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Institutions and culture as well as their distance between home and host countries matter for international business activities. Yet, the exact nature of this influence is still not fully understood. In this chapter, we develop the concept of institutional and cultural compatibility and propose empirical measures of both to contribute to our understanding in this regard. We argue that the institutional and cultural profiles of home and host countries can create synergies that facilitate bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) flows (that is being compatible) even if they are characterized by high distances. We apply our measures of compatibility to a sample of bilateral FDI flows between 127 host and 122 home countries over 12 years.

This chapter aims to make sense of the growing research that examines the role of culture in mergers and acquisitions. We provide a detailed review of the many related but distinct constructs that have been introduced to the literature. While each construct has contributed to our understanding of the role of culture, the lack of connections made among constructs has limited the consolidation of contributions. The review shows what these constructs mean for mergers and acquisitions, what major findings have been discovered, and, most importantly, how constructs interrelate. Our discussion provides several opportunities to foster the needed consolidation of this research.

Many theorists describe organizational learning as having three stages: learning, unlearning, and innovation. Little is known, however, about the details associated with each stage, or the impact on performance. We attempt to fill this gap by reporting on a ten-year study in Hungary of the knowledge acquisition process, foreign parent contributions, and new learning capabilities. In transitional economies, firms facing the obsolescence of their socialist managerial skills must learn new approaches quickly. Private firms such as international joint ventures (IJVs) and small to medium enterprises often develop competitive advantages by learning from their foreign parents and creating new learning processes.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is about understanding and acknowledging when racism has impacted a policy, person, system, and our history. This chapter examines CRT as a tool to understand what has happened in our history and educational system and as a tool to dismantle our current system to bring about true inclusive and authentic schools. It serves to analyze the practical use of CRT in our current public K-12 educational system. The purpose is to fast forward our discussion on race and to explicitly illustrate the dire need for an inclusive education fundamentally girded in an abolitionist mindset for school systems, educators, parents, and students. Although CRT has branched out to be inclusive of many populations, the core purpose was to examine anti-Blackness in America and how that has stained our education system. Inspired by the dissertation conducted by Ayanna Blackmon-Balogun, the aim of this chapter is to draw our attention to that essential purpose of CRT so that schooling can become more liberatory and meaningful to all.

The purpose of this paper is to examine processes of Eurasian integration and the veritable ‘culture war’ between Russia and the West over it, while contributing to the theoretical paradigm of geopolitical economy. This paradigm invites us to consider the multiple manifestations of an emerging multipolar world order while scrutinising the extent to which previously popular approaches to the study of international political economy were themselves enmeshed in projects, the architects of which aspired to global hegemony.

The paper employs critical historicism, an approach in which cultural difference is seen as the sedimentation of historically constituted material and ideational processes and which eschews cultural essentialism and orientalising tropes. It is through this lens that Russian state attempts at normalising Eurasian integration processes are examined.

I demonstrate that Russian state organs and officials, as well as ‘political technologists’ attempt to de-politicise processes of Eurasian integration by appealing to both the logic of cultural/civilisational compatibility of affected parties, as well as the logic of economic integration. Such portrayals invite scrutiny; however, it is important that we also consider how Eurasian integration initiatives are the product of a post-Soviet struggle over Eurasian space but represent something more than mere neo-Soviet revisionism.

The paper demonstrates its originality by situating ongoing processes of Eurasian integration within the longer post-Soviet conjuncture and amid processes of international contestation. Moreover, it situates Russian officials and political technologists as active contributors to international debates about the emerging multipolar world order.

This chapter synthesises theoretical and empirical perspectives on cultural compatibility within cross-border acquisitions, drawing on both the organisational and national culture streams of acquisitions literature. The impact of cultural compatibility on subsequent acquisition performance is seen to revolve around the form of post-acquisition integration and the relative attractiveness of the acquirer's culture. For the latter, there is some evidence that attitudes towards participation, formality and risk may have a particular importance, although the relative influence between organisational and national culture remains unclear. Avenues for future research are indicated.

Based on the findings in earlier research of the importance of relationships in general, and relationships to social actors in particular to explain innovation processes in emerging economies, the aim of the paper is to reach a better understanding of the mechanisms behind innovations in these economies. This has been accomplished through an investigation of an innovation process and the relationships between two business firms and a NGO that were central for its progression. Theoretically the study is constructed on the concepts of trust, commitment and cultural capability in long and short-term relationships as discussed in business network theory and theory on discontinuous innovation. A case study method is used and the social innovation project ‘Connexão Belterra’ that enabled connectivity in the distant Amazon region of Pará, Brazil, was investigated.