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The international marketing field has witnessed many studies related to “country of origin” (COO) effects or the “made in” concept over the past few decades. Yet COO research is deeply rooted in the so-called “production-related” approach, which mainly accounts for production- or technology-based factors. Barely considered is the “consumption-related” perspective, which reflects consumers' proclivity to base their buying decisions on foreigners' product choice. In this paper, we propose the “country of reference” (COR) concept, in which consumers deliberately imitate the product choices of consumers from another country, to whom the former (i.e. the imitators) attribute superior or more prestigious personas.

Unlike the made in concept, which emphasizes favored product qualities from superior manufacturing countries, we believe product preferences may arise from cross-border benchmarking or “cross-country referencing.” Pivoting on the optimal distinctiveness theory, this paper suggests a COR framework that incorporates the system justification theory and the self-discrepancy concept, along with decision heuristics and mental simulation effects. The proposed framework aims to explain consumers' inclination to “buy what certain foreigners buy.”

We suggest critical propositions related to the COR concept, discuss its marketing implications, and pinpoint further research issues.

COR may become a coping strategy through which low-status consumers perceiving themselves as less privileged than their high-status counterparts can narrow this gap by means of decision mimicking.

This study is an extension of an etic‐emic analysis of the individualism‐collectivism construct at the sociopsychological level to an organizational context. At the first level of comparison, strong and weak etics were extracted to permit comparability of values. At the second level, emic elements were produced to provide a basis of intercultural comparisons. Purely individualistic, purely collectivist and multidimensional factors emerged for the ten nations under consideration.

The authors study the role of collectivistic norms and beliefs on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) in Mexico, including differences across gender and generations.

The authors researched the relationship between Mexican employees' collectivistic norms and beliefs and their OCBs, which the authors grouped into etic (universal), emic (regional) and unique (indigenous) categories, the latter referred to as Mexican OCBs (MOCBs). The authors also studied the role of gender and generations as moderators.

Collective norms had a positive relationship only on the etic OCBs of sportsmanship, while collective beliefs impacted altruism and civic virtue; the etic OCBs of personal development, protecting company resources, interpersonal harmony; and the MOCBs of dedication and camaraderie. Collective beliefs on the etic OCB of altruism, the emic OCB of protecting company resources and the unique MOCB of camaraderie were stronger for workers from Xers than for Millennials. Moderation tests also showed that collective belief had stronger effects on the emic OCB of protecting company resources and the unique MOCBs of dedication and camaraderie for men than for women.

Gender roles in emerging economies where society is characterized by collectivistic attributes, especially in a sample drawn from professional employees, may have changed. This could explain the reason why most of the interactions were stronger for men. Future studies involving gender roles should look beyond a demographic variable and design an instrument measuring self-perceptions of role identity, such as the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974). This study's findings could be generalized, particularly, to other Latin American nations, but scholars should acknowledge differences in economic development and gender roles, as well as unique cultural elements (Arriagada, 2014; Hofstede, 1980).

The results of this study yield three practical implications for international managers, including (1) distinguishing between the impact of changing cultural norms or beliefs on OCBs, (2) understanding how demographic factors such as gender or generation may influence the degree of OCBs exhibited in the workplace by specific employee groups, and (3) identifying cultural contexts which promote OCBs. First, workers from a younger generation in a collectivistic society, such as Millennials, respond less positively than workers from older generations to cultural beliefs concerning OCBs, such that they are less willing to engage in a particular category of OCBs including protecting company resources.

Global managers should be aware that employees engage in distinct OCBs for different reasons. Emphasizing cultural rules and norms behind helping one another may backfire in Mexico, particularly among men and younger generations of workers. This is understandable for these OCBs. For example, engaging in personal development for the organization's sake due to collective norms may be less effective that pursuing personal development opportunities that employees are passionate about or recognize as beneficial for their careers. Dedication and sportsmanship behaviors that stem from rules are likely less strong or effective as OCBs employees engage in due to strong beliefs or altruistic spontaneity.

The authors filled a gap in scholar's understanding of cultural norms and beliefs on behavior. Specifically, the authors found that cultural beliefs shape etic, emic and unique MOCBs, particularly for men and older generations, and that cultural norms have a negligible and sometimes negative role, being positively related only to the etic OCB of sportsmanship.

Behavioral intention models are assumed to be universally applicable; however, recent criticisms have questioned their application among non‐Western subjects. It is argued that models that posit constructs that represent and measure the cultural nature of evaluative and normative latent constructs will best model intention formation in a culture. Thus, emic measures of etic latent constructs are required. A review of culturally‐influenced differences in reasoning processes between Chinese and Americans provides a theoretical basis to explore these models with samples from two cultures. Models considered Western, Oriental, and universal were compared with Hong Kong and US subjects. As predicted, the most Western model fit the USA data best and the most Oriental model fit the Hong Kong data best. Also as predicted, the measures of evaluation most representative of emic thought processes were most related to intention formation. Results suggest that the BI framework is applicable across cultures, yet must be operationalized with the distinctive thought processes of each culture in mind.

The level of contact by government and non‐government organisations with local companies has intensified in recent years. Sheffield is used as a case study to show that the level of contact with local businesses can be considerable. This level of contact has led to a growing chorus of complaints from many businesses about the increasing burden of information collection. One way to resolve these problems is through collaboration by those involved in information collection. In Sheffield six organisations have been working together for more than a year to collaborate in the collection, analysis and dissemination of company information. An independent organisation, the Employment and Training Information Consortium (ETIC) has been established to co‐ordinate the sharing of information.

Entrepreneurship is a social role, suggesting that different communities and societies will hold different typical expectations for who the entrepreneur should be (i.e., personal characteristics) and how an entrepreneur acts (behaviors). In this chapter, we describe the results of two studies that elucidate the content of the entrepreneur’s role and assess its generalizability and cultural uniqueness in three cultures: the United States, China, and Taiwan. We do so by examining the prototypes, or culturally shared implicit theories or schema that individuals hold about the attributes and behaviors characterizing the entrepreneur’s role. We suggest that the entrepreneur prototype has overlapping content across these three cultures, and that they also reflect cultural uniqueness due to different political, economic, and social histories and conditions. First, we conducted an initial inductive study designed to elicit a comprehensive list of representative characteristics and behaviors that are commonly recognized in each society as typical of an “entrepreneur,” resulting in an inclusive list of 87 prototypical/anti-prototypical items. These items were subsequently used in a survey-based study to assess the specific content that each culture endorses as prototypical of an entrepreneur, the extent to which those prototypes varied across the three cultures, and relationships of prototype evaluation with individuals’ personal values and exposure to entrepreneurship. Results showed that prototypes were distinct in each culture, but with some overlap of attributes, especially between China and Taiwan. Results showed some support for the relationship between top-ranked prototypical attributes and individuals’ exposure to entrepreneurship as well as openness-to-change values and conservation values, but also interesting differences in these relationships in the three cultures. The findings highlight that role prototype formation processes across these cultures were etic, but that the content of the role may well be emic or culturally specific.

Teaching about development contains a basic contradiction. The issues are even more stark when we consider that gender disruptions are always a part of the discontinuities in any development process. Students and text books often assume that women are being suppressed and it is a task of development workers to “free” women from “traditional” oppression.

Here the author explores some of the contradictions inevitably part of Development Anthropology. On the one hand, the development worker’s etic vision of problems to be solved by “development” controls discussion in the classroom and the transfer of resources to the field. On the other hand, ordinary villagers’ or urbanites’ emic vision of what is happening in the socio-­cultural system as it faces pressures to “develop” hold sway in field contexts, as well as in their classroom analysis. The author needs to bring the realities of field settings into the pedagogical setting.

Application and pedagogy tend to interpenetrate; there is no clear boundary. Relying on discussions of the pedagogical problems, the author explores some of the discontinuities to be found in a gendered vision of development. The author stresses the problems highlighted by the educational environment in which students frequently first encounter these issues. The ultimate goal of this study is to make clear that teaching about or engaging in development do not have sharp boundaries and cannot be accomplished within the confines of a value-free paradigm. Every decision in this area involves a meeting of emic and etic visions and the value systems that arise from them.

The purpose of this study was to explore an innovative strategy for studying the Brazilian negotiator’s unique and paradoxical characteristics from a cultural point of view to acquire a better understanding of the nature of international business negotiations in Brazil.

The study is of a qualitative nature, using a multiple-case study design at three levels (small-, medium- and large-scale negotiations). Interviews were conducted with Brazilian and German managers to capture the emic–etic view of the Brazilian negotiator. The Strategic Trinity Model was developed to assess the behavior of the Brazilian negotiator in agreement with three metaphors: “African Capoeirista”, “Portuguese Bureaucrat” and “Indigenous Warrior”.

The three roles “African Capoeirista”, “Portuguese Bureaucrat” and “Indigenous Warrior” comprised similar as well as contradicting characteristics. The Brazilian negotiator chose naturally and even paradoxically from these role features, effectively negotiating any given situation, context and time. During the pre- and post-negotiation phases, traits of the “African Capoeirista” and “Indigenous Warrior” were the most salient. During the formal negotiation phase, however, the characteristics of the “African Capoeirista” and “Portuguese Bureaucrat” dominated.

International business negotiations in Brazil call for an in-depth comprehension of the paradoxical roles that local negotiators take on to achieve better negotiation outcomes.

The present study unveiled the contradicting Brazilian negotiating style in international business negotiations, thus acquiring a better understanding of the negotiation process in the Brazilian market.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the relations between management control system (MCS), leadership style and gender ideology. It investigates how a female leader’s gendered personal values are formed, translated, produced, and reproduced in her leadership style, the subsequent MCS and organisational life.

This is an interpretive case study that uses the anthropological lens of emic and etic views. The emic view is derived from the interpretation of the company’s subjects. The etic view refers to the interpretation of outsiders (the researchers and previous literatures). The combination of these two views enables an in-depth understanding of the case. Interviews, observation and documentary analysis were used to collect the data.

In a gendered society, a female leader will gain full respect if she demonstrates leadership behaviours that fit her subordinates’ gendered expectations. The leader’s and followers’ common gendered cultural background will result in leadership and followership that support each other. Gendered leadership produces gendered MCS. Gendered MCS is based on gendered cultural values that direct the behaviour of organisational members to focus on certain competencies based on a single gender perspective. In turn, the gendered MCS sustains and reinforces the gendered leadership.

The study does not focus on the potential value of including feminine measures in MCS. In the future, MCS literatures need to explore the strategic advantages of introducing measures into the system in order to develop feminine competencies in organisation. Furthermore, the processes by which MCS reinforces gendered practices in a society are not explored in the study. Therefore, another important next step is to examine the patterns of the reinforcement processes and their magnitude in strengthening the biases beyond organisational boundaries (e.g. in professional and industrial practices).

This study encourages leaders to consider the use of masculine and feminine characters in MCS to increase organisational effectiveness, build a more humane organisational atmosphere, establish organisational cohesion and harmonise different personal aspirations.

MCS literatures tend to hide gender bias in the system. This study offers insight on how MCS translates, produces and reproduces societal gendered practices in organisational life.

Understanding societal expectations of a leader's responsibility and context-specific challenges in less-researched emerging economies has become imperative for foreign Multinational enterprises (MNEs) to survive in these contexts while developing globally responsible leaders. Identification of institutionally sanctioned characteristics, competencies and strategies that assist leaders in dealing with such challenges while achieving shared value has wider implications for academics, practitioners and the literature on responsible leadership (RL), which is the purpose of this paper.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews of 28 senior indigenous leaders in 3 Indian Multinational corporations (MNCs) in construction sector, following a grounded theory approach.

The authors identified three vital institutionally driven challenges and four individual-level societal-driven factors, subsequently influencing leaders' strategic decisions and choices to deal with such challenges beyond passive conformance. Contrary to the previous findings, this study also briefly discusses that a mere ethical climate is insufficient; organizations must develop a holistic values climate that works as contextual factors to influence RL.

Contrary to the previous findings suggesting Indian leaders' conformance to constraining forces to RL, by adopting a multilevel approach, the authors identify the context-specific strategic behaviors that responsible leaders adopt in dealing with such forces responsibly. Thus, it is the first multilevel inductive approach conducted in a non-Western context, offering a discrete understanding of RL while addressing some of the inconsistencies in the literature and contributing to cross-cultural leadership research. Also, findings highlight the factors of RL that are more emic and etic for generalization.