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This study aims to examine the impact of home–host country distance on the cross-border mergers and acquisitions performance.

The results of this study are based on a final sample of 483 completed cross-border deals involving BRICS nation acquirers and targets spread across a set of 27 nations. While controlling for prior experience, among other factors, the impact of nine institutional distance dimensions on deal performance is examined. Cumulative abnormal returns calculated over the select event windows are used as a measure of deal performance.

The results of this study validate the explanatory power of cross-country distance and exhibit that financial and cultural distance exert a negative influence on deal performance, whereas political and global connectedness distance positively impacts performance. Interestingly, geographic distance is not found to be related to performance outcomes.

The results of this study caution against possible aggregation of the cross-country distance measure and point towards the need to acknowledge and analyse the multi-dimensional nature of distance.

The results of this study are expected to aid managers in devising internationalisation strategies and target selection, maximising their performance and shareholder wealth.

This study contributes to the knowledge of internationalisation and cross-country distance. It presents as one of the first to investigate the impact of institutional distance on deal performance using a substantially large multi-country emerging market data set.

Accounting comparability has been the subject of significant interest in empirical financial accounting research. Recent literature, particularly that following De Franco et al.’s (2011) influential study, has focused on utilizing the output of the financial reporting process to measure accounting comparability. In this paper, we conduct an early survey of studies using output-based measures of comparability. We provide two distinct contributions to the literature. First, we describe and comment on four important measurement concepts as well as the studies that introduced them. With this methodological contribution, we aim to facilitate the measurement choice for empirical accounting researchers engaged in comparability research. Second, we classify the sub-streams of literature and related studies. In providing this content-related contribution, we sum up what has already been achieved in output-based accounting comparability research and highlight potential areas for prospective research. As a whole, our study attempts to guide empirical researchers who (plan to) undertake studies on accounting comparability in selecting relevant topics and choosing adequate approaches to measurement.

Prior research has tended to view cross-country distance as an obstacle. Yet, differences across countries are a key reason for firms to internationalize. To address this discrepancy, this paper puts forward a unifying framework which (1) synthesizes and delineates the different types of cross-country distance, (2) provides a logic for analyzing cross-level influences of distance on internationalization decisions, and (3) highlights the opportunities brought about by distance. The paper argues that firms are more likely to be able to realize these opportunities when they have internationally experienced managers and diverse, well-functioning top management teams at the helm. The paper also highlights the complex influences of distance, calling for the use of cognitive and behavioral research methodologies to further our understanding of the role of distance in internationalization. An illustrative example of Vodafone Group PLC is included.

This study investigates the role of national culture between outreach and sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs). Despite microfinance's deep embeddedness in cultural contexts, research on the influence of national culture on MFI performance is rather sparse. This paper seeks to fill this gap and, based on cross-country microfinance data, attempts to explain the outreach-sustainability relationship in reference to cultural factors.

An unbalanced panel, consisting of 5,741 MFI-year observations of 1,232 MFIs from 43 countries in six regions, is drawn from the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) Market database. Two different econometric models are tested. Model 1 estimates the direct effect of outreach on sustainability, using a fixed-effects estimator. Model 2 examines the moderation effect of national culture on outreach-sustainability relationship, employing correlated random effects approach.

The results show that depth of outreach and financial sustainability of MFIs are negatively related, and the relationship is moderated by national culture. Power distance and uncertainty avoidance positively moderate the outreach-sustainability relationship, whereas individualism and masculinity negatively moderate the relationship.

The findings suggest that the national culture where MFIs are located plays an important contingent role in their performance and that the magnitude of the trade-off effect varies from culture to culture. The research thus provides further insight in the trade-off debate and contributes to literatures of both microfinance and cross-cultural management.

The purpose of this study was to examine pathways towards, and the rationale behind internationalisation from the perspectives of micro firms' operators involved in the globally competitive wine industry. Moreover, drawing from entrepreneurial action theory, the study developed a theoretical framework to help understanding micro approaches and rationale for internationalisation.

Data were collected through interviews with 19 micro winery owners and managers operating in the Prosecco Superiore (Italy) and cava industry (Spain).

Aligned with entrepreneurial action theory, uncertainty in participants' environment, coupled with the associated need to diversify through exports, were predominant drivers of internationalisation. However, internationalisation also emerged through non-deliberate channels, including through growth of wine tourism and increasing foreign wine enthusiasts. Thus, while entrepreneurial action through deliberate means triggered a stronger focus on internationalisation, other passive interventions beyond the control or influence of micro firms, but rather emerge serendipitously, can similarly spur direct action.

The study demonstrated its originality and value in various ways, fundamentally, addressing three knowledge gaps, thereby contributing to practical and theoretical discourses with corresponding value, including managerially. First, it extended literature focussing on micro firms, which as compared to small and medium enterprise research is much more limited. Second, it provided a comparative component, which is much rarer in contemporary research discussing internationalisation amongst micro firms. Third, the study proposed a theoretical framework stemming from the chosen inductive approach, thus, addressing concerns regarding the lack of theoretical rigour or depth in internationalisation activities amongst micro firms.

Consistent with the diffusion of innovation (DOI) model and resource‐based view (RBV) theory, the purpose of this paper is to develop a research model for measuring enterprise resource planning (ERP) post‐adoption and its consequence on small and medium enterprise (SME) performance.

The model links six determinants based on DOI to explain “ERP use” and three on RBV to explain the “ERP value”, on which nine hypotheses are postulated. Testing was conducted through structural equation modelling, utilizing data from 558 web‐surveyed firms in Portugal and Spain.

Full sample analysis finds that competitive pressure, training, best‐practices, compatibility, and efficiency are important antecedents of “ERP use”. Together with usage, collaboration and analytics capabilities contribute to “ERP value”. Cross‐country analysis reveals that complexity is an important inhibitor for “ERP use” in Portuguese firms whereas it is a facilitator for Spanish firms. In addition, while for Portuguese firms, compatibility and efficiency are significant, they are not for Spanish firms. For “ERP value”, while use and collaboration are more important for Portuguese firms, analytics is more important for Spanish.

The paper provides insight into how SMEs use and value ERP; however, the authors cannot speak empirically on the issue of whether value is sustained, or on maturity stages, or on the impact of different industries.

The paper describes the first empirical research study on Iberian SMEs, thus adding a cross‐country dimension to the innovation diffusion literature. Unlike the typical focus on ERP adoption found in the literature, this paper focuses on post‐adoption stages, linking usage with value.

The difficulties that MR poses for comparativists were anticipated 40 years ago in Sidney Verba's essay “Some Dilemmas of Comparative Research”, in which he called for a “disciplined configurative approach…based on general rules, but on complicated combinations of them” (Verba, 1967, p. 115). Charles Ragin's (1987) book The Comparative Method eloquently spelled out the mismatch between MR and causal explanation in comparative research. At the most basic level, like most other methods of multivariate statistical analysis MR works by rendering the cases invisible, treating them simply as the source of a set of empirical observations on dependent and independent variables. However, even when scholars embrace the analytical purpose of generalizing about relationships between variables, as opposed to dwelling on specific differences between entities with proper names, the cases of interest in comparative political economy are limited in number and occupy a bounded universe.² They are thus both knowable and manageable. Consequently, retaining named cases in the analysis is an efficient way of conveying information and letting readers evaluate it.³ Moreover, in practice most producers and consumers of comparative political economy are intrinsically interested in specific cases. Why not cater to this interest by keeping our cases visible?

The purpose of this paper is to extend the methodology proposed in Majumder et al. (2012) for the estimation of the item-specific purchasing power parities (PPPs) within countries, to the cross-country context. It estimates item-specific intra-country PPPs (i.e. spatial prices) and inter-country PPPs in a unified framework using unit records of household food expenditures from three Asian countries: India, Indonesia and Vietnam, covering contemporaneous time periods. The study addresses a key limitation of the International Comparison Program (ICP) exercise, namely, that it treats all countries, large and small, as homogeneous entities. Moreover, it directly calculates bilateral PPPs between countries based on their expenditure patterns and prices alone and directly estimates the price-level indices (PLI) and their standard errors, allowing formal tests of the hypothesis of PLI being unity. The usefulness of the estimated PPPs is illustrated by applying them to comparisons of real food expenditures between the three countries, and benchmarking the comparisons with those using the ICP PPPs.

The methodology is based on the fact that a spatial price index can be viewed as a true cost of living index (TCLI). Using a general cost function underlying the Rank 3 quadratic logarithmic systems, the TCLI is calculated for a reference utility level.

The study provides formal statistical tests of the hypothesis of item invariance of the PPPs. The usefulness of the proposed methodology is illustrated by applying the estimated PPPs in comparisons of food expenditures between subgroups in the three countries. The sensitivity of the expenditure comparisons to the use of item-wise PPPs underlines the need to provide price information on highly disaggregated PPPs to a much greater extent than the ICP has done to date.

The choice of these three Asian countries was dictated by the fact that, though comparability of items between them remains an issue as with all cross-country comparisons. Also, in the absence of price data, this study followed the practice in Majumder et al. (2012, 2015a, 2015b) in using as proxies the raw unit values of the food items, but adjusted for quality and demographic factors using the procedure introduced by Cox and Wohlgenant (1986) and extended by Hoang (2009).

It addresses some limitations of the ICP, namely, ICP treats all countries as single entities with the purchasing power of the country’s currency assumed to be the same in all regions within the country, ICP uses the US dollar as the numeraire (this ignores the fact that the PPPs required in bilateral welfare comparisons between developing countries with vastly different consumption habits from the “international norm” are quite different from the ICP PPPs) and ICP uses distribution invariant prices to calculate PPPs, which overlooks the fact that the poor pay different prices from the “representative” individual.

This study highlights the importance of estimating and using item-specific PPPs in cross-country comparisons by formally testing and rejecting the assumption of item invariant PPPs and by providing empirical evidence that they do make a difference to the welfare comparisons between countries. This study provides PPPs based on food items only, which may be more relevant for poverty comparisons.

It introduces, for the first time, the concept of item-specific PPPs between countries as estimable parameters and operationalizes this concept by using them in cross-country welfare comparisons.

The global financial crisis has magnified the role of Financial Sector Surveillance (FSS) in the International Monetary Fund's activities. This chapter surveys the various steps and initiatives through which the Fund has increasingly deepened its involvement in FSS. Overall, this process can be characterised by a preliminary stage and two main phases. The preliminary stage dates back to the 1980s and early 1990s, and was mainly related to the Fund's research and technical assistance activities within the process of monetary and financial deregulation embraced by several member countries. The first ‘official’ phase of the Fund's involvement in FSS started in the aftermath of the Mexican crisis, and relates to the international call to include financial sector issues among the core areas of Fund surveillance. The second phase focuses on the objectives of bringing the coverage of financial sector issues ‘up-to-par’ with the coverage of other traditional core areas of surveillance, and of integrating financial analysis into the Fund's analytical macroeconomic framework. By urging the Fund to give greater attention to its member countries' financial systems, the international community's response to the global crisis may mark the beginning of a new phase of FSS. The Fund's financial sector surveillance, particularly on advanced economies, is of paramount importance for emerging market and developing countries, as they are vulnerable to spillover effects from crises originated in advanced economies. Emerging market and developing economies, which constitute the majority of the Fund's 187 members, are currently the recipients of over 50 programmes of financial support from the Fund (including those of a precautionary nature), totalling over $250 billion.

The purpose of this paper is to address an important but seldom explored field of study: the communication of corporate strategies to external and internal stakeholders. The relevance of the topic can be tracked both in communication studies and in management research, but empirical insights are rare. The paper addresses this research gap by asking: How do listed companies in key industrial markets communicate publicly about their corporate strategy?

A comprehensive content analysis of corporate websites was conducted for a sample of the 20 largest listed companies in the UK, the USA and Germany (n=60). The subsequent benchmark analysis has identified best practices and highlighted them in detail.

The study revealed significant differences between companies and countries in the sample for most of the dimensions. Cross-country comparisons confirm these differences statistically: German companies score significantly higher in the benchmark than British or US companies.

This paper outlines quality criteria for professional strategy communication, helping practitioners to improve their activities and contribute to organizational goals.

The study offers a holistic approach to strategy communication by providing an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation as well as insights into corporate practice, with the aim of laying the ground for further research and discussion in both academia and practice.