Sustainable Communication

In chapter 5, Sustainable Communication, the role of PR firms as international knowledge brokers is given its due. The chapter demonstrates the impact of a network of American public relations firms in spreading “green” PR across European and Mexican borders during a critical historical period. With the consolidation of the European Union and NAFTA on the horizon, corporate clients in a range of industries (from tobacco to chemicals to oil, coal, and gas) adopted promotional methods that advertised their commitment to environmentalism in an effort to sidestep sweeping regulations. By diffusing its core principles of sustainable communication over sustainable environmental behavior, PR networks helped to define environmental communication as a field in its own right, acting as a key cultural producer in the realm of international environmental governance.

Exploring the enablers and microfoundations of international knowledge transfer

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the enablers and barriers influencing international knowledge transfer at the team-level in the context of product innovation within an emerging-market multinational enterprise (EMNE) in the insurance industry. Design/methodology/approach The research applies an exploratory case study design considering an emerging-market multinational insurance company headquartered in Colombia. Four subsidiaries (El Salvador, Chile, Argentina and Colombia) and the Corporate Office (headquarter) served as the research sites. It also adopts an interpretive research approach providing a grounded theory framework linking international knowledge transfer and product innovation. Findings The empirical findings emphasize the central role played by the enablers (i.e. shared vision, empathy and knowledge sources) in facilitating international knowledge transfer, which, in turn, enhances product innovation. More important, however, is the detailed explanation that the paper provides regarding the enablers’ microfoundational antecedents in terms of key activities that are performed at the team-level. Research limitations/implications The grounded theory framework was constructed using data collected in a single firm associated with a particular industry and regional context. The study only considered a single aspect of knowledge management (i.e. knowledge transfer). Other aspects of knowledge management systems, such as knowledge creation and knowledge application, should be used for explaining product innovation in EMNEs more comprehensively. Practical implications The study suggests a set of enabling conditions and activities that should be adopted by managers of EMNEs to improve international knowledge transfer with the aim of triggering product innovation. This includes the design of strategies for strengthening empathy among geographically dispersed teams by providing opportunities for regular live videoconferences among team members aimed at building close bonds, fostering trust and creating a sense of belonging in which participants get to know each other better and to establish a shared vision and a set of guiding principles and commitments for how the team will work. These suggestions are particularly important today when several multinational enterprises (MNEs) have been forced to rearrange their workplace by replacing face-to-face interactions with virtual work dynamics due to the COVID-19 crisis. Originality/value Previous studies have confirmed that international knowledge transfer positively influences MNEs’ innovative performance. However, no studies have been conducted linking both variables in the context of EMNEs in Latin America in the service sector. The research tries to fill this gap. Besides, the paper introduces empathy as a novel enabler for international knowledge transfer and a moderator able to diminish the negative effect that cultural differences and geographical barriers have on the knowledge transfer process.

Language Relativity in Legacy Literature: A Systematic Review in Multiple Languages

Since the Olympic Agenda 2020, legacy has been widely used as a justification for hosting the Olympic Games, through which sustainable development can be achieved for both events and host cities. To date, no universal definition of legacy has been established, which presents challenges for legacy-related international knowledge transfer among host cities. To address this gap, a multilingual systematic review of the literature regarding the concept of legacy was conducted in French, Japanese, Chinese, and English. Using English literature as a baseline, points of convergence and divergence among the languages were identified. While all four languages value the concept of legacy as an important facet of mega-events, significant differences were found within each language. This finding highlights the importance of strategies that align different cultures when promoting sustainable development of some global movements such as the Olympic legacy. Sport management is replete with international topics, such as international events and sport for development, and each topic is studied simultaneously in several languages and with potentially differing frameworks and perspectives. Thus, literature reviews that examine the English literature, exclusively, are innately limited in scope. The development of partnerships and resources that facilitate cross-lingual and cross-cultural consultation and collaboration is an important research agenda. More research is needed on knowledge translation across languages.

‘Hidden Motives’? African Women, Forced Marriage and Knowledge Production at the United Nations, 1950–1962

The period following the Second World War saw much international debate around African marriage, especially practices believed by Western observers to be coercive, and the emergence of international instruments ostensibly designed to counter these practices. Drawing on feminist readings of governmentalities, this article explores United Nations debates around the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, and the 1962 Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages. Despite the United Nations’s preferred impression of benign universality, neither the international debates around forced and early marriage, nor the instruments they generated, were the product of neutral ‘expertise’. Rather, they represented attempts to reframe and govern marriage and the family through knowledge production. The interventions produced did not – and were not intended to – produce tangible benefits in the lives of African women and girls. Instead, they served political ends in the adversarial atmosphere of the decolonization and Cold War-era United Nations, and also represented continuities with earlier colonial ideas. In the creation of these discursive framings, African women’s voices were largely ignored, excluding them from debates that concerned them and minimizing their contributions to international ‘knowledge’.

Technological Catch-Up and Innovative Entrepreneurship in Vietnamese Firms

The article analyses the dynamics of technological catch-up through entrepreneurship in latecomer firms to emerging markets. With this aim, the article introduces Vietnam’s experience and illustrates the result of three case studies of Vietnamese technology firms at different stages of their evolution. Insights from the cases reveal all follow an incremental innovation model based on business model ‘soft’ innovations, mainly in customer-facing activities and partnering, as well as limited products and technology adaptation to local market needs. Consistently with latecomer firms’ theory, the market drives these firm’s innovation efforts, which are concentrated on developing new services and comprehensive solutions rather than new technologies. Comparisons of the findings with recent and similar experiences of Chinese firms highlight that different stages of catch-up lead to different innovation practices in nature and degree, and the need to strengthen institutions to face competition, rather than use the former to shelter from the latter. The Vietnamese firms’ innovation practices and catch-up patterns found are then discussed under the perspective of reaping the benefits of international knowledge and technology flows and the specific challenges faced by Vietnam. The paper concludes with several reflections, lessons learned and perspectives for other newly industrializing emerging countries.