<p> Foreign direct investment is an important part of the U.S. economy, and foreign companies employ 6.8 million Americans. Therefore, it is critical for American managers to possess effective cross-cultural leadership and followership skills. However, it is widely recognized that leadership theories are too leader-centric, and cross-cultural followership research remain scarce. </p><p> This phenomenological study aimed to contribute to cross-cultural followership research. It investigated the lived experiences of American managers (as followers) as they worked with their Korean leaders to co-construct leadership and its outcomes in the context of U.S. affiliates of South Korean companies. It explored how the American managers&rsquo; national culture and followership schema impacted their work relationship with Korean leaders. The study also explored the following behaviors that they used in this context. Uhl-Bien, Riggio, Lowe, and Carsten (2014) constructionist framework of followership that emphasized the dynamic interactions between leaders and followers was used as the framework of inquiry. </p><p> Using modified Seidman&rsquo;s (2013) in-depth interview method, eight upper-level American managers who worked for South Korean companies in the U.S. were interviewed. The data were analyzed using the four-step interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) method suggested by Smith and Osborn (2008), and the emergent themes were identified. From emergent themes, 26 recurrent themes and eight superordinate themes were identified. Collectively, the emergent themes produced five significant conclusions. </p><p> The conclusions of this study indicate that American managers: (1) found themselves in a perplexing environment of an American workplace with &ldquo;Korean&rdquo; flavor, (2) strived to be a change agent in Korean companies, (3) found Korean leaders to be less collaborative and praiseful compared to American leaders, (4) yearned to be more trusted and empowered in Korean companies, and (5) sought creative ways to achieve the organizational goals in Korean companies no matter what, up to a point. This study contributed to the theory by enhancing Uhl-Bien et al.&rsquo;s (2014) constructionist framework of followership and providing evidence of what happens when proactive followers work in an authoritarian business environment.</p><p>

<p> Here Be Dragons: How Global Business Executives Navigate Change and Paradox Globalization has resulted in increased international trade, enhanced information flows, diasporas, and a greater dependence on the global economy, as well as dramatically changing the context in which leaders operate today. Studies show that there is a shortage of global leaders and that most organizations are concerned that this lack of global leadership skills may threaten corporate performance and continued business growth. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how senior executives in globally integrated business enterprises navigate change, as viewed through the lens of paradox theory. This exploratory study employed a basic qualitative design. Data were collected from 23 global executives, working for 20 unique global enterprises, in 12 different functions, across 18 different industries, through a preinterview participant qualifying profile, an in-depth semistructured interview, and follow-up verification. </p><p> The key findings of this study build on existing research and show that (1) executives who are global leaders are contextual leaders; (2) global leadership roles are inherently paradoxical because they balance both task complexities and relationship complexities; (3) for these global executives, change is continuous and contextual; (4) paradox is the process that global executives use to navigate continuous change; (5) global executives are savvy sensemakers; (6) the global leadership capabilities to navigate paradox can be learned, and global leaders are constant and agile learners; and (7) to navigate change, executives who are global leaders oscillate/balance constantly by navigating paradox + sensemaking + learning. The study concludes with implications for theory and practice, along with recommendations for further research.</p><p>

This dissertation addresses the problem of culture in international management scholarship. It presents an alternative approach for doing cultural research based on the interdisciplinary field of Cultural Studies, and illustrates this approach through fieldwork conducted in a maquiladora and maquiladora-related institutions in Mexico. The dissertation offers three different but related contributions to international management theorizing and research. First, it develops a genealogical framework to analyze the emergence of the problem of culture and the attempts made over forty years to solve it. The framework identifies a pre-paradigmatic and a paradigmatic phase informed by notions of cultural values, and highlights the recurrence of “culture” as a problem throughout these phases. It suggests the development of a post-paradigmatic phase based on Cultural Studies scholarship and a different ontological positioning towards “culture” as a possibility for resolving this problem. Second, the dissertation illustrates the concrete implications for international management research of conducting cultural analysis based on Cultural Studies. It develops the conceptual and analytical notion of maquiladorization to focus participant observation and interviews performed in maquiladora contexts in Tijuana, Mexico. Processes of maquiladorization are analyzed through Cultural Studies' theoretical frameworks, including Articulation Theory and The Circuit of Culture, to show the strategic functioning of discourses and practices that join around the idea of “maquiladora.” Third, the dissertation forwards an approach for reflexive cultural research, recognizing researchers as inextricably located within the systems of meaning used to conduct research. It explicitly acknowledges that researchers are not just describing processes by which people create culture or discovering cultural structures but, through their research, also continuously changing the very understanding of the concept of culture. Therefore, “culture” is never complete but always emergent alongside the reality under study. The dissertation re-directs the problem of culture to a different ontological space through arguments that engage with the continuous genealogy of “culture,” problematizing taken-for-granted beliefs in its existence. In terms of research, it demonstrates a type of inquiry that employs culture as a heuristic device useful to explain specific human realities but that also reflects on its own implication in creating regimes of cultural knowledge and social organization.

<p> The effectiveness of a state's natural resource management is rendered meaningless if the particular resource migrates into another state's jurisdiction. In the case of marine mammals, inadequate management of the species anywhere along their annual migration could make food insecure for the regional human populations. My research evaluates to what extent International Environmental Agreements have been able to manage transboundary challenges to food security. Two case studies, the <i>Polar Bear Agreement</i> (2000) and the <i>International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling</i> (1946), are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively using Ronald Mitchell's four factors for describing variation of International Environmental Agreements' effectiveness: incentives, capacities, information, and norms. To ensure food security in the Bering Strait, this thesis stresses the importance of local concerns, norms and stakeholders. Transboundary management includes stakeholders at various scales to address a local challenge that is intersected by an international political boundary. The higher values of the Bowhead whale International Environmental Agreement's four factors, in the quantitative analysis, account for the higher level of food security for Bowhead whale. The qualitative analysis makes three recommendations for future International Environmental Agreements, in this case the draft U.S.-Russia agreement on Pacific walrus: 1) conservation of the Pacific walrus, 2) maintenance of Native self-determination and, 3) encouragement the flow of information between the local and federal stakeholders and between the United States and Russia. In order to ensure future food security in the Bering Strait Region, the management of the Pacific walrus depends on an effective International Environmental Agreement.</p>

This thesis investigates issues relating to international portfolio diversification from the perspective of the Polish stock market in the context of the financial crisis. Beginning with an outline of the functioning of the Polish stock market, the first contribution of the thesis is to consider the risks, benefits and opportunities in this market. Within this context, trading strategies are considered with an emphasis on the impact on risk reduction or return enhancement of initial public offerings. Second, the thesis provides a model which may be relevant for measuring trend durations in equity prices. A third element of the thesis considers the influence of spill-over effects (from the financial crisis) on equity investments in Poland, incorporating country and industry specific factors. Finally, the thesis considers financial crisis contagion and policies that may be relevant for practitioners.

The following three essays present an analysis that combines well-known models of fisheries management with contemporary theories of international trade and industrial organization. The general theme of the thesis is that countries' fisheries management policies can affect the strategic interaction between their fishing industries. The first essay examines the problem of noncooperative management of international fisheries by analyzing the strategic rent-shifting roles for such well-known national management policies as fleet licensing and effort subsidies. It is shown that the noncooperative equilibrium in each policy takes the form of a prisoner's dilemma with dissipated rents in the fishery. It is also shown that strategic effort subsidies can only lead to incomplete rent dissipation but strategic fleet licensing can lead to complete rent dissipation. The second essay develops a theory of cooperative management of international fisheries by considering negotiation between countries over the same fleet licensing and effort subsidy policies considered in the first essay. The outcomes of negotiation over these policies are compared to the corresponding noncooperative outcomes, on the one hand, and to the efficient outcome on the other. It is shown that negotiation over effort subsidies in the absence of side payments is efficient, but negotiation over fleet sizes in the absence of side payments is inefficient. The third essay develops a two-stage two-period model of a 'domestic' country and a 'foreign' country whose respective fishing industries harvest from separate fisheries for the same international market. The domestic country uses a harvest policy to regulate the harvest by its fishing industry, but the harvest by the foreign fishing industry is unregulated. Two types of fisheries are considered. In the case of schooling fisheries, the domestic country may choose a conservative harvest policy in the first period if it can induce the biological collapse of the foreign fishery in the second period. In the case of search fisheries, the domestic country always chooses a conservative harvest policy in the first period in order to induce the economic degradation of the foreign fishery in the second period. The results suggest that international fisheries trade in the presence of divergent national fisheries management regimes could have unexpected consequences for world fisheries.

No description available.

No description available.

<p> The disappointing economic performance of Nigerian, Ghanaian, and the Togolese economies, coupled with the globalization of activities in the world economy, have forced them to look outward for development strategies. Many studies have been attempted to estimate the impact of natural resources on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows around the world, but very few have been focused on Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. This study departed from previous studies and employed a gravity-type framework to explicitly explore the question of whether natural resource endowments was a more relevant factor that explained the FDI&rsquo;s attraction to the countries under study. The study also included other FDI determinants. Accordingly, this study served to investigate whether natural resources attracted FDI inflows in Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. Using time series data from 1980&ndash;2015, the study was conducted to answer two research questions. Two models were established utilizing the pooled ordinary least square method to estimate the coefficients of the models. Preliminary results were obtained using both the random effect and fixed effect models. The results of the study yielded by both techniques registered natural resources to be significant as a driven factor for FDI inflows to the countries under review. Other factors such as GDP per capita, trade openness, political stability, and economic liberalization were also found to be significant in FDI determination. </p><p>

<p> The topic of the study was the relationship between national culture and software development project team performance. Relationships were examined through the lenses of Hofstede&rsquo;s cultural dimension model and the human performance technology model. Research indicated that software development project teams continue to face challenges completing projects within planned scope, on schedule, and within budget despite improved project management methods. The identified gap in the research was that most studies were qualitative and non-productivity related, a gap addressed by this quantitative, productivity-focused study. Four research questions were posed to determine the relationship between national culture and project team performance. Each question inquired as to the relationship between a team-level cultural measure and the number of user stories completed by the team during a sprint. The power distance (PDI) measures were the project team&rsquo;s average PDI and the PDI variance within the project team. The uncertainty avoidance (UAI) measures were the project team&rsquo;s average UAI and the UAI variance within the project team. A quantitative method was applied using a sample from the population of software development project teams that used the Agile management method. The data were extracted from archived productivity project data from 73 sprints conducted by teams from one firm. Archived email data identifying each team member&rsquo;s country of origin was used for each member&rsquo;s national culture. Spearman&rsquo;s rho was applied to the dataset. Results indicated there was a statistically significant relationship between PDI variance and team productivity, and between UAI variance and team productivity. The relationship between a team&rsquo;s average PDI and team productivity, and between the team&rsquo;s average UAI and team productivity, tended toward significance. Avenues for future research include duplicating the study using additional cultures and analyzing the relationship using additional Hofstede cultural dimensions.</p><p>