customer acquisition strategy positively affects performance and the interaction of customer acquisition and customer retention positively affects performance.Research limitations/implicationsThis study aims to contribute to the existing literature with a more fine-grained understanding of the inclusion of customer orientation strategy of Chinese Service MNEs in global supply chains.Practical implicationsThe findings outline several important implications that Chinese Service MNEs seeking to expand to overseas markets.Originality/valueThis paper contributes a novel, combined perspective of culture distance and customer orientation strategy.

UK FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN THE OECD, CULTURE AND GEOGRAPHY

How does distance affect foreign direct investment? Subject of this research is to determine important factors for the United Kingdom, when undertaking foreign direct investment (FDI). The UK is therefore estimated as the home country of investment, investing in the form of FDI in multiple host countries. More specifically, this research measures determinants of FDI outward stock from the UK to other OECD countries. This research examines how distance affects foreign direct investment and provides twofold contribution. First: Hofstede culture distance effects on foreign direct investment is measured. Second: Geographical kilometer distance effects on foreign direct investment is measured. Methodology used in this research is based on the gravity model, presenting a model setup designed for international trade. Moreover, the research applies foreign direct investment OECD data, together with data on gross domestic product and population. The equation specification combines the economic variables with measures for geographical distances, and the Hofstede Culture measure. First regression equation estimates FDI as a function of GDP, population and Culture Distance. Second regression equation estimates FDI as a function of GDP, population and Geographical Distance. This regression setup provides a clear opportunity to estimate the difference between impact of cultural and geographical distance, represented in the estimation coefficients of the regressions. The British Empire has evolved and through time developed the British culture. Purpose of this current research is to examine how cultural distance and geographical distance impact foreign direct investment, with foreign direct investment often being an indicator of the long-term commitment of foreign investors. Furthermore, with the purpose of finding how foreign direct investment is impacted by several different cultural factors, we analyze various dimensions of the Hofstede culture. These are the power distance (PDI), individualism (IDV), the masculinity/femininity (MAS), and the uncertainty avoidance (UAI). Conclusion is that, all taken together, the research finds foreign direct investment from the UK going to other OECD countries to be more highly affected by geographical distance than cultural distance. Which is interesting considering Brexit. Potentially, this is because the UK is not so culturally different from its main trading partners in the OECD, which is an interesting subject for future research.

Global Teams

Global teams have become a basic building block for organizing work that crosses geographic boundaries. They are an alternative to more traditional forms of hierarchy-based organizing and form the foundation of what is becoming known as the global networked organization. Global teams connect people who are geographically dispersed and work together on specific projects or tasks, crossing national, cultural, organizational, and linguistic boundaries. While global teams hold promise for organizing global work, they face conditions of complexity: (1) a multiplicity of different cultural contexts, governmental requirements, and multiple diverse stakeholders; (2) interdependence brought about by global flows of capital, information, and value chains; and, (3) ambiguity of meanings despite the fact that there is plenty of information. Management scholars have conducted most of the research about global teams from 1990 to 2018. These studies have shed light on global teaming processes, including communication and collaboration, facilitation and brokerage, leadership, language and identity, shared meaning, trust, power, national and organizational culture, distance, time, and technology. Some of the factors shown to improve global team effectiveness are as follows: a clear mission and objectives, explicit expectations for members’ roles and responsibilities, facilitating relationships among team members that leads to shared knowledge and a team identity, managing cultural, language and other contextual challenges, and monitoring and managing changing environmental conditions. While knowledge has grown about how global teams function, there is still much to learn about the complexity of multilevel cultural interactions in global teams and how different influence factors interact to affect performance. In-depth, longitudinal studies by anthropologists can provide such insights. The role of anthropologists is to assist the development of global teams by bringing nuance to the ways culture manifests in team member interactions and how social relationships are enacted and understood. Anthropologists can help build a richer understanding of contextual influences and the perceptions embedded in culture that shape sense-making across multiple contexts.

The Influence of Risk Culture on the Performance of International Joint-Venture Securities

With the development of economic globalization, culture is a key factor supporting the sustainability of foreign direct investment (FDI), especially for multinational enterprises. This paper takes the Chinese capital market as a sample and, combined with interviews with managers of international joint-venture securities (IJVS), finds that the culture of participants formed in developed and emerging capital market has a significant impact on the performance of IJVS. Using the degree of price fluctuation to measure the risk culture of each capital market, this paper observes that the risk culture in the Chinese capital market is significantly stronger than that of developed countries. This paper also finds that the stronger the risk culture IJVS shareholders have, the better they can adapt to the environment of the Chinese capital market and the better the performance they can achieve. Furthermore, risk culture distance, calculated by the risk culture differences between foreign shareholders and Chinese capital market, are significantly negatively correlated with IJVS performance and efficiency.

Educação a Distância, Cultura da Convergência e Audiovisualidades: Apontamentos para a Formação de Professores

Nossa proposta é pensar, a partir do conceito de audiovisualidades, as possibilidades didáticas abertas pela cultura da convergência, seja nos cenários da Educação a Distância, seja nas paisagens da modalidade presencial. Para tanto, discutimos o papel da televisão, de modo a problematizar as tecnologias educacionais e seus usos por professores e estudantes. Discutimos o nosso contato diário com a televisão comercial – no aparelho tradicional ou na palma da nossa mão – e rememoramos iniciativas que elegeram a TV como meio de praticar e dar acesso à educação formal – mais especificamente, falamos da gênese e da lógica do Telecurso 2º Grau, pensando em como aquela modalidade de ensino ainda ressoa entre as práticas atuais de EAD. Perguntamos o que ainda temos a aprender com essa lógica de produção de imagens e que espaços de invenção podemos explorar a partir dela, ampliando o repertório sobre as tecnologias educacionais na formação de professores.Palavras-chave: Audiovisualidades; Cultura da Convergência; Educação a Distância. Distance Education, Convergence Culture and Audiovisualities: Notes for Teacher TrainingABSTRACTOur proposal is to think, based on the concept of audiovisualities, the possibilities open by the convergence culture, whether in the scenarios of distance education, whether in the landscapes of the face to face education. To this end, we discussed the role of television in order to problematize the educational technologies and their use by teachers and students. We discuss our daily contact with the commercial television - in the traditional device or in the palm of our hand - and remember initiatives that have elected the TV as a means of practicing and giving access to formal education - more specifically talking about the genesis and the logic of the TELECOURSE 2nd Grade, thinking about how that type of education still resonates among the current practices of Distance Learning. We asked what we still have to learn with this logic of image production and wich spaces of invention we can exploit from it, expanding the repertoire on the educational technologies in teacher training.Keywords: Audiovisualities; Convergence Culture; Distance education. Convergencia y Audiovisualidades: Apuntes para la Formación del ProfesoradoRESUMENNuestra propuesta es pensar, basado en el concepto de audiovisualidades, las posibilidades abiertas por la cultura de convergencia, ya sea en los escenarios de la educación a distancia, ya sea en los paisajes de la educación presencial. Para ello, analizamos el papel de la televisión con el fin de cuestionar las tecnologías educativas y su uso por parte de profesores y estudiantes. Hablamos de nuestro contacto diario con la televisión comercial tradicional - en el dispositivo o en la palma de la mano - y rememoramos iniciativas que han elegido a la TV como un medio de practicar y dar acceso a la educación formal - más específicamente hablando de la génesis y la lógica del Telecurso 2º grado, pensando acerca de cómo este tipo de educación, aún resuena entre las prácticas actuales de la educación a distancia. Hemos preguntado lo que aún tenemos que aprender con esta lógica de producción de imagen y que espacios de invención podemos explotar, ampliando el repertorio de las tecnologías educativas en la formación del profesorado.Palabras clave: Audiovisualidades; Cultura de Convergencia; educación a distancia.

Ciberaula e nativos digitais: uma experiência de educação a distância na educação básica

Resumo: O advento das tecnologias digitais da informação e comunicação, aliadas ao uso da Internet, tem provocado mudanças significativas na contemporaneidade, dimensionadas pelas características da sociedade em rede, e com novas perspectivas para a educação. Nesse horizonte, este estudo analisou a concepção dos estudantes do ensino fundamental (nativos digitais) acerca da utilização da educação a distância como complementação da aprendizagem na educação básica. Trata-se de uma pesquisa com abordagem quantiqualitativa, do tipo exploratória, com estudantes do 7º ano do ensino fundamental, do Colégio Marista Pio X, em João Pessoa-PB, que participaram do Curso de História e Cultura Afro-brasileira e Indígena, na modalidade a distância. Os resultados apontam que a experiência foi significativa para os estudantes, tendo em vista que contribuiu para o êxito do processo educativo empreendido pela escola, notadamente nos resultados obtidos pelos estudantes e na avaliação que eles fazem da experiência.Palavras-chave: Educação a distância. Educação básica. Nativos digitais. CYBERLESSON AND DIGITAL NATIVES: A DISTANCE EDUCATION EXPERIENCE IN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION Abstract: The advent of digital information and communication technologies, combined with the use of the Internet, has provoked significant changes in contemporaneity, dimensioned by the characteristics of a network society, bringing new perspectives to Education. This study aims to analyze the perception of primary and secondary students (digital natives) in relation to the use of distance education as a complement to their learning in school. An explorative, quantqualitative research approach was taken with 7th grade students enrolled, of School Marista Pio X, of João Pessoa, Paraíba, who participated in an Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous History and Culture distance course. Results indicate that the experience was significant for the students, when considering that it contributed successfully to the education process adopted by the school, as noted by the students’ results and evaluation of the experience. Keywords: Distance education. Primary and Secondary Education. Digital Natives.

National Culture and Governance on Bondholder Wealth: Evidence from Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances around the World

This paper examines bondholder wealth effects in global business collaborations with the form of cross-border joint ventures (JVs) and strategic alliances (SAs). Based on a sample of 1,898 event-firms from 2009 to 2015, we find significant and positive abnormal returns for bondholders. On average, bondholder value increases 14.4 basis points in a 3-month observation window. We find that country-level governance and national culture are dominant drivers of bondholder wealth effects. More specifically, bondholders benefit more from JVs and SAs if they are from countries with poorer institutional governance or greater regulatory governance in creditor protection (higher creditor rights and lower shareholder rights). In addition, bondholders gain more when they are from countries characterized with greater individualism, less power distance, a higher level of trust, or larger culture distance. Robustness tests and subsample analyses confirm the main findings. We find a positive impact of JVs and SAs on stockholder wealth, but little evidence for wealth transfer between stockholders and bondholders.