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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the formation of a consensual culture of agile management used in schools where school administrators and teachers work.

This research is based on a qualitative research approach that highlights social phenomena and explores the environment in which they belong. In this context, five managers and seven teachers working in six vocational education institutions were asked semi-structured questions during face-to-face interviews.

The research revealed that technology has a great impact on foster learning management and the development of school culture based on consensus.

The data of the research is limited to the participants who are Five managers and seven teachers working in six vocational education institutions within Nicosia context.

The school gained awareness on the uses of technology for learning and development.

Merits of technology for consensus culture were examined in this paper.

The paper is original in that it gives insights for the education system on the technology and learning.

Characteristic successes of Germany’s social market economy include both stability and productivity growth, yet mass unemployment indicates the need for reform. The conventional reform agenda emphasises Germany’s restrictive labour market. However, many targets for reform are elements of an institutional system in the labour market that promotes Germany’s culture of consensus. A model is outlined that synthesises insights from X‐efficiency and business strategy theory to highlight the positive effects of consensus on business performance. The model together with accompanying empirical data suggests that Germany’s consensus culture not only gives rise to negative outcomes associated with labour market inflexibility – in particular, sluggish employment growth – but also helps firms to generate innovation, productivity growth and sustainable competitive advantage. This implies the need for a renewed “social contract”, in which consensus not only generates productivity growth but also sustains a corporatist bias towards employment. Finally, a corporatist reform process consistent with Germany’s cultural and institutional environment is likely to be more effective than top‐down liberalisation in accelerating job creation while maintaining cultural sources of global competitiveness.

Purpose – This chapter introduces two empirical models that could be used to examine the influence of Eastern and Western culture on strategic management: the cultural consensus model (CCM) and the cultural mixture model (CMM).

Methodology/approach – We describe how strategic management scholars can use these models and suggest areas where these models can be of greatest use, including international market entry, international mergers and acquisitions and international alliances, global headquarters and subsidiary relationships, and corporate governance.

Findings – Originally developed by cognitive anthropologists and cultural psychologists, these models can measure domain specificity, scope, and heterogeneity of cultural influences within and across Eastern and Western societies; can address multilevel issues; and can measure an individual or firm's representativeness of the culture.

Social implications – This new research methodology can help strategic management researchers address the impact of “West meets East” on strategic management outcomes and processes.

Originality/value of chapter – The two empirical models provide methodologies that integrate qualitative and quantitative methods.

This article demonstrates the usefulness of applying the multiperspective framework developed by Martin (1992) to the analyses of organizational culture. The paper presents empirical evidence derived from the UK retail sector to illustrate that the culture of retail organizations can be more clearly understood by reference to Martin’s (1992) three perspectives. Moreover, it argues that the organizational members’ perceptions of culture correspond with their respective hierarchical positions. The paper concludes with an exploration of theoretical and practical implications derived from the application of Martin’s (1992) three‐perspective framework.

This paper aims to identify problems caused by cultural differences between Japan and China that face supply chain managers by applying Japanese-style supply management practices within supply networks in China and present solutions to this problem.

A single, longitudinal case study conducting two waves of data collection (i.e. interviews and observation) plus the collection of much archival data was performed. It goes beyond the dyad by examining supply management of a Japanese company’s supply chain up to three tiers in China.

The four supply cultural differences between Japan and China, which caused the cultural clashes between JVCo and some of its suppliers were revealed and a model of adaptation of Japanese supply management to the Chinese business system was developed. Adaptation involves creating new supply management practices out of selective adaptation, innovation and change of existing Japanese and Chinese supply management practices rooted in different Japanese, Chinese and Western cultures. A list of organisational factors affecting the adaptation has also been provided.

Due to the adoption of a single case study method, caution should be given to generalising the findings to all Japanese firms.

The Japanese, Chinese and Western managers were provided with insights on how to mitigate the problems caused by cultural differences within supply relationships in China and some innovative ideas on how managers from all three cultures could blend the elements of the three cultures to form a hybrid culture and reduce cultural clashes.

This is one of the few attempts to study the transfer of Japanese supply management practice to China. Organizational theory (i.e. transfer of organizational practice and hybridization) is applied and provides a robust framework to explain the supply management practice. This study also answers the call for a global supplier relationship management paradigm.

This paper summarises the institutional arrangements and prerequisites for a new social partnership, necessary for the successful completion of labour market reform in western Germany. It does this by drawing on key policies and proposals highlighted and explored in the papers of this special issue. The paper elaborates further on these issues by outlining the importance of the labour market and its institutions in the German social market economy before turning to the case for reform. The paper addresses both micro and macroeconomic themes, including international experiences of labour market reform, employment and social policies, insider‐outsider and institutionally determined unemployment, the German system of collective bargaining and the importance of tripartite corporatist agreements. The paper concludes that reform in the German labour market should proceed through rather than against the existing institutions of social partnership, possibly with a new role for government in strengthening incentives for both unions and employers to act in a socially responsible way.

This study aims to explore the impact of knowledge management (KM) on the development of an innovative culture in learning organizations from emerging economies.

A quantitative study using a survey was carried out, achieving a pooled cross-sectional sample of 10,567 workers, made up of 69 larger Chilean companies.

Results were analyzed using the exploratory factor analysis and multilevel regression analysis techniques. The findings provide insights into the positive and significant effect of KM – as acquisition, dissemination and responsiveness to knowledge – on innovative culture.

The findings suggest that managers become more successful in their overall innovative efforts when implementing routines of knowledge or know-how practices that generate a learning culture characterized through discovery skills, creativity, empowerment and cooperation.

This is an original study that introduces valuable information on learning organizations in emerging markets, contrasting to traditional literature and frequently focusing on developed countries. This study explains the cultural change in learning organizations through KM’s role, which offers routinization of learning practices to facilitate an innovative culture.

This paper aims to enhance the understanding of continuous improvement (CI) practices in Vietnamese organizations.

The study reported here is based on field research using in-depth case studies to investigate the factors underpinning CI effectiveness in Vietnam. Data were collected from direct observations, internal company documents and interviews in six leading Vietnamese companies, as well as interviews with 50 business leaders, managers, practitioners and academics in Vietnam.

This paper identifies the cultural conditions that have most shaped, and continue to shape, the management of CI in Vietnam, and suggests ways that practitioners can design effective CI practices in that country. For example, a very strong top-down management approach seems to be necessary to jump-start CI in Vietnamese organizations. Vietnamese organizations can succeed with CI, but they require substantial investment in human capital to give managers and employees at all levels up-to-date CI education and training. Furthermore, contrary to best-practice thinking in many developed countries, Vietnamese organizations may well be unable to motivate employees to participate in CI initiatives without a seemingly heavy-handed system of substantial rewards.

Future research in this area should study a broader selection of case companies across a wider selection of sectors, including more in service, and in other industries and in other regions of Vietnam. It should also aim to capture and analyze other factors that determine CI effectiveness.

To lead organizational change, leaders must first be able and willing to adjust their leadership styles to match the demands of their changing business environments.

While Vietnam is attracting intense interest from the international business community, little research has been done on CI practices there, in part because Vietnamese companies have developed a strong culture of secrecy, and are very wary of granting research access to outsiders. This study offers one of the first “inside views” of Vietnamese management with reliable data focusing particularly on CI.

This paper is ambitious. Its central purpose is to examine how a number of developed economies, plus the largest developing economy, vary in terms of corporate governance: USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, Sweden, Switzerland and mainland China. We understand corporate governance in a very broad sense, descriptive not prescriptive: as who controls and influences firms, and how. We are thus dealing very much with varieties of capitalism. In a sense, we shall be seeking to characterise national systems of corporate governance, but we must stress that our concern is always with the situation of the individual firm. We shall find it convenient most of the time to give one label to a country's whole economy, but this will always be an approximation, which conceals variations among that country's firms. At other points, we shall distinguish types of firm and indicate the rough proportions of each type in a particular economy.