EXPRESS: Cultures and Institutions: Dispositional and contextual explanations for country-of-origin effects in MNC “ethnocentric” staffing practices

Although the country-of-origin effect on staffing practices of multinational corporations (MNCs) is well-known, its underlying mechanisms are under-theorized. Drawing on the cross-cultural management and comparative institutionalism literatures, we propose an overarching, theory-based framework with two mechanisms, dispositional and contextual, that might explain country-of-origin effects in MNCs’ use of parent-country nationals (PCNs) in their foreign subsidiaries’ top management teams. The tendency of MNCs from some home countries to staff these positions with PCNs is typically labeled as “ethnocentric”, a word imbued with negative intentions referring mainly to the dispositional rationale behind this staffing choice. However, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of staffing practices of MNCs from ten home countries shows that both mechanisms – dispositional and contextual – have considerable explanatory power. Our methodological approach enables us to analyze conceptually distinct, yet empirically intertwined, societal-level explanations as a pattern, and thus offers a viable solution to integrate different perspectives in international and comparative research.

The Impact of Country of Origin on Brand Equity: The Case of Jaffna Customers in Purchasing Toothpaste in Sri Lankan Market

The toothpaste market is a highly competitive platform where various competitors are trying their best to grab the market share. Therefore Brand Equity is something every marketer in the Toothpaste market is trying to enhance. Brand Equity can be affected by many aspects in the industry, in this research it has been measured how the Country of Origin impacts on the Brand Equity. A variety of literature was gathered in order to identify the specific sub components of Brand Equity. As this is a pioneering study on this subject the conceptual framework employed has been specially developed for the purpose of this study, and has been devised based on several empirical studies. The primary data was gathered using a well-structured questionnaire. The sample comprised of 150 respondents from the Jaffna customers. The data analysis was carried out using SPSS 20. The findings concluded that there is a positive association between Country of Origin and Brand Equity of Toothpaste purchasing In Sri Lankan Market. Apart from that it was found out that there was no influence of the Gender for the Country of Origin effects on toothpaste brands. Nevertheless, there was an influence on the Brand Equity by the Gender of the toothpaste users.

Country of Origin Effects on the Average Annual Values of NHL Player Contracts

Using data from 2005 to 2016, this paper examines if players in the National Hockey League (NHL) are being paid a positive differential for their services due to the competition from the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and the Swedish Hockey League (SHL). In order to control for performance, we use two different large datasets, (N = 4046) and (N = 1717). In keeping with the existing literature, we use lagged performance statistics and dummy variables to control for the type of NHL contract. The first dataset contains lagged career performance statistics, while the performance statistics are based on the statistics generated during the years under the player’s previous contract. Fixed effects least squares (FELS) and quantile regression results suggest that player production statistics, contract status, and country of origin are significant determinants of NHL player salaries.