General call for papers: Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies (OMEE)

The Multidisciplinary Research Journal: Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies (OMEE)

General Call for Papers

Journal website: www.om.ef.vu.lt

Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies mission is to contribute to the development and dissemination of multidisciplinary knowledge on organizations and markets in emerging economies, to increase dialogue among scholars focused on more narrow research issues within the OMEE scope and, finally, to offer an outlet for high quality scholarship.

The journal takes a broad definition of emerging economies. As such, emerging economies include the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe, Asian nations (China, India, Vietnam, and others) that are increasing their free-market systems, countries in Central and South America, and finally countries in Africa. Each of these regions faces unique challenges and we encourage research that highlights the uniqueness of the particular region or country, while whenever possible seeks to identify shared patterns of organizational and market behaviour across different emerging economy contexts and across emerging economy and developed economy contexts.

The submitted papers can take economic, sociological or psychological perspectives. The Journal is open for various types of articles:

• Review articles, which summarize and evaluate the current stock of knowledge on a specific issue;
• Conceptual/theory building articles, which develop propositions and outline directions for further research;
• Empirical papers, which study specific issues employing qualitative or quantitative methodologies.
• Other types 

Topics of special interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Organizational learning and change in emerging economies.
2. MNE’s in emerging economies.
3. Alliances, networks and clusters in emerging economies.
4. Corporate and functional strategies in emerging economies.
5. Market development and consumer behaviour in emerging economies.

We equally appreciate and encourage submissions by scholars from both emerging and developed economies. The strength of the journal is openness to contributions of scholars coming from diverse geographical contexts disciplinary backgrounds, theoretical traditions, and methodological approaches. This is reflected in the structure of our editorial board as well as in the way Journal assigns reviewers. Such philosophy and ensuing practice allows the double-blind peer review procedure to be rigorous, constructive, and stimulating, which helps advance research papers.

The submissions will be considered for upcoming issues of Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies. For more information, please visit homepage of the Journal www.om.ef.vu.lt. Inquiries and papers should be sent by e-mail organizations.markets@ef.vu.lt.

Prof. Sigitas Urbonavicius,
Editor-in-Chief Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies

Cal for Special Issues Proposals. Journal of Organizational Behavior

The Journal of Organizational Behavior is calling for Special Issue Proposals. For more detail, please go to the JOB website http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291099-1379 and click on the Call for Proposals (located on the right).

Call for JIBS special issue: Widening the less: Rethinking distance diversity and foreignnes in International Business through positive organizational scholarship

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of the Journal of International Business Studies

Call for JIBS special issue: Widening the less: Rethinking distance diversity and foreignnes in International Business through positive organizational scholarship

Special Issue Editors

• Günter K. Stahl (WU Vienna, Austria, guenter.stahl@wu.ac.at) 
• Rosalie L. Tung (Simon Fraser University, Canada, tung@sfu.ca) 
• Tatiana Kostova (University of South Carolina, USA, kostova@moore.sc.edu) 
• Mary Zellmer-Bruhn (University of Minnesota, USA, zellm002@umn.edu) 

Deadline for submission: November 17, 2014
Tentative publication date: Spring 2016

Introduction

Essentially, international management is management of distance.

Zaheer, Schomaker and Nachum (2012: 19)

The notion that difference and distance are liabilities, whether they are national, cultural, geographic, or semantic, is pervasive in international business (IB) research and practice. Constructs such as “cultural distance” (Kogut & Singh, 1988; Shenkar, 2001), “psychic distance” (Johnson & Vahlne, 1977, 2009), “institutional distance” (Kostova 1996; Kostova, 1999), and “liability of foreignness” (Zaheer, 1995; Miller & Parkhe, 2002) have guided much of the IB literature. Barriers, difficulties, costs, and risks associated with working and doing business across national borders are emphasized, resulting in a “problem-focused view” of diversity in IB research (Stevens, Plaut & Sanchez-Burks, 2008). Many issues arising in IB contexts have been explained in terms of “foreignness,” “unfamiliarity costs,” “organizational misfit,” “culture novelty,” “institutional gaps,” and related concepts, and IB research commonly focuses on discordance, incompatibility, friction, and conflict, and the negative impact of distance, diversity, and difference on various outcomes. In short, current theory and research in IB may have overly emphasized a negative view on distance and diversity of all kinds (national, cultural, organizational, and institutional) with an emphasis on liabilities and adverse outcomes associated with such differences. While existing research is certainly valuable, focusing on mostly negative processes and outcomes has hindered our understanding of the processes and conditions that leverage the benefits of diversity in a wide range of contexts, such as development of strategic capabilities, foreign direct investment decisions, synergy creation in cross-border mergers and acquisitions, cross-border knowledge-sharing and learning, and unleashing the creative potential of diverse teams (Brannen, 2004; Shenkar, 2001; Stahl et al., 2010; Tung & Verbeke, 2010; Zaheer et al., 2012).
The goal of this special issue of JIBS is to encourage research that is in line with a Positive Organizational Scholarship perspective (POS). POS aims “to develop rigorous, systematic, and theory-based foundations for positive phenomena. [It] draws from the full spectrum of organizational theories to understand, explain, and predict the occurrence, causes, and consequences of positivity” (Cameron et al., 2003: 5-6). POS does not represent a single theory, but rather offers a fresh lens and encourages scholars to look at commonly considered phenomena in new ways, as well as to explicitly consider new phenomena. For example, recent calls to pay greater attention to the potentially positive outcomes of IB activity and to enhance the benefits of IB studies for real-world stakeholders (Jonsen, et al. 2010), including viewing “foreignness as an asset” (Brannen, 2004: 596), exploring the “upside of cultural distance” (Stahl & Tung, 2013), and “consider(ing) it as an opportunity for arbitrage, complementarity or creative diversity” (Zaheer et al., 2012: 26) are examples of looking at phenomena in new ways. Explicitly considering positive concepts like thriving, resilience, compassion, and virtue in IB research on differences illustrates consideration of distinctly different phenomena. Examining the positive side of differences is not only intellectually beneficial in terms of filling the gap in the IB literature, but is also crucial for IB practice in light of the increasing globalization of the world economy as well as growing intra-national heterogeneity in many countries.

Topics

We invite theoretical and empirical papers using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches. As aspects of distance, diversity, and foreignness occur at multiple levels, submissions investigating micro, meso, macro, or cross-level phenomena are welcome. Research submitted to the special issue does not need to explicitly apply POS, but can use the POS perspective as a generative lens to theorize about positive outcomes. Other existing theoretical perspectives in IB could be linked to theorize why distance, diversity, and foreignness matter; under what circumstances they are likely to be beneficial rather than challenging or harmful; how their effects play out and what motivational and enabling mechanisms are or could be at work in the process. As such, it is also not necessary for research submitted to consider only positive outcomes.

Papers could address a wide range of issues, including but not limited to topics that

• Infuse the IB literature with new constructs generated in POS research such as resilience, meaningfulness, positive emotion, altruism, relationship transformation, and high-quality connections, and study how these constructs enable individuals, groups, and organizations to gain the benefits of diversity, distance, and difference. 
• Consider positive outcomes investigated in POS like thriving, virtue, and abundance. These could support investigation of questions like: What does organizational thriving mean in diverse institutional contexts? 
• Consider traditional organizational outcomes in IB and examine the contexts and conditions under which foreignness enhance a corporation’s legitimacy, reputation, attractiveness, or brand value. 
• Integrate theories that traditionally haven’t been simultaneously considered to reconcile challenges and benefits, such as research on the multinational advantage versus liability of foreignness. Integrating such perspectives could illuminate the conditions generating value from difference, diversity, and distance. 
• Unpack mixed results and curvilinear findings to develop theory about enabling processes that “bend the curve” from negative to positive, or delay inflection points to extend positive benefits of diversity. This could support investigations of the relationship between differences and innovation, for example, which show an inverted-U-shaped relationship. What could support benefits of diversity to innovation at very high levels of diversity? 
• Investigate further how research on diversity in organizations has shown that individuals vary in how much they value diversity. Can concepts like happiness, joy, fulfillment, self-esteem, or other positive states alter the extent to which individuals value diversity rather than feel threatened by difference? 
• Apply different research methodologies and designs than traditionally used in IB research to study topics like cross-border alliances, mergers, and acquisitions. Process research or qualitative research may reveal important insights into how firms develop valuable capabilities and reap synergistic benefits from these activities and uncover new understanding of difference, diversity, and distance by examining positive processes that create beneficial outcomes/patterns. 
• Consider positive individual traits and behaviors like character, talent and responsible behavior and investigate their role in leader effectiveness in diverse contexts. 
• Investigate what is positive global leadership, developing a framework that goes beyond cultural similarities and differences and identifies common ground for leveraging diversity, both locally and globally. 
• Explore how the experience of being foreign and/or marginal, typically considered negative, could lead to enhanced creativity and help individuals develop a global mindset. 
• Refine theories of adaptation to consider how concepts like replenishment and resilience can support phenomena like emerging market multinationals learning from their foreign operations, particularly their activities in developed markets. 
• Examine the idea of abundance gaps created by distance, diversity, or difference in research on international entrepreneurship and “born global” organizations. 
• Differentiate between when difference and distance have a positive effect on MNEs and when they don’t. For example, are there some instances when an outsider perspective (such as the use of global teams from subsidiaries) is valuable in regards to sustainable corporate renewal or growth and when having a more culturally integrated team would be more effective? 

The main contributions sought with the special issue include: analyzing the reasons for possible overemphasis on the negative in current research on foreignness, diversity, and distance, and identifying ways to overcome this imbalance; motivating the development of new theoretical perspectives or the application of theoretical perspectives seldom used in the international business literature to refine the distance and diversity constructs and shedding new light on the positive outcomes of differences in the context of IB; exploring situational contingencies (moderators), intervening mechanisms and processes (mediators), and non-linear relationships between foreignness, diversity and distance and outcome variables – possibly drawing on POS research to introduce new constructs to IB; reassessing whether “foreignness,” “diversity,” and “distance” are appropriate metaphors with which to describe, analyze, and assess the impact of difference variables in international business.

Submission Process

All manuscripts will be reviewed as a cohort for this special issue. Manuscripts must be submitted in the window between November 3, 2014, and November 17, 2014, at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jibs. All submissions will go through the JIBS regular double-blind review process and follow the standard norms and processes.
For more information about this call for papers, please contact the Special Issue Editors or the JIBS Managing Editor (managing-editor@jibs.net).

References

Brannen, M. Y. 2004. When Mickey loses face: Recontextualization, semantic fit, and the semiotics of foreignness. Academy of Management Review, 29(4): 593-616.

Cameron K. S., Dutton, J. E. & Quinn, R. E. 2003. Foundations of positive organizational scholarship. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton and R. E. Quinn (Eds), Positive organizational scholarship. Foundations of a new discipline: 3-13. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Johanson, J., & Vahlne, J. E. 1977. The internationalization process of the firm – A model of knowledge development and increasing market commitments. Journal of International Business Studies, 8(1): 23-32.

Johanson, J., & Vahlne, J. E. 2009. The Uppsala internationalization process model revisited – From liability of foreignness to liability of outsidership. Journal of International Business Studies, 40: 1-21.

Jonsen, K. et al. 2010. Scientific mindfulness: A foundation for future themes in international business. In T. Devinney, T. Pedersen, and L. Tihanyi (Eds), Advances in International Management: The Past, Present and Future of International Business & Management (Vol. 23, pp. 43-69). Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Kogut, B. & Singh, H. 1988. The effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode. Journal of International Business Studies, 19(3): 411–432.

Kostova, T. 1996. Success of the transnational transfer of organizational practices within multinational companies. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Minnesota.

Kostova, T. 1999. Transnational transfer of strategic organizational practices: A contextual perspective. Academy of Management Review, 24(2): 308-324.

Miller, S. R., & Parkhe, A. 2002. Is there a liability of foreignness in global banking? An empirical test of banks' X-efficiency. Strategic Management Journal, 23(1): 55-75.

Shenkar, O. 2001. Cultural distance revisited: Towards a more rigorous conceptualization and measurement of cultural differences. Journal of International Business Studies, 32: 519–536.

Stahl, G. K., Maznevski, M. L., Voigt, A., & Jonsen, K. 2010. Unraveling the effects of cultural diversity in teams: A meta-analysis of research on multicultural work groups. Journal of International Business Studies, 41, 690-709.

Stahl, G.K., & Tung, R. 2013. Negative biases in the study of culture in international business: the need for Positive Organizational Scholarship. Academy of Management Conference, Orlando, August 9-13, 2013.

Stevens, F. G., Plaut, V. C., & Sanchez-Burks, J. 2008. Unlocking the Benefits of Diversity. All-Inclusive Multiculturalism and Positive Organizational Change. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44: 116-133.

Tung, R. L., & Verbeke, A. 2010. Beyond Hofstede and GLOBE: Improving the quality of cross-cultural research. Journal of International Business Studies, 41(8): 1259-1274.

Zaheer, S. 1995. Overcoming the liability of foreignness. Academy of Management Journal, 38(2): 341-363.

Zaheer, S., Schomaker, M. S., & Nachum, L. 2012. Distance without direction: Restoring credibility to a much-loved construct. Journal of International Business Studies, 43: 18-27.

Special Issue Editors

Günter K. Stahl is Professor of International Management at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna). Prior to joining WU Vienna, he served for eight years as a full-time faculty member at INSEAD, and was a visiting professor at Duke University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Northeastern University, and Hitotsubashi University. His research interests include the socio­cul­tural processes in teams, alliances, mergers and acquisitions, and how to manage people and culture effectively in those contexts. He has served on the editorial boards of several academic jour­nals and recently was a co-guest editor for special issues of Academy of Management Learning & Education on “Cross-Cultural Management Education: Exploring Multiple Aims, Approaches, and Impacts,” of Academy of Management Perspectives on “Responsible Leadership,” and of the European Journal of International Management on “Global Leadership.”

Rosalie L. Tung is the Ming & Stella Wong Professor of International Business, Simon Fraser University. In 2003-2004, she served as President of the Academy of Management. She was formerly a Wisconsin Distinguished Professor, University of Wisconsin System. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business, and the British Academy of Management. She has published many books and articles on international human resource management, international business negotiations and comparative management. She serves on the editorial board of many academic journals.

Tatiana Kostova is the Buck Mickel Chair and Professor of International Business at the University of South Carolina's Darla Moore School of Business. Her research is in the areas of international management, macro-organizational behavior, and organization theory. In particular, she studies cross-border transfer and adoption of organizational practices, MNC legitimacy, headquarters-subsidiary relationships in MNCs from an agency and social capital perspective, multiculturalism, psychological ownership, dual identification, and others. She is also interested in conceptualizing and measuring contextual embeddedness of MNCs with an emphasis on the institutional environment, its multiplicity and complexity. Dr. Kostova has served as Vice President of AIB, Chair of the International Management Division of the Academy of Management, as well as on the editorial boards of many international business and management journals. She is AIB Fellow.

Mary Zellmer-Bruhn is Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. Her research focuses on knowledge and learning, and composition and diversity in teamwork and workplace collaboration, with particular interest in cognitive and cultural diversity. Her recent work emphasizes the role of context in team learning and knowledge management, and language and cultural diversity social cognition. She has particular interest in multi-level and longitudinal research. Zellmer-Bruhn is Area Editor for the Journal of International Business Studies. She has served on the editorial boards of several leading journals, including currently Organization Science and Management International Review. She currently Chairs the Executive Committee of the College of Organization Science (INFORMS), and was a past board member of INGROUP.

Call for papers: Ethics, technology and innovation

Overview

This event, and the related symposium to be published in the Journal of Business Ethics in the first half of 2015, intends to analyze the impact of ethics-related variables on the development of new products and services and on organizational innovation. For example, in recent years, customers’ privacy expectations have shaped how companies design and commercialize new products and services in communication, entertainment and many other sectors (see, e.g. Floridi, 2005; Pollach, 2005; Nissenbaum, 2009; Vaccaro and Madsen, 2009). By the same token, security and reliability expectations have dramatically affected how designers develop new products and services in the automotive sector (see, e.g. Thomke, 2003).

Organizations differ in how they deal with ethical issues. For example, the literature on technology ethics (see, e.g. Nissenbaum 2004 Gorman, 1998; Mitcham, C. 1995) presents interesting cases where designers have intentionally pursued an immoral objective, see e.g. a bridge designed with the aim of preventing bus transit from areas with a high concentration of Afro-Americans (which embed and convey social discrimination values) or hardware and software designed to control users’ activities, violating elementary privacy rights, etc. Thus, Internet technologies have not only driven a flatter world as many argue, but they have also led to the creation of ‘digital sweatshops’, i.e. overcrowded rooms where workers play online games, such as Lineage, for up to twelve hours a day in order to create virtual goods, such as characters, equipments or in-game currency, which can then be sold to other, obviously richer, players (Floridi, 2009, p. 14).

On the other side of the moral scale, it is possible to find exemplary cases of high ethical standards. The example that comes quickest to mind are the 100% biodegradable products: They address the function for which they were designed but they also convey the moral duty of environmental protection (see, e.g. Guiltinan, 2009; Fraj-Andrés et al., 2009).

These considerations highlight the need to further current understanding of the role played by ethics-related variables in new product / service development and more generally, in firms’ innovation efforts (see, e.g. Adolphson, 2004; Madsen, 2005). This symposium will address this need by focusing on three main broad themes.

First, the issue of social responsibility (SR) has attracted considerable attention from scholars and practitioners during the last two decades. However, there is a shortage of studies, in the literature on technology policy and ethics, concerning under what conditions, how and why companies address ethical and social responsibility issues in the development of new products / services. For example, we do not know how organizational processes of information collection and sharing, decision-making, project evaluation etc. are adapted (if they are at all) to include ethical considerations in response to, e.g. changing EU Eco-norms, or customers’ expectations and/or moral values shared at industry level.

A second main theme that this symposium will investigate concerns the impact of environmental ethics on new product development. In particular, contributions are expected to explore how environmental concerns affect new product and service development, how companies deal with different environmental legislations when they design new products and services, and the use of environmental sustainability as a source of competitive advantage.

The third and last theme will explore processes associated with social innovation in hybrid organizations (Montgomery et al., 2012; Santos, 2012; Vaccaro, 2012). In particular, the symposium’s editors will encourage papers that analyse how stakeholders’ expectations and perceptions affect process innovation and/or changes in the structure and strategy of organizations attempting to combine business and social objectives.

Theme 1: Ethics, Social Responsibility and Innovation

• 1. How customers’ ethical perceptions and expectations affect new product/service development.
• 2. How stakeholders’ ethical perceptions and expectations affect new product/service development.
• 3. How companies manage and resolve conflicting ethical perceptions and expectations of their stakeholders in multi-cultural or multi-national contexts.

Theme 2: Environmental Ethics and Innovation

• 1. How environmental issues affect new product and service development.
• 2. How companies deal with different environmental legislations in new product and service development.
• 3. Environmental sustainability as a source of competitive advantage.
• 4. Ethical issues in environmental sustainability: green-washing vs. real environmental improvement. 

Theme 3: Social Innovation and the Organization

• 1. How employees’ ethical expectations and perceptions affect innovation in organizational processes.
• 2. How stakeholders’ ethical expectations and perceptions affect innovation in organizational processes.
• 3. Innovation in organization structure: How to combine business and social objectives by leveraging stakeholder expectations.
• 4. The new emerging ethical issues affecting hybrid organizations.

Timetable and submission procedures: 

The conference is organized by ETH, Zurich, IESE Business School on January 7 and 8, 2014. The conference’s venue will be the ETH Campus in Zurich. The deadline for submission of the complete paper is December 1, 2013.

Papers have to be submitted to the attention of Ms. Rosario Magre Miro RMagre@iese.edu specifying in the subject of the e-mail “Submission to Innovation Conference”. (If you do not receive a confirmation of your submission within 24 hours, please re-submit your document). Acceptance for presentation at the conference will be sent to authors by December 8.

The best papers presented at the conference will be invited for submission to the symposium of the Journal of Business Ethics. This process will include a double-blind review process by 2-3 anonymous referees. The invitation for submission to the symposium does not guarantee publication of the article.

Papers that were not presented at the conference cannot be submitted for publication in the symposium. Please use the guidelines for authors of the Journal of Business Ethics (http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/applied+ethics/journal/10551 ) to format your paper.

Guests Editors' bio

Stefano Brusoni is Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich). He coordinates the TIMGROUP - the new Chair of Technology and Innovation Management at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics (D-MTEC). He is Associate Editor of Information, Economics and Policy and member of the Review Board of Organization Science. His publications have appeared in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Research Policy and Industrial and Corporate Change.

Antonino Vaccaro is Academic Director of the Center for Business in Society at IESE Business School where he also serves as a faculty member in the department of business ethics. He has served as guest editor for Ethics and Information Technology and for the Journal of Business Ethics in a special issue about Network Ethics and in the special issue of the EBEN AC 2011. His publications have appeared in journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Research Policy, Journal of Business Ethics, Ethics and Information Technology and IEEE-HICSS-Transactions, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, The Information Society, etc.

References

• Adolphson, D. 2004. A New Perspective on Ethics, Ecology, and Economics, Journal of Business Ethics 54(3), 201-213.
• Flanagan, N., Howe, D and Nissenbaum, H. 2008. Embodying Values in Technology: Theory and Practice. In Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert (eds.). Cambridge University Press.
• Floridi, L. 2005. The Philosophy of Presence: From Epistemic Failure to Successful Observability, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 14(6) 656-667.
• Floridi, L. 2009. Information Ethics: A very short introduction (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
• Fraj-Andrés, E., Martinez-Salinas, E. and Matute-Vallejo, J. 2009. ‘A Multidimensional Approach to the Influence of Environmental Marketing and Orientation on the Firm’s Organizational Performance’, Journal of Business Ethics, 88(2), 263–286.
• Gorman, M. E. 1998. Transforming Nature: Ethics, Invention and Design. Springer.
• Guiltinan, J. 2009. Creative Destruction and Destructive Creations: Environmental Ethics and Planned Obsolescence, Journal of Business Ethics, 89, 19–28.
• Madsen, P. 2005. Responsible Design and the Management of Ethics, DMI Review 16(3): 37-41.
• Mitcham, C. 1995. Ethics Into Design. In Discovering Design, Eds. R. Buchanan and V. Margolis, 173-179. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Montgomery, A.W., Dacin, P. and Dacin, T. 2012. Collective Social Entrepreneurship: Collaboratively Shaping Social Good, Journal of Business Ethics, 111(3), 375-388.
• Nissenbaum, H. 2004. Privacy as Contextual Integrity. Washington Law Review, 79(1): 119-158.
• Nissenbaum, N. 2009. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy and the Integrity of Social Life (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press).
• Pollach, I. 2005. A Typology of Communicative Strategies in Online Privacy Policies: Ethics, Power and Informed Consent, Journal of Business Ethics, 62, 221–235.
• Santos, F. 2012. A positive Theory of Social Entrepreneurship, Journal of Business Ethics, 111(3), 335-351.
• Thomke, S. 2003. Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.
• Vaccaro, A. and P. Madsen, 2009. ‘Transparency: The new ICT-driven Ethics?’ Ethics and Information Technology, 11(2), 113-122.
• Vaccaro, A. 2012. To Pay or not to Pay? Dynamic Transparency and the Fight against the Mafia’s Extortionists, Journal of Business Ethics, 106(1), 23-35.