Antony Drew

Towards a Theoretical Framework for Examining Societal-Level Institutional Change

Institutional economics at the societal level focuses on the examination of interpersonal and impersonal economic, political and social institutions within a given polity and how such institutions might change and evolve over time. Such examination is critical to both international business scholars and practitioners if they are to successfully navigate variations in the rules of the game in international trade and commerce. Whilst institutional economics offers an immense body of literature on institutions, it offers surprisingly few theoretical or conceptual tools for empirical analysis. This chapter discusses five extant frameworks and proposes an ontological theoretical framework developed from interdisciplinary sources to underpin extant frameworks and thereby guide international business researchers in designing more effective research instruments for examining institutional change across and between cultures.

An institutional analysis of Chinese business relationships

Understanding Chinese business practices and relationships has become increasingly important for international firms. One of the common threads for international firms is the importance of a special relational aspect of Chinese markets, called guanxi. The impact of guanxi on value chain management is under-researched but increasingly gaining attention. This paper takes a more novel approach by reviewing guanxi in terms of its institutional rather than simply its often-cited cultural implications. It adopts and adapts the ecocultural framework of John Berry and incorporates Robert Trivers theory of reciprocal altruism in an attempt to shed light on the practice of guanxi in eight Chinese related polities. The eight polities are investigated using a qualitative methodology. The design of the study incorporates two phases with focus groups and an online survey. The study acknowledges that the institution of guanxi has important implications for all polities researched but it remains an essential and powerful force in the mainland Chinese polities of Shanghai and Beijing. Subsequently, the relational dynamic of guanxi remains an essential element in value chain management in Chinese contexts, particularly for chains operating on the mainland. As the paper also contends, this has important implications for both Chinese and Western firms.

Understanding changing patron expectations of club offerings: a consumer behavioural approach

ABSTRACT This article adopts a consumer behavioural approach to investigating the needs, wants, and expectations of club patrons and reviews the differing requirements of three existing segments of club patrons and two demographic sub-groups. The article applies a consumer behavioural framework and suggests that demographics, culture, values, reference groups, and attitudes underpin the differing needs, wants, and expectations of patrons. The article suggests that attitude is the specific determinant of consumer behaviour that may be of most interest to club marketers and suggests the application of the Theory of Reasoned Action in order to change sub-group attitudes and increase patronage. This suggestion is illustrated through the presentation of a case study. The article concludes by suggesting that further research be conducted to determine how clubs may be able to remain true to their historical roots and traditional membership base, whilst actively catering to the market orientation of current and future generations of potential members.

Student Experience of Oral Communication Assessment Tasks Online from a Multi-Disciplinary Trial.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the experiences of tertiary students learning oral presentation skills in a range of online and blended learning contexts across diverse disciplines. Design/methodology/approach – The research was designed as a “federation” of trials of diverse online oral communications assessment tasks (OOCATs). Tasks were set in ten courses offered across all five faculties at University of Newcastle, Australia. The authors collected and analysed data about students’ experiences of tasks they completed through an anonymous online survey. Findings – Students’ engagement with the task was extremely positive but also highly varied. This diversity of student experience can inform teaching, and in doing so, can support student equity. By understanding what students think hinders or facilitates their learning, and which students have these experiences, instructors are able to make adjustments to their teaching which address both real and perceived issues. Student experience ...

Teaching International Business Across Multiple Modes of Delivery: How to Maintain Equivalence in Learning Outcomes

The drivers of globalization are changing how, where, and when international business (IB) is being taught, and increasing student diversity. Concomitantly, education is becoming an important contributor to GDP in developed economies. Today, the same course may be taught at home to domestic and in-bound international students, in host countries, online, and through blended learning techniques. The increasing variety of modes of delivery raises an important question, however—how to deliver the same material in different contexts and achieve the same learning outcomes. This article examines the changing face of IB education and presents a case study on how this question has been answered at one Australian university.

Dealing with the Complexity of Causes of Societal Innovativeness: Social Enabling and Disabling Mechanisms and the Case of China:

Societies progress by the influence of two forces: innovativeness and cooperativeness. A capacity for enabling these forces constitutes a society’s transformative capacity. The article proposes a vocabulary for certain universal requirements for use in comparing the various societal trajectories aiming towards shared prosperity. Progress to date has in consequence normally seen the growth of empowerment and of more benevolent forms of domination over time. Economic action fosters the sharing of prosperity when systems encourage competition to cooperate. Studies that stress the heritage of ecological context in shaping relevant responses in the present-day social psychology are considered. The specific field of innovativeness is considered by an analysis of Silicon Valley. From this, and from other studies, seven features are identified for an ideal type of societal system high on innovativeness. These are capacity to scale up, worker creativity, individual autonomy, property rights and incentive, open society, stable institutional order and rationality. China is assessed against these criteria, and found to have certain inadequacies that are currently the subject of policy attention. JEL: Z1, N00, O01, P5

Why Has the Chinese Leadership Style Prevailed over Millenia? Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Leadership

Several scholars call for more context-specific research to draw on indigenous thought in developing new theories on management practices throughout the world. Given the importance of China in today’s globalising economy we examine the cultural influence on one particularly important management function—leadership. Previous research shows that the principles of leadership in Chinese organizations today are similar to those of more than 2000 years ago. Research also indicates that leadership is a main area, in which Western firms in China adapt to the Chinese leadership style as part of their hybrid organization. To study these issues, we analyse and discuss the foundations, nature, practice and development of leadership in the Chinese context. We further develop and integrate two major strands of theory: evolutionary theory that focuses on organizational change over time and institutional theory that focuses on organizational inertia and difficulties in change processes.