Nancy K. Napier

Toward an understanding of cross-cultural ethics: A tentative model

In an increasingly global environment, managers face a dilemma when selecting and applying moral values to decisions in cross-cultural settings. While moral values may be similar across cultures (either in different countries or among people within a single country), their application (or ethics) to specific situations may vary. Ethics is the systematic application of moral principles to concrete problems.This paper addresses the cross-cultural ethical dilemma, proposes a tentative model for conceptualizing cross-cultural ethics, and suggests some ways in which the model may be tested and operationalized.

Divergence or Convergence: A Cross‐National Comparison of Personnel Selection Practices

Striking a balance between globalization and localization in human resource management (HRM)requires a better understanding of the cross-national differences in terms of both the status quo and the socially desirable HRM practices. With this purpose in mind, we examined the hiring practices in ten different countries or regions using the Best International Human Resource Management Practices Survey (BIHRMPS). Our empirical findings revealed more divergence than convergence in current recruiting practices, but they also suggest that organizations around the world are indeed in the process of converging on ways of recruitment even though the current selection criteria may still be driven by each countrys prevalent cultural values.

Communication During a Merger: The Experience of Two Banks

This paper examines the communication used during a merger between two banks in the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A. The study drew on the framework of Ivancevich, Schweiger and Power (1987) to examine the communication process used during different phases of the merger. The study used several sources of data at each bank: interviews with current and former employees, a survey of current employees, newspaper articles and other external information sources, and internal documents such as memos and newsletters. The findings suggest that individuals took charge of controlling their stress during the merger and that the two banks played somewhat lesser roles in the process, except for the period immediately after the announcement of the intent to merge.

Academic Entrepreneurship Views on Balancing the Acropolis and the Agora

Given the disquieting changes in higher education worldwide, universities need new directions and ways of thinking about how to operate.In this article, we propose the notion of academic entrepreneurship, in which each employee pursues or supports those who pursue opportunities to build and improve their units, colleges, or universities.W e present ways that individual faculty members, program managers, department chairs, deans, and provosts can support academic entrepreneurship through helping to create opportunities, nurturing people who recognize and act on them, garnering resources to support opportunities, and creating a culture that supports the entrepreneurial activities of universities.

Cross Cultural Learning and the Role of Reverse Knowledge Flows in Vietnam

Knowledge transfer has long been a topic within the literature on multinational companies (MNCs), although there has been less focus on non-MNC settings and on transition or developing economies. Here the assumption has been that foreign ‘experts’ offer knowledge, skills and talents to local ‘learners’. Yet cross cultural adaptation and learning may also flow in a reverse direction: from ‘learners’ to ‘experts’. Locals may possess unanticipated pockets of knowledge useful for foreigners. This article tackles the question: what conditions appear to enhance the possibility of knowledge flow from locals to experts and what appears to encourage cultural adaptation and learning by foreigners in transition economies? It proposes a tentative framework relating to reverse flow of knowledge. It concludes that factors like dramatic economic change and increased sophistication of local managers generate conditions that are ripe for reverse flow of knowledge and learning. For foreigners and locals to succeed in meeting joint goals, such cross cultural adaptation, particularly by foreigners, and reverse knowledge flow is likely to become even more crucial in the future. The article seeks to expand the notion of reverse knowledge flow to become a way to facilitate learning by foreigners and argues that locals may increasingly have unanticipated pockets of knowledge that are of value to foreigners, even beyond their on-site specific tasks.

Employee Health Management and Organizational Performance

Recent research suggests that well-designed employee health management programs (EHMPs) can enhance employee health as well as a number of important organizational outcomes. The purpose of this article is to further our understanding of EHMPs and their effects on organizations. To do so the authors define EHMPs and discuss their history, examine motivations for organizations establishing EHMPs, review EHMP outcome research, discuss linkages between EHMP and the human resource management (HRM) function, analyze the mechanisms by which EHMPs influence important HRM outcomes, and address EHMP implementation challenges. Recommendations for future research are presented.

Western women working in Japan : breaking corporate barriers

Tables and Figures Preface Acknowledgments Wanted: Adventurers for the Next Century Foreign Professional Women in Japan: The Realities What Next for Foreign Professional Women? Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Bibliography Index

The End of a 'Period': Sustainability and the Questioning Attitude

Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. From Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner (1969) in Teaching as a Subversive Activity. The aphorism above suggests that students exit secondary school thinking they “know” what needs to be known…period. Higher education may simply serve to replace the period (.) with an exclamation (!). Upon exit from college, students “know what is to be known” even better, are more confident in stating it and think they are prepared for job placement. Can universities help students recapture the thrill of being question marks (?), suggesting a joyful pursuit of continual self-discovery? In addressing this question, we submit that only with enduring questioning, life-long pursuit of new insights and continual adaptive change, are college graduates able to contribute to and partake in the paradigm shift of sustainability. Our essay seeks to connect the mindset of questioning and adaptive change to the current sustainability transformation within universities. In doing so, we set forth a foundation for understanding how universities, particularly schools and colleges of business, can empower students to leave our halls as “?”s and effectively participate in the sustainability transformation.

International relocation of inpatriate managers: assessing and facilitating acceptance in the headquarters organization

Abstract The shortage of qualified managers to assign to overseas positions has necessitated rethinking of the viable candidates pools. A relatively new group of global managers have emerged, inpatriate managers. These are foreign nationals and third-country nationals who are relocated to the organizations domestic headquarters to serve as a “linking-pin” to the global marketplace. This paper examines challenges to effectively incorporating these inpatriate managers into the domestic organization. The various issues with inpatriate manager adjustment to the domestic macro and organizational culture are examined. In addition, the necessary social support in work and non-work contexts is discussed.

A Strategic Approach to Implementing Mergers and Acquisitions

Do mergers and acquisitions (M&As) create value and thus enhance the financial performance of acquiring firms? This question has plagued both academics and practitioners for many years. The potential to create value through M&As rests on the premise that a firm can supplement or complement its core skills and resources (i.e., distinctive competencies) through synergistic or value-creating combinations with other firms. Despite the intuitive appeal of this premise, the aggregate empirical evidence on the profitability and the stock market performance of acquiring firms remains equivocal.1 Moreover, practical experience yields numerous examples of both M&A successes and failures.