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The purpose of this study is to systematically analyze how homeworkers perceive, interpret and make sense of their situations in relation to work and leisure participation. Thus, this study examines the dynamics by which homeworkers struggle to manage leisure and work in their everyday lives, with a special emphasis on how they interpret and make sense of their leisure–work dilemmas.

Using the framework of a dynamic intersection of identity orientation and border-setting approach, this study analyzes qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 13 young, home-based teleworkers in Shanghai.

Unlike the purpose of family-friendly employment policies, homeworkers who had striven for a better leisure life ended up with frustration and disappointment, regardless of their attempts at separate leisure–work borders or not. In contrast, the overwhelming work in a homeworking context paradoxically led to a more fulfilling and satisfying life for most who prioritized work over all else in life.

In the cases of home-based work or other flexible work policies that aim to make a better balance of work and life, public attention has been directed merely toward a debate of whether these policies lead to an enhanced quality of leisure life or an intensification of work intrusion. However, understanding the complexity of such emerging phenomenon requires a richer, more nuanced explanation. In this light, this qualitative study of homeworkers’ lived experiences is sociologically relevant for deciphering the relationship between leisure and work in the late-modern society that entails an evolving process of negotiating identities and situational variability.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to provide support and extend work-family Border Theory (BT) in order to investigate organizational and individual factors that determine the complex nature of work-family balance (WFB).

Qualitative research was conducted in a company in Greece. In total, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted. Data analysis was guided by interpretative phenomenological analysis.

The key findings illustrate that strong borders protect the investigated, powerful, work domain and expand only to accommodate its’ needs. In congruence with BT, employees choose to be central participants in the powerful, highly impermeable and inflexibly bordered, work domain. The deeply entrenched organizational culture, as well as leaders’ behavior and leadership style, support the development of an array of positive work attitudes which boost central participation in the work domain. Due to the strongly bordered work setting, employees were found to choose segmentation as a WFB cope strategy; however, shifts in the participants’ life phase, as well as unfulfilled expectations, lead them to reset priorities and reevaluate their central participation in the dominant work domain.

The present study has implications for HR practitioners. Communication and open discussions on work-family themes reveal issues that can positively contribute to WFB. Further to this, organizations need to consider individual differences when they deal with WFB issues and frame interventions to facilitate this process.

This paper adds to current thinking in BT by illustrating that organizational culture, leadership and work attitudes have a strong impact on the nature of the work domain and its borders, as well as on employees’ central participation in the work setting and the attained WFB.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new insight concerning a relatively understudied phenomenon in the medium sized enterprise (SME) internationalisation and international entrepreneurship literature; the internationalisation of firms crossing the border to only one adjacent foreign country. These firms are called border firms. This study explores the variety of internationalisation patterns of border firms.

The study is based on theoretical perspectives related to speed of internationalisation and country embeddedness, and uses empirical data from seven Norwegian case companies operating across the border between Norway and Russia.

Three different internationalisation patterns of border firms are empirically identified and described; an early single-country path, a born-again border path and a born border path. Then, a model of the distinctive cross-border pathway is developed.

Several limitations of this study have implications for further research, such as sample size and setting, the new perspective on country embeddedness and questions related to generalisation of the findings.

The study has implications for both entrepreneurs and policy-makers. It demonstrates that internationalisation is not always about “going global” and is sometimes simply a matter of “hopping” across the nearest border. The model demonstrates different possible patterns for how to achieve or support this in practice.

This study contributes to theory-building in the field of SME internationalisation and international entrepreneurship in three ways. First, it identifies and defines an interesting but neglected type of international venture; border firms. Second, it explores the different start-up patterns of these firms, their speed and embeddedness. Third, it offers a theoretical framework of the distinct cross-border pathway of internationalisation.

This paper aims to investigate three different orientations of recruitment (profession-sensitive, language-sensitive and interculture-sensitive recruitment) and their effect on the foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs).

This study examines the relationship among three different orientations of recruitment and knowledge transfer from parent firms to foreign subsidiaries. Data are collected from local managers in MNCs’ subsidiaries operating in Japan using a questionnaire. The hypotheses are tested by using ordinary least squares resression (OLS).

The results of this study indicate that each of the three orientations of recruitment positively influences the knowledge transfer of MNCs. In particular, the positive effect of profession-sensitive recruitment is enhanced when foreign subsidiaries are established through acquisition. The positive effect of interculture-sensitive recruitment on knowledge transfer is also strengthened by offering professional training.

This study is subject to several limitations. The sample size is small, and the data were collected from a single country. In addition, the respondents’ positions in an organizational hierarchy have not been taken into account. Despite these limitations, this study can be considered the first step toward future research on the relationship between different orientations of recruitment and intra-organizational knowledge transfer.

The results of this study indicate that not only profession-sensitive recruitment but also language-sensitive and interculture-sensitive recruitment are important for intra-organizational knowledge sharing. This study suggests that local employees with intercultural competence have the potential to improve subsidiary performance through knowledge sharing with parent firms if they are provided with professional training.

This study has empirically examined the complex mechanism of the three important factors (professional, language and intercultural competence) in recruitment and their influence on knowledge transfer. In particular, this study emphasizes language-sensitive recruitment and interculture-sensitive recruitment, which have received less attention than profession-sensitive recruitment in international business research. Moreover, this study focuses on the relationship between recruitment and knowledge sharing in a cross-border setting, which few studies in the human resource management area have examined.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the viewpoints of key stakeholders on the European Commission’s proposal for a regulation for a mechanism to resolve legal and administrative obstacles in cross-border regions. The mechanism known as ECBM, or European Cross-border mechanism, was presented as part of the legislative package for EU Cohesion Policy 2021-2027. The regulation will allow one Member State to apply their legal provision in another Member State for a concretely defined case. This proposal is particularly interesting as it does not give further competence to the European level, but changes how Member States may interact with one another, yet, it raises critiques as regards to its compliance with constitutional, international and European law.

This paper outlines the main elements of contention, which are legal justification, state sovereignty, compliance with the subsidiarity and proportionality principle, thematic and territorial scope, voluntariness and the administrative burden.

The author concludes that the assessment of the voluntariness of the regulation will be crucial in examining the regulations compliance with EU principles and suggests that a more nuanced reading as to which parts of the regulation are voluntary is needed. The author further expects the legal text to change substantial during the legislative procedure, in particular in regard to the thematical scope and the bindingness.

This piece summarises the debate currently held in the European Council and the European Parliament in a structured way to an interested readership. Examining the proposed regulation and the arguments for and against it offers the opportunity to review the main arguments that will be raised in any future debate on legal proposals on territorial development initiatives.

Given the confluence of opportunism, bounded rationality, and asset specificity in a partnership, the participants may attempt to expropriate certain rents. This type of rent is called the quasi-rent, and it is the reason for participating in the relationship in the first place (Alchian & Woodward, 1988). A quasi-rent is the excess above the returns necessary to sustain the current use of resources. It can be the means to recover sunk costs, such as investments in assets in general, and relational assets in our context. A relational quasi-rent is that portion of the quasi-rent generated by a resource that depends on the partner's resources (Hill, 1990). It stems from investment in specialized assets to support a partnership. Also this rent is the amount, which a partner can expropriate without destroying the relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically investigate the potential welfare effects of state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) international operations.

The paper is conceptual, applying standard economics state ownership theory based on agency theory and incomplete contracts theory to different forms of SOE cross-border operations.

When private firms are risk averse or financially constrained, or when writing complete contracts and making credible commitments are not possible, state ownership can achieve objectives such as international operations supporting domestic industrial policy, addressing social objectives in another government’s territory and addressing transnational market failures. Welfare effects may, however, also depend on home-host country relationships.

This is the first application of standard economics state ownership theory to state-owned multinationals. The analysis shows that key conclusions from the state ownership literature in a domestic setting can be extended to international operations, and highlights new theoretical issues arising from SOEs going beyond their home jurisdiction to that of another government.

The European Union has pursued two contradictory policies over the last decade in response to the challenges of globalization. On the one hand, the EU has loosened borders to facilitate trade and make the EU more competitive globally. On the other hand, the EU has tightened borders to enhance its security, fearing the negative consequences of a globalized world. In this paper, I examine the effects of implementation of the EU's Schengen border regime, a set of rules governing external border control, on the post-communist countries and the difficulties that Schengen has posed for the governments in the region. I also discuss the EU's emerging European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), designed to address many of the concerns voiced by the Central and East European (CEE) officials regarding Schengen. An important element of ENP is to work across the EU external border to facilitate economic relations and develop joint institutions with non-members to create new cooperative borderlands.

Two images are frequently invoked with regard to the evolution of the EU. Certain scholars portray the organization as moving toward a new, post-modern, post-Westphalian entity comprising an increasingly borderless Europe. Other scholars view European integration as a process by which the EU is increasingly taking on the trappings and functions of the state to build a “Fortress Europe.” The discussion of Schengen and the eastern enlargement suggests a more complex reality than either of these two images in which borders are constantly shifting and whose functions are changing in response to the different challenges posed by globalization and internal developments. The EU's external borders will continue to change, both in terms of where they are located and how important these will be. Europe's ENP, with its emphasis on cross-border cooperation, is changing borders into borderlands, zones of cooperation and collaboration across a line on a map. Governance and the shaping of policy are increasingly taking place at multiple sites and with different kinds of actors, further transforming the importance of borders. Perhaps, a new vision of European integration is needed to capture the evolution of the EU.

The purpose of the paper is to present a framework for moving cross-border ePrescription (eP) and Patient Summary (PS) services forward, bearing in mind the needs and requirements of the European e-health space for cross-border eP and PS services, the limitations of the already developed solutions, as well as outcomes available from other domains.

The outcomes of previous and current large-scale pilot projects, aiming toward the delivery of electronic cross-border services, are examined. Integration of generic building blocks (BBs) is considered for the further development of cross-border eP and PS, in line with the European Directive on patients’ rights in cross-border health care.

The e-health domain is expected to greatly benefit from mitigating non-domain concerns such as those for electronic identification, end point detection, non-repudiation and the use of electronic signatures and trust establishments for basic cross-border public services in Europe.

Research limitations are related to the fact that electronic identification, electronic signature and semantic issues have not been fully addressed yet at a European level to support cross-border services.

Practical implications are related to the cooperation, European level compatibility and sustainability of the underlying national infrastructures required to support reliable and secure exchange of medical data, as well as the readiness to address continuously evolving interoperability, legal and security requirements in a cross-border setting.

The need for consolidating the existing outcomes of non-health specific BBs is examined for two high-priority e-health services. Ongoing progress is presented, together with related issues that need to be resolved for improving technical certainty and making it easier to use health-care services abroad in cases of emergency.

As organisations respond to changes in cross‐border business activity career practices more attuned to differences in business and cultural practices are required if organisations are to become more effective in their cross‐ border business activities. Missing from the career management practices of many cross‐border organisations are two complementary challenges. First is the selection, development and retention of a “diverse” cross‐section of skilled managers, representative of the various locations of the business entity, reflecting an organisational culture that values the “know‐how” possessed by skilled managers from disparate cultural backgrounds. Second is the existence of a corporate culture that values a “mindset” reflective of the cultural diversity of the organisation, as well as the disparate values, attitudes and behaviours that potentially exist across the firm’s foreign business operations. The literature on these themes is reviewed and some recommendations for the development and management of cross‐border careers and propositions for future research are outlined.