Yes / The international business literature has mainly focused on the impact of top managers' psychological attributes on firms' strategic decisions. However, the potential moderating influence of industry conditions such as competition has not been well explored. Deriving insights from the regulatory focus and upper echelons theories, this paper extends the international business and regulatory focus literature by investigating how the impact influence of CEOs' regulatory foci on firms' degree of internationalization depends on the intensity of competitive market conditions. Using primary data gathered from 289 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana, the findings of the study revealed when competition is intense in the domestic market, the potency of a CEO's promotion focus as a driver of internationalization is amplified. In addition, the research shows that intense domestic market competition weakens the negative influence of a CEO's prevention focus on a firm's degree of internationalization. These findings have important research and managerial implications for international business.

This study explores the role of self-regulation in opportunity recognition by pioneering an investigation of the influence of two antecedent factors: chronic regulatory focus and media on opportunity recognition. 155 students participated in a two-stage experimental design that first measured chronic regulatory focus, and in the second stage primed situational regulatory focus through the use of media stories. Participants then engaged in an opportunity recognition exercise, identifying opportunities to apply the smart phone technology to the South African market. The measured outcome was the number and quality of opportunities identified. Findings did not yield a significant relationship of chronic regulatory focus and opportunity recognition as expected, but however demonstrate that media plays an influence in opportunity recognition. The potential role of motivational individual differences and prior knowledge factors in opportunity recognition highlighted in this study provide a broad array of opportunities for further research to advance the field of entrepreneurship.Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study extends Regulatory Fit Theory (Higgins, 2000) to examine horizontal regulatory fit (Scholer & Higgins, 2010) in the context of performance feedback. Participants completed the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (Higgins et al., 2001) to measure their chronic motivational orientation, then worked on an adapted version of an in-basket task (Holmes & Hauenstein, 2012) across two sessions. Hypotheses predicted that compared to instances of non-fit, conditions of regulatory fit between chronic and situational and motivational orientations (Promotion vs. Prevention) would have a significantly greater impact on the following three outcomes: 1) Variety and Frequency of Feedback Use, 2) Feedback Recall, and 3) Attitudes toward both Feedback and the In-basket Task. Overall results supported this assertion. Participants in condition of regulatory fit engaged in a significantly greater variety of behaviors and did so more frequently than those in non-fit conditions. Additionally, participants in regulatory fit conditions had stronger positive attitudes toward feedback than those in non-fit conditions. Counter to previous research, regulatory fit did not have significant impact on feedback recall in the current study, nor did regulatory fit have a significant impact on the attitudes toward in-basket task. / Master of Science