As one of the most important means of globalization for companies around the world, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have been adopted as a core growth and expansion strategy. M&A integration involves combination in various areas, in which cultural integration has an important role. Nevertheless, the potential positive and negative impact of cultural dimensions on the success of M&A activity is somewhat less acknowledged in the business community. The purpose of this paper is to explore problematic cultural issues in order to get an understanding of the characteristics and outcome of cultural integration as influenced by both national culture and organizational culture in M&A. In order to fulfil the purpose a qualitative case study approach was chosen. Semi-structured phone interviews were made with the top managers who were responsible for the deal and employees that worked for both companies during the transition period. In addition, two survey were conducted among KPMG and Andesen members. It could be summarized that KPMG and Andersen deal result in a great loss of ex-Andersen employees, due to the resistence from employees to the new culture after integration.

Aim: The aim of this research is to formulate India market product strategy for the global multinational corporate Vodafone Inc., Investigate the influence of national cultures in strategy formulation. Applying cultural synthesis in the strategy formulations for target markets.  Method: The main methods of data collection are individual interviews and discussions and group cultural training. A computer online questionnaire is used past the interview for correlation and analysis of responses. Two sets of interviews pre-cultural training and post-cultural training are conducted. The results are presented, analysed, reflected and related to the research. The research is applied to deliver a reformulated product strategy for Vodafone Inc., Result & Conclusion: This research bought out the implications of national cultures in strategy formulation and how strategy can be delivered by infusing culture as one of the parameter in strategy formulation. The end result is strategy that is closer to local market customer needs and wants aligned with organization business objectives. The conclusion is that global multinationals could deliver better strategy that applies globally to each of the local subsidiaries by embedding ethos of the regional markets in the strategy formulation. Suggestions of future research: The research focussed on strengthening strategy formulation by embedding culture as parameter. The theme could be extended to strategy implementation in future research. Contribution of the thesis: This research has added value to the strategy formulation, by proposing a new model, where the strategy team comprehends the national culture value of target markets and blends them as one of the parameters in the information’s and data. Thus the final interpretation of the information and data is a collective reflection of own national culture values and the target market cultural values.

Quality management and continuous improvement are well known and many successful implementations of improvements regarding quality has been made over the recent dec-ades by many organizations. This means that there are lots of different tools, strategies and implementation techniques available for organizations today. However, globalism have made this area an interesting aspect for researching cultural impacts in quality management and continuous improvement for organizations operating in many differ-ent countries. The purpose behind this thesis is therefore to study how a multinational company han-dles international quality management and how national culture impacts quality man-agement and continuous improvement efforts in a multinational company. Initially, a frame of reference was developed to examine current available research of quality man-agement and continuous improvements, as well as cultural aspects regarding differences in national culture and how this impacts an organizational culture that operates in sever-al countries world-wide. We used a qualitative research approach and within that performed a case study of Vol-vo Trucks. Primary data was collected from interviews and other material acquired from Volvo Trucks. The results showed that power distance was a value that impacted improvement work the most. This was seen in different stages of improvement efforts.

The study of the cultures has been a primary focus of sociology, psychology and anthropology since their inception. Increasing globalization has brought the attention of academics and practitioners to the study of national cultures and their differences into the management area. Likewise, the parallel trend towards running some business through projects has brought broader perspectives such as national cultures into the project management field. Recent academic literature demonstrated that national culture has a major impact on management practices. However, the element of national culture is elusively described in the project management field. No extensive tests were found on the comparison of the project planning among countries, which could help to establish relationship between national cultures and project planning capabilities. Using GLOBE study to capture national cultures and Project Management Planning Quality (PMPQ) model to capture project planning approach and organizational planning support, this paper addresses this gap by comparing national culture, project planning and organizational project planning support across four different countries: Malaysia, Japan, Sweden and Israel. The findings of this thesis are that there are both similarities and differences in project planning between different countries. In organizational project planning support practices, two clusters were identified. It attempts to answer questions about the relevance of culture to project planning and concludes with implications to project managers.

This thesis aims to research on the concept of national culture in regard to project management. We mainly aim to find out whether national culture poses an influence on the conduct of innovation management in the microfinance sector in Kenya and Germany.  The motivation for our choice of sector and aim are multiple; culture, particularly national culture, in projects and project management, is to  our understanding still an undeservedly under-researched area. Furthermore, the integration of solutions and concepts developed in countries other than the own increasingly takes place in the globalized world. We therefore consider research on the integration ability of such “imported” concepts into a national culture’s existing frame of reference a valuable, yet under-researched area.   This led to the development of our research aim as addressing two aspects: firstly, whether national culture poses a perceivable influence to product innovation approaches, and secondly, how the integration of culturally foreign, “imported” concepts might be undertaken in the two countries. The selection of product innovation in Microfinance was informed by the assumption that this would allow us to study the multifarious interrelationships between culture, innovation, and project management in a dynamic context; and hence pose a favourable setting to study the approach towards novelty and integration of culturally foreign concepts. Kenya and Germany were selected due to our personal backgrounds, being our countries of origin.   A perceived lack of differentiated scientific sources covering our needs led us to develop our own theoretical culture model which reviews cultural aspects from a joint African-European perspective. The model was developed based on seminal works in the field of culture and intercultural research. It is comprised of six dimensions deemed influential for innovation. Each of these six dimensions is based on the works  of two to four authors. This model comprises an African-European perspective and merges existing concepts into a novel conceptual model with a clear focus on culture and  innovation. In order to derive empirical findings, a qualitative multiple case study has been conducted in Microfinance institutions in Kenya and Germany. The findings of these case studies were consecutively analyzed based on the theoretical culture model in due consideration of the research aim.    We consider our research offering a contribution in a field that is still coming to the fore; that is, a novel perception of project management as being “more” than simply a temporary endeavour determined by scope, cost and time. The perception of innovation in the service industry is furthermore delved into, and it offers extensive insight into the national cultures of Germany and Kenya and the development and contribution of Microfinance in developing and industrialized nations.

<p>As one of the most important means of globalization for companies around the world, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have been adopted as a core growth and expansion strategy. M&A integration involves combination in various areas, in which cultural integration has an important role. Nevertheless, the potential positive and negative impact of cultural dimensions on the success of M&A activity is somewhat less acknowledged in the business community.</p><p>The purpose of this paper is to explore problematic cultural issues in order to get an understanding of the characteristics and outcome of cultural integration as influenced by both national culture and organizational culture in M&A.</p><p>In order to fulfil the purpose a qualitative case study approach was chosen. Semi-structured phone interviews were made with the top managers who were responsible for the deal and employees that worked for both companies during the transition period. In addition, two survey were conducted among KPMG and Andesen members.</p><p>It could be summarized that KPMG and Andersen deal result in a great loss of ex-Andersen employees, due to the resistence from employees to the new culture after integration.</p>

Grounding on institutional theory in organizational studies and e-commerce adoption literatures, this dissertation discusses the impact and effect of institutional environment on B2B e-commerce adoption. The institutional environment in question includes industrial, governmental, legal and national cultural factors. The study has been conducted in two phases. Phase I was in 2001-2003, as the infant stage of B2B e-commerce adoption. Phase II was in 2006-2007, reflecting the latest status of B2B e-commerce adoption. In both phases, the study collected and analyzed both secondary data at country-level and primary survey data at firm-level. The research methodology is a mixed approach of multi-time point, multilevel, multi-data source, multi-method, and comparative study. The cross-validated results of the study suggest that 1) the industrial pressure and/or encouragement is always the most powerful external facilitator for B2B e-commerce adoption; 2) at the beginning stage of e-commerce, the supportive government policy was a prime force to encourage private sector to adopt e-commerce; 3) as e-commerce becomes more prevalent and routine in business, e-commerce adoption becomes more business-driven, governmental policy loses its effect, and the legal environment becomes an important factor. The study is one of the first cross-country studies on the institutional environment in MIS research and fills the knowledge gap of understanding the external environment of e-commerce, especially from the temporal perspective. The research also offers empirical evidence to industrial practitioner and public policy-makers to develop e-commerce strategies.

This paper discusses the ways in which Hofstede’s model of ‘dimensions of (‘national’) culture’ – and similar models developed in a functionalist paradigm – are problematically used to classify people. It briefly surveys critiques of Hofstede’s research method, but focusses on the dangers of attempting to develop models of culture within a functionalist paradigm. Although such models may be parsimonious and rapidly applied, I argue that they are a poor fit for CATaC investigations of the dynamic and reciprocal interactions between human cultures and technology. Instead, I contend, we must abandon this paradigm, and embrace methodologies that permit meaningfully explorations of the multiple and dynamic conditions influencing the field of cultural practices in human societies. I discuss the merits of ‘articulation’ as theory and method, and offer Hacking’s theory of “dynamic nominalism” as one example.

This study sought to answer critical questions surrounding the impact that national culture has on specific parts of the employment experience of employees working for multinational organizations. As globalization expands and organizations are gaining larger footprints beyond regional operations, there has become a need to understand how cultural nuances could be playing a role in the employee experiences at these organizations. This study looks at two pieces of the employee experience in great detail, the psychological contract and job satisfaction. Understanding the process that builds psychological contracts between employee and employer is a critical piece to promoting a satisfied and productive workforce. The perception of a breach of the psychological contract has substantial negative implications. Understanding how the psychological contract and employee job satisfaction are linked is a key focus of this study. Binary logistic regression and path analysis were conducted on a sample of employees of multinational organizations which provided key findings and evidence that both nationality and job satisfaction play a statistically significant role in the perception of a psychological contract breach. The path analysis provided results that warrant further research, but was unable to substantiate the moderating effects of the dimensions of national culture on job satisfaction and psychological contract breach. Implications and recommendations for multinational organizations and learning technology practitioners are discussed as well as recommendations for future research.

The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of national culture on organizational culture across borders from a cultural dimension approach. In order to find out how the national culture of a company's host-country impacts the organizational culture throughout the company, we examine Swedish companies that have established business in a culturally distant nation, namely India. A multiple case study is used for this research that includes qualitative data gathering from 7 interviewees from the Swedish companies Sandvik AB and Elekta AB. The main criterion of selecting the interviewees was to find people who have first-hand experience from both the Swedish and the Indian working environment. The study shows that national cultural values seem to be an unchangeable, nontransferable property, but that organizational culture practices can be learned, adopted, and thus transferred. The research indicates that personal interaction could be the key element in adopting foreign culture element; in this case, supervisor-subordinate relationship styles and attitudes towards rules. This study contributes to the literature by shedding light on the process, how elements from a company's home-country national culture can be transferred to overseas facilities through company practices and personal interaction. Future studies are recommended to address the topic in different settings and also by using longitudinal quantitative methods.