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Multiattribute ratings of country‐image are commonly obtained to study the influence of country‐of‐origin on product preference and purchase decisions. Usually, such ratings are obtained for products made in different countries in order to make comparisons across countries. However, recent research evidence indicates that, when individual respondents rate multiple entities (e.g., multiple countries), the ratings of a particular country can be affected by the other “contextual” countries included in the questionnaire. The purpose of this study is to examine, via a controlled experiment, the issue of measurement context effects in the measurement of country images. The hypotheses tested concern the stability of attribute‐based and entity‐based country image scaling and potential methods of reducing the vulnerability of multi‐entity scaling to entity context ‐‐ the use of an anchor entity and an insulator question set to increase country image measurement stability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) content in the context of four differing national institutional arrangements for welfare. An analysis is presented on how self-reported CSR differs in content across two western welfare states (the UK and Sweden) and two emerging economies in southern Africa (South Africa and Mauritius).

This paper is based on a qualitative content analysis of the CSR self-reporting of 40 companies. This involved 10 of the largest companies incorporated in four countries, namely, Sweden, the UK, South Africa and Mauritius. The content is categorised into community involvement, socially responsible production and socially responsible employee relations. For each category, an analysis is provided of the reported issues (the question of what), the geographic focus of reported issues (the question of where) and ways of working with these issues (the question of how), as well as the extent of reporting and level of reporting (the question of how much).

The study shows that companies place focus on aspects, issues and localities in ways that differ between countries and can be understood in relation to current institutional arrangements for welfare. The content of self-reported CSR can be both complementing and mirroring the welfare arrangements. Differences in self-reported CSR agendas are particularly evident between the two western welfare states on the one hand and the two emerging economies on the other, as these represent two distinct contexts in terms of welfare arrangements.

This paper contributes to research on the institutional embeddedness of CSR in three ways: first, by going beyond measures of country differences in terms of extent of CSR to consider differences in CSR content; second, by focusing on the social aspects of CSR and placing these differences in relation to welfare configurations; and third, by contributing with empirical findings on how CSR content differs across national settings and across the established/emerging economy divide.

Retail prices ending in 0, 5 (even ending), and 9 (odd ending) are common in western countries. The purpose of this paper is to explain variances in odd versus even ending practices in western versus non‐western countries, using Hall's high‐low context construct.

A survey of web‐posted prices in ten countries is conducted.

Relative to their counterparts in low context, western cultures, consumers in high context, non‐western cultures may be less prone to the illusion of cheapness or gain created by odd endings, and more likely offended by such perceived attempts to “fool” them. Thus, odd endings are predicted to operate at a higher level of value significance to consumers, and to occur less frequently relative to even endings, in high than low, context cultures. Data support the predictions.

Additional empirical studies are recommended to further test the proposed theory.

Western firms need to be cautious when replicating odd ending practices in non‐western markets. Even ending is a “safer” pricing format. Odd endings, if used, should convey cheapness or gain that is more “real”.

The research results indicate that the results of western‐based consumer research cannot be treated as universally applicable. The high‐low context theory supplements prior theories for price ending patterns in non‐western countries, and those based on perceptions and affect in the west. The study also demonstrates the usefulness of the web method in international pricing research.

The purpose of this paper is to review most recent developments of social and environmental accounting (SEA) in the context of developing countries and to offer insights for the latest research in this field. It also provides an introduction to the AAAJ special issue.

The authors have undertaken a conceptual overview of the field developed in the past two decades (2001–2020) with a view to identify major themes, trends and future research directions.

The overview reveals that only 43 SEA papers addressing contextual challenges of developing countries have been published in leading accounting journals in the last 20 years. The coverage of these publications is concentrated in a small number of countries and regions. Interdisciplinary accounting journals, especially AAAJ, are the main publishing outlets in this field. The topic areas are dominated by social accounting challenges, with much less focus on environmental accounting, although developing countries are particularly exposed to the threats of climate change, water pollution and biodiversity loss. The literature reviewed uses elaborating, problematising and theorising contexts as three main contextualisation approaches to analyse contextual themes framed around regulatory, political, cultural and religious, and social-economic systems. Although various conceptual lenses have been adopted in the developing country SEA literature, the use of institutional theory and its various extensions to address political and cultural complexities seems to become more prominent, as shown in most of the contributions included in this special issue.

This review is limited to leading accounting journals. SEA research increasingly published in other disciplines such as in management, social and environmental areas might provide a more comprehensive view in this research field.

In this paper, inter alia, the authors review and synthesise the previous literature in a conceptual framework, illustrating and highlighting the importance of contextual framing of SEA in developing countries. Based on this review, the authors propose some ideas for a future research agenda aiming to advance the field. The authors expect this paper and the special issue to act as a reference point for emerging SEA researchers from developing countries to raise more scholarly impactful enquiries in this area.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the cultural context and other institutional factors may influence the amount of direct communication with employees in nine European countries.

Nine countries were selected from the Cranfield Network on Comparative Human Resource Management database varying from high to low context. The dependent or criterion variable, was direct communication, independent variables were organization size age and industry, strategic role of human resource management (HRM), union presence and communication culture context. Data were analysed using one‐way analysis of variance and hierarchical regression.

The results show that cultural communication context, union presence and strategic role of HRM all have an influence on direct communication. The authors also see that union presence and cultural context interact.

The paper relied on data collected from the human resource managers of the organizations; therefore the authors do not know how the communication is perceived by the employees themselves. Future research can investigate not only the amount, also but the quality of the communication by collecting data from employees.

In today's environment where people from different cultures and companies from different legal systems are increasingly working together, the authors need to realise that context matters. What has worked in one environment may not be successful in another. The authors need to develop models that can guide managers in how they can deal with the differences and be effective in communicating with their employees.

The paper investigates direct communication in low‐ and high‐context countries as well as medium‐context countries. European integration provides a move towards convergence in some practices, however, there remains cultural differences between groups of countries.

This paper aims to refine the concept of community/ethnic resources for migrant communities by focusing on the way ethnic migrant entrepreneurs (EMEs) use co-ethnic-based (CEB) resources in their entrepreneurial activities, taking into account their migration contexts. Migrants are usually considered as disadvantaged individuals given their restricted opportunities in the labor market and in the business arena; thus, they rely on ethnic resources for survival in the host country.

Through Bourdieu’s (1986) forms of capital model, the authors compare the experiences of EMEs from three migrant communities in Malaysia (specifically, the Indonesian, Pakistani and South Korean communities) with regard to their ethnic resources. The authors used a qualitative approach in analyzing our data, which includes interview narratives with 41 individuals consisting of EMEs, community leaders, embassy representatives and trade experts.

This study’s findings indicate that migration contexts influence the differences in the way ethnic resources are used by EMEs. The findings are synthesized into a framework of ethnic resources within the context of ethnic migrant entrepreneurship.

Adopting a qualitative approach was useful in studying the subject, but the findings are still limited within the context of the study. As such, future research is encouraged to test the proposed framework and examine the underexplored aspects of migration in influencing the utilization of ethnic resources for entrepreneurial migrant communities.

A practical implication of this paper lies in the illustration of migrants’ usage of alternative routes for resources through co-ethnic networks, which is useful for policymakers and businesses focusing on migration and trade.

This framework contributes to the discourse of ethnic migrant entrepreneurship through further clarifying aspects shaping the utilization of community ethnic resources.

This paper aims to review the immigrant entrepreneurship literature to locate how researchers consider embeddedness to home and host countries beyond the “embedded” or “not” dichotomy.

The paper conducts a systematic literature review. The authors found 106 articles in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, using a structured search and selection protocol.

Few articles perceive embeddedness openly as a gradual phenomenon. However, articles in the review use different approaches for considering relative levels of embeddedness, such as depth of social ties. In addition, some articles take a dual perspective or make multi-contextual comparisons to acknowledge immigrant entrepreneurs’ embeddedness levels. These articles emphasise embeddedness as a gradual phenomenon to understand the complexity of immigrant entrepreneurs’ contextualisation better. Based on the review, the paper develops a model, considering embeddedness as an emergent result of the immigrants’ engagement with spaces, networks, markets and institutions of a given home or host context. It also accounts for the dynamic interaction between contextual factors as embeddedness levels change.

The paper has located all relevant papers in the used databases. However, the systematic review protocol naturally limits its scope. Nevertheless, the developed model based on the review helps researchers develop a more comprehensive understanding of embeddedness and possibly ask novel questions.

This paper can help policymakers improve their policies for the progressive social integration of immigrants, as it helps consider different embeddedness levels.

Researchers mainly consider individuals’ embeddedness as either “embedded” or “not.” However, we can also understand embeddedness at various levels, e.g. partial, increasing/decreasing and gradual. Significant changes occur in the embeddedness of individuals during immigration. Additionally, contextual relations intertwine immigrants’ entrepreneurial activity over time. The paper reviews embeddedness in the immigrant entrepreneurship literature, searching beyond the dichotomic use of embeddedness. Then, it develops a theoretical understanding of embeddedness levels.

The present study explored the adjustment (i.e. survival vs stay) of a unique group of Turkish entrepreneur immigrants in the United Kingdom, whose initial experiences upon their move were disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.

Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore this immigrant group's experience on the path to potential immigration success or failure as indicators of adjustment. The content of the interviews was analyzed via theoretical thematic analysis.

Key career capital aspects hindering entrepreneurial effort under the unique conditions of Covid-19 were defined as not knowing how to start a business (in general, in the host country and under extreme conditions), why they should persist to stay, and whom to contact in the host country. Key facilitating career capital aspects were defined as knowing how to revise the business plans when needed and knowing why they left the home country, preferred the host country and should persist to stay there. Each unique aspect was mapped onto specific components of the context (home country, host country and profession) to add depth to the analyses.

The study contributes to the literature primarily by integrating career capital framework with different elements of the context. It also represents the first effort to adopt the framework to identify the critical career capital aspects of entrepreneur immigrants.

Due to the changes in organizational, social, cultural and technological factors, companies from different contexts are shifting towards open forms of strategy-making with more widened inclusion of internal and external actors and greater transparency regarding their strategic issues, including their internationalization processes. The purpose of this paper is to understand how Open Strategizing occurs in the accelerated process of internationalization considering different contexts.

The authors conducted a qualitative comparative case study in Brazilian and English technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which rapidly internationalized. Furthermore, data was collected through semi-structured interviews, observations and documental analysis.

The authors suggest that openness contributes to the accelerated process of internationalization. Additionally, the authors show that the home-country and the national cultural contexts affect openness. The authors also disclose openness as crucial and inherent to the accelerated process of internationalization, while context is relevant but not determinant in the Open Strategizing.

The authors contribute to Open Strategy (OS) literature by presenting how Open Strategizing unfolds daily during the internationalization process and by evidencing the role of home-country and national cultural contexts in the configuration and dynamics of Open Strategizing. The authors also contribute to the international entrepreneurship (IE) literature by advancing the understanding of the strategies and drivers adopted by technology-based SMEs internationalizing in an accelerated way.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a cooperation‐driven stage in the traditional framework of country competitiveness development and also suggest an approach to address pragmatic issues related to cooperation in the context, particularly, competitiveness evaluation and choice of partner country.

The objectives of the research were achieved by a research design that leveraged quantitative tools with strength of case study research. Quantitative data for benchmarking were obtained from a carefully selected Country Competitiveness Report. For identifying criteria of competitiveness for success of a country (aka critical success factors CSF), content analysis of strategic reports from competitive countries was employed.

Cooperative strategies and flagship firms emerged to be CSFs that can drive investment needed for innovation and technology development, the later stages in country competitiveness development framework. Evaluation of competitiveness can be quite difficult and resource‐intensive process, but can be improved with innovative mix of different approaches and tools. With quite consistent and effective results in one more international context and a new industry, the assets‐processes‐performance (APP) framework of competitiveness can provide a simple, yet valuable approach with flexibility to adapt across levels and contexts, a vital need.

Competitiveness leaders should review cooperation processes and performance. They should evolve strategies to leverage cooperation on relevant dimensions.

A key contribution of this paper is proposing a vital cooperation‐driven stage for country competitiveness and operationlizing it using three major frameworks of competitiveness in a practical and useful context of nanotechnology, when many countries are evolving their strategies for such industries. An approach is tested to simplify evaluation of competitiveness in a difficult context of emerging industries. It can help leadership take more informed critical decisions about competitiveness and assess their impact for enhancing desired impacts of the decisions. For the purpose, comparing three alternatives, the author extends the APP framework with strategy concept of CSF to enhance its flexibility, thus contributing to needs of effectiveness and simplicity of emerging country context.