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The competitive international environment of the twenty‐first century is said to require greater collaboration between the multinational corporation (MNC) units, where local employees work toward global as well as local goals. What does it take to motivate local employees to go the extra mile for the sake of the MNC as a whole? This article reports the results of a study conducted among 317 local managers at the Indian and Pakistani subsidiaries of a British MNC in the consumer products industry. Organisational identification, or a psychological bonding with the organisation, was one of several factors contributing to the willingness of local managers to exert extra effort toward organisational goals. Implications of the findings are drawn for expatriate managers who work alongside local managers, and for international human resource management.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model that identifies the strategies that have the ability to create a culture of employee engagement for global managers in making the tactical adaptations necessary to develop and implement global strategy in an increasingly complex and dynamic marketplace.

The authors focused on the global managers charged with the responsibilities of developing and creating a culture of employee engagement as an important strategy for the competitive advantage of organizations.

Employee engagement should be viewed as a long-term commitment between the employees and the organization, each supporting the other in an era of increasing international operations. In fact, employee engagement is an important strategy for long-term organizational sustainability in international markets.

Employee engagement is critical to the management and retention of talented employees in the organization. It can be achieved by managing global mobility in increasingly complex global workplaces; talent so that it enhances business results; training and development; rewards, recognitions and engagement; manager/employee communication and interaction; and leadership and development.

In today’s global society, it is critical for organizational leaders to focus on creating a culture of employee engagement to attract and retain quality employees in an increasingly competitive market. Engaged employees are more committed to their work and feel connected to the success of their organization. In addition, they are more likely to believe in their organization’s values, mission and vision. The increasing utilization of boundary less organizations poses a challenge for leaders who strive to create and maintain employee engagement within an organization.

Modern global career implies not only an interaction between an organization and an individual but also – and increasingly – a mutual dependency between the two parties. Whereas the traditional career concept presupposes that the individual employee to a high extent has to adhere to the conditions and opportunities provided by the organization, organizations increasingly have to accept and match the expectations and demands of the employee. In particular, this is found in knowledge intensive organizations providing immaterial “products” like know‐how, complex problem solving, consultancy service, etc. This kind of immaterial “production” not only requires highly skilled and professional employees but also means that the employees possess the core competence of the company – and can carry it out of the organization if they choose to resign. The paper analyzes the dual dependency in global careers and discusses this interdependency from the viewpoints of both individual and organization. In addition, the paper outlines the implications for practitioners and future research.

There is general agreement that global brands should ensure that they incorporate social responsibility. To do this properly, organisations must understand what it means to be socially responsible and how they can leverage their actions. The paper proposes consideration of three distinct areas: the range of social responsibility issues, what the organisations actually do and how to leverage those corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. This paper seeks to conceptually develop these three areas of complexity – Issue, Organisational and Communication – as it is only after organisations understand these three areas that they can effectively leverage socially responsible activities in their brands.

This research undertakes a review and synthesis of the academic, practitioner and industry literature examining CSR and the brand, addressing the three areas of complexity – issue, organisational and communication.

The research finds that within these three areas of complexity there are a number of sub‐issues that must be addressed if CSR is to be strategically integrated into a global brand. This includes sub‐issues associated with social issue complexity (identification, heterogeneity, measurement, and interpretation); organizational complexity (overall corporate brand, multiple products and brands, functional activities, and supply chain); and communication complexity (intensity of action/positioning, communicating action, types of programs utilised, and integration issues.) It thus provides an agenda for future research.

There is limited academic literature examining how global organisations incorporate CSR activities into their brand and the research proposes the issues that need to be considered when integrating CSR into branding strategy. Future research needs to be undertaken to explore the internal processes that global firms use to develop their CSR positioning strategies and some research propositions for future research are proposed. Additionally further exploration of each of the issues (and sub‐issues) identified in this paper is warranted, and some suggestions are made for this.

The results of this study show that developing a CSR leveraged brand in a consistent way that is salient to all stakeholders is no simple task for global organisations. By considering the three areas of complexity developed here organisations will be able to better understand and align their activities in line with CSR related issues. Being global means that organisations will likely need to ensure they address the highest set of global expectations, as any lower level may be criticised as being less than appropriate.

The paper develops the sub‐issues of issue, organisational and communication complexity associated with global brands' CSR activities. This strategic perspective goes beyond focusing on the tactical activities undertaken or the philosophical issue of whether CSR should be undertaken. The work therefore allows global organisations to look at CSR more strategically as a branding issue.

The purpose of this article is to expound the view that knowledge of a special kind, which the author terms open knowledge, has a central place in the conduct of human activities at the global level.

The author advances the concept of open knowledge in a global context by examining key constructs in the field, such as knowledge, management, learning and complexification, considering some consequences and implications, and applying his personal experience, interpretations, and insights.

The paper finds that this particular kind of knowledge, open knowledge, is becoming increasingly important due to operational complexities associated with global outreach. Appearance of and application of open knowledge brings consequential modifications of familiar and established local‐regional managerial practices.

The author expounds the concept of open knowledge which is “knowledge proven useful regardless of field of study and discipline to know how best and effectively to manage global processes of human activity defining global organizations”.

The purpose of this paper is to examine predictors of obtaining global certification (ISO 9000) in an emerging market by focusing on ownership structure and total quality management (TQM) commitment.

This paper adapts the theory of planned behavior to explain organizations that obtain global certification in an emerging market (China). Using 269 service firms at different stages of ISO 9000 certification (a proxy for goal-directed behavior/excellence by organizations), the study examines the influence of ownership structures (a proxy for perceived behavioral control) and TQM commitment (a proxy for attitude toward a behavior), using a probit model.

The results showed that ownership structures that were state-owned enterprises, privately owned enterprises and township-village enterprises (TVEs) had a lower probability of obtaining global certification. However, TQM commitment moderates the relationship between ownership structure and obtaining ISO 9000 certification for POEs and TVEs. The study found stronger results for a subsample of organizations that intended to obtain ISO 9000 certification. Among organizations without ISO 9000 certification, we examined organizations that began the learning process for ISO 9000 and those that had not, and found differences based on competitive pressures, ownership structures, and the moderating effect of TQM commitment.

Future research may consider manufacturing organizations and other countries to further validate the findings of our study.

Creating strong TQM commitment can be an effective means for POEs and TVEs to obtain ISO 9000 certification.

This study is the first to adapt the theory of planned behavior for an organization-level analysis of ISO 9000 certification, especially in the service operations setting. The study found that TQM commitment selectively moderates ownership structures in explaining the probability that an organization obtained ISO 9000 certification.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

There is a lacuna in research work in terms of understanding how Indian IT organizations can become global brands. Benchmarking has not received much attention in marketing literature due to lack of benchmarking framework, and IT organizations are yet to make progress in benchmarking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of brand strength on global branding by developing a conceptual benchmarking framework for Indian IT organizations.

Semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with thirty middle-level managers from two Indian IT organizations, two US-based global IT organizations and one UK-based leading bank, which is a customer of these IT organizations.

Results show a positive relationship between brand strength and global branding, between customer loyalty and global branding, between brand loyalty and competitive advantage and between global branding and competitive advantage. Indian IT organizations can benchmark global IT organizations to improve delivering brand promise, positioning, awareness building and authenticity toward making Indian IT organizations future ready to address the entire breadth of opportunities in the evolving world of cloud and digital.

This research helps managers with a brand strength-based benchmarking framework toward global branding of Indian IT organizations.

IT is instrumental for rapid growth of Indian’s economy. India should optimally utilize its greatest wealth, its human potential, with the latent global demand in IT through building global IT brands.

The originality of the study lies in conducting a qualitative study on global branding of Indian IT organizations and also proposing a conceptual benchmarking framework. The study further validates the model using qualitative analysis.

Globalization of organizations necessitates the development of a network organizational configuration. This new form of organization requires managers to become boundary spanners between the various organizations aligned in the global business network. The question becomes how are these boundary‐spanning managers going to be identified and selected for global assignments. This paper examines the staffing options for marketing managers of integrative (i.e. relational) and market (i.e. transactional) modes of norm‐based control of global channels of distribution. Both transaction cost analysis and focus theory are used to identify which control mechanism would be most appropriate for each inter‐organizational situation.

This paper aims to propose a new theoretical perspective on the organizational design of offshoring service organizations by adopting an information processing perspective which incorporates the factors of collaborative information technologies, task commoditization and global customer service delivery that are characteristic of modern-day knowledge-intensive service (KIS) organizations.

The authors analyze data from a large multiyear survey of offshoring service providers conducted in 12 countries.

The authors show how use of collaborative technology is significantly and positively related to spatial and configurational dispersion, task commoditization is significantly and positively related to spatial and temporal dispersion and need for global customer presence is not related to spatial, temporal or configurational dispersion.

The paper integrates concepts from management information system (MIS), operations management and international business to show how collaborative technology, task characteristics and customer service requirements affect the global dispersion of KISs.

The results show how use of collaborative technology, task characteristics and global customer service requirements need to be jointly considered in the global dispersion of activities by KIS providers.

The study sheds light on the effect of the key factors on different dimensions of global dispersion (i.e. spatial/temporal/configurational dispersion) in offshoring service provider organizations. Second, it shows how the traditional information processing perspective on organizations can be updated and applied to KIS organizations by incorporating the factors of global collaborative information technologies, task commoditization and global customer service.