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This article explains the challenges faced when management‐practitioners decide to enter the academic environment and teach. The authors speak from the perspective of their own experiences with respect to transitions into the academic field and also highlight prominent literature on the subject. The framework for the paper begins with the explanation of a basic model associated with cultural transition. They identify three success factors for transition: task success; social interaction; and cultural understanding and awareness and develop strategies for each. The dual themes of the article are to reinforce the usefulness of practitioners into academia and to help smooth the environmental transition for practitioner‐academicians (PAs) by developing strategies for success.

There is an established link between national cultural differences and documented variations in technological innovations across countries. To move beyond a narrow emphasis on national cultures, scholars have suggested using within‐country diversity to compensate for known limitations in national culture measures. Given that ethno‐linguistic diversity is a known source of cultural variation, this paper specifically aims to explore the relationship between culture, ethno‐linguistic diversity and national innovativeness.

The researchers used publicly available data on patents and trademarks in a multivariate regression context to study the effects of national culture and within‐country diversity on national levels of innovativeness.

The research found that culture and ethno‐linguistic diversity are independently positively associated with national innovation. More importantly, cultural and intra‐cultural variation measures when taken together account for significantly greater variance in levels of national innovation than does national culture when measured separately.

While this study points to the importance of ethno‐linguistic diversity in explaining national levels of innovativeness, there are other measures of within‐country diversity to be explored.

If national culture were the sole factor in innovativeness, then companies would be limited by their host cultural legacies; since within‐country diversity is also associated with innovation, it provides entrepreneurs, government policy makers and executives with important options for increasing innovativeness.

While previous studies pointed to the potential link between ethno‐linguistic diversity and innovation, prior research has generally not taken this variable into account.

The decision one makes to engage in entrepreneurial activity is affected by many different motivators. The paper aims to focus on one specific motivator for entrepreneurial activity which is the Need for Achievement. The prevailing methods of studying achievement motivation will also be discussed as shall constructs related to Need for Achievement. The paper also examines the dynamics of achievement motivation. The dynamic ability of individual traits is important, if it were not one's traits would be constant and not capable of being changed or developed. Some of the main factors that can influence achievement motivation are also examined in the paper.

Specifically, data from 249 entrepreneurs from the USA, 220 from China, and 173 from Latvia were used in order to examine the relationships between variables related to Need for Achievement.

Goal orientation, conscientiousness, cognitive complexity, age, and gender were found to be able to account for 29.4 percent of the variance in Need for Achievement among American entrepreneurs, 45.3 percent among Chinese entrepreneurs, and 33.5 percent among Latvian entrepreneurs. Differences are found between the countries with cognitive complexity being statistically significant in the USA and China, but not in Latvia. Gender was significant in the USA and China but not in Latvia. Age was not significantly related to Need for Achievement in any of the three countries, while goal orientation and conscientiousness were significantly related to Need for Achievement in all three countries. Finally, the implications of this research as well as areas that need to be considered for future research are discussed.

The paper is limited to entrepreneurs of small to medium‐sized enterprises in North America, Asia, and the Baltics. The implications of the research include that Need for Achievement is important for entrepreneurs across these three very diverse cultures and that variables related to Need for Achievement vary between the countries. As Need for Achievement is related to economic development, it is important to understand the factors which might be able to influence the Need for Achievement of entrepreneurs from around the world.

The development of entrepreneurs is important if economies desire to have sustainable growth. Little empirical research has examined these issues with data‐sets from three continents. Even less research has examined these issues among entrepreneurs. The paper addresses these areas.

This chapter describes the pivotal shift occurring in our national research psyche whereby Indigenous epistemology is increasingly recognised as both valid and enriching. Two key contentions emerge from a description and discussion of this shift. First, ethics review bodies must evolve to incorporate a wider knowledge framework, one which conscientiously locates Indigenous knowledge and which empowers researchers to appropriately traverse Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural terrain. The second contention argues that there are ethical responsibilities to address inequities, based on our shared Treaty partnership, and that ethics review bodies should instantiate consideration of inequities within their oversight roles. This chapter sets the scene by describing the current shift away from Western homogeneity to cultural diversity in education, noting the formal higher learning undertaken by Māori prior to colonisation, alongside current Māori educational achievement and the goal of success as Māori. The emerging recognition of mātauranga Māori (Indigenous epistemology) is exemplified by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and Vision Mātauranga. However, this shift has not yet reached all parts of the New Zealand research community, and we argue particularly so for ethics review processes. Possible solutions are posed, and four cultural markers are offered as supporting foundations for professionals in the field as they traverse epistemological landscapes that are more attuned to Indigenous realities.

This study investigates the relationship between national culture and the country level of firms' digitalisation, by applying Hofstede's cultural framework to the European Union member states. Although many studies have observed the impact of national culture on firms' innovation and information and communication technology (ICT) adoption, there have been no analyses of how cultural dimensions impact firms' digitalisation at the country level. This study intends to fill that gap.

Using a pooled ordinary least square (OLS) model, this study analyses data from 27 European countries over the period from 2014 to 2018.

The results suggest the existence of a negative, significant, relationship between both masculinity and uncertainty avoidance, and the country level of firms' digitalisation. Indulgence is found to positively and significantly influence a country's level of digitalisation. Contrary to expectations, this study indicates a negative, significant, relationship between individualism and the degree of digitalisation. Power distance is found to have no significant impact.

This study contributes to the literature by showing how a country's various cultural dimensions help or hinder the level of firms' digitalisation in that country. Theoretical and managerial implications are presented, including suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of absorptive capacity (ACAP) and co-creation on innovation performance (INN).

The authors use survey data from Swedish and Norwegian companies (n=1,102) and establish a cross-national equivalence between Sweden and Norway.

The subsequent structural model revealed interesting differences. For Sweden, co-creation fully mediates the effect of ACAP on INN, whereas for Norway, ACAP has a direct effect on INN with no mediation. Subsequent regressions including control variables showed that the structural model is reasonably robust. The authors conclude that, despite the many common national features conducive to innovation between these two countries, sufficient differences remain to create substantial variation in the innovation processes.

The study presents a second-order model of ACAP that permits a unique test of cross-country differences.

A significant number of studies have been performed to investigate generic effects of corporate consolidations on shareholder value. Sector‐focused scrutiny has been lacking, however. European retailing has unique features that warrant investigation of consolidation effects, yet such studies are scarce or inadequate. This article seeks to fill the gap by reporting the findings of a study that ascertains the value impact of corporate consolidations in the context of European retailing. The method used in the study is analysis of the abnormal returns realised by shareholders in consolidating transactions, supplemented by examination of value‐sales and price‐earnings multiples. Its finding that retail consolidations fail to create shareholder wealth, in the short term at least, challenges retail executives to consider other ways to deliver value.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by firms in the emerging marketing on stock market cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). This research focuses on the acquiring firms in emerging markets and broadens the existing scope which highlights the M&As by firms in developed countries.

Regarding the controversial argument on the effect of cross-border M&As, the authors introduce a resource-based theory to explain the motivation of M&As by Chinese firms, conduct an event study analysis of 472 international acquisitions by Chinese firms from 2010 to 2015 and indicate cross-border M&As as a positive signal in the stock market.

The results reveal that cross-border M&As result in significantly positive CARs in a short term for the acquiring firms listed in mainland markets but not for that in the Hong Kong market. Furthermore, consistent with signaling theory and the investors’ heuristic thinking in decision-making, investors may adopt the technological innovation capability of the country where the target firms locate, and the acquiring firm’s preannouncement in shaping their positive judgment of the acquiring firm’s near future performance.

The authors distinguished the responses of the investors from the mainland and Hong Kong stock markets and investigated how the knowledge of the national innovation capability of the target firm and acquisition preannouncement influence the investors’ interpretation of the cross-border M&As as a market signal.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative integration of the existing empirical body of literature on culture and acquisition performance.

The study is based on a meta-analytical approach that synthesizes 189 effect sizes from 24 independent samples with a total sample size of n=5,496 acquisitions.

This meta-analytical study found a consistently negative and significant relationship between organizational cultural differences and acquisition performance, and a dual effect of national cultural differences (i.e. cultural distance) on acquisition performance. It further identified significant methodological and contextual moderators and discusses the implications for acquisitions in emerging markets.

Due to the nature of meta-analyses, this study is based on existing (i.e. available secondary) data. Future research may collect novel, primary data to further test the conceptual model and respective relationships developed therein.

This study sheds light onto the culture-based performance determinants of acquisitions and the effects of methodological and contextual moderator variables. Given the significant importance of acquisitions across organizational and national cultures, the findings may inform business practitioners when developing sustainable strategies to successfully integrate organizations that are culturally different and/or are located in culturally diverse environments.

A better understanding about the culture-based performance determinants of acquisitions may inform public policy makers about how to regulate and set incentives for acquisitions, which constitute a main vehicle through which firms undertake foreign direct investment, and which can be considered a global sustainable growth strategy for multinational corporations and entire economies.

This paper is original in that it provides a large-scale and in-depth quantitative integration and synthesis of the empirical literature on culture and acquisition performance based on a meta-analytical approach and so has important theoretical value and empirical implications for future emerging market research.