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Purpose – We offer a view of interpersonal justice climate in which the benefits of fair treatment might be stronger within some groups versus others, depending on characteristics of the supervisor, the group, and the organization in which the group is embedded. We further identify a potential silver lining that may be associated with low interpersonal justice climate. Overall, our intent of this chapter is to offer a more nuanced view of the topic to enhance our understanding of interpersonal justice within groups.

Design/methodology/approach – We review literature on status to support our propositions.

Findings – We examine how a supervisor's idiosyncrasy credits, a group's status, and an organization's emphasis on hierarchy will moderate the relationship between unfair interpersonal treatment from a supervisor and the group's perceived interpersonal justice climate. Also, we suggest that low levels of interpersonal justice climate may actually lead to greater affiliation among group members and ultimately enhance perceptions of group cohesion.

Originality/value – Previous literature on justice climate has largely focused on procedural justice, whereas generally ignoring interpersonal exchanges between a group and its supervisor. This chapter contributes to research on justice at the group level by examining the potential moderating effects of status on the generation of interpersonal justice climate. Further, and in contrast to previous research, we offer a potential positive outcome that may result from low interpersonal justice climate.

According to data released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Ernst & Young, 2010), the Brazilian middle class is represented by approximately 100 million people. Moreover, according to the Brazilian Association of Importers and Manufactures of Motor Vehicle Companies (ABEIFA, 2015), Brazil was ranked fourth in the world in the ranking of major automobile consumers. This is undoubtedly a highly attractive market for world producers in this sector. However, the Brazilian automobile market has some specific features that require a very prudent operation. This case aims to investigate how those idiosyncrasies were approached by the Chinese car manufacturer JAC Motors, which in addition to not having previous experience in that market, also presented a negative country of origin image.

We rely on a case study method to better understand how the executives of this Chinese firm approached the Brazilian market.

Pulling and pushing factors are the basis of the adaptation process followed by the car manufacturer to better serve the identified idiosyncrasies. It was not only China that pushed JAC Motors to go abroad, but also Brazil that attracted (pulled) the car manufacturer’s investment. Additionally, there is evidence of pushing factors on the side of JAC’s strategy and pulling factors on the side of a Brazilian partner.

Internationalisation decision-making processes often result from a combination of factors which gain a specific ‘momentum’ that result in an extraordinary occasion that provides a unique opportunity to invest abroad.

The uniqueness of the opportunity to invest abroad is the result of the alignment of pulling and pushing factors, in the country, the company and at the decision-making level.

In marketing literature, notions of experience and consumer value have continuously been revisited since early works in the 1980s. This chapter deals with how tourism services are a paradigmatic realm for the analysis and application of the experiential approach by (a) providing evidence of the idiosyncrasy of the experiential approach for tourism services based on their high subjectivity, the relevance of emotions and sensations, their aggregated nature and the many interactions and contexts they provoke, and (b) reviewing previous works applying the experiential perspective to tourism, which are varied and multifaceted. Dimensions of tourism experiential value correspond to cognitive, affective, relational and sensorial aspects, which are present in the various phases of the tourism consumption process. Insights for both researchers and practitioners interested in the world of experiences in tourism are offered, as well as future lines of research to continue the challenge of studying tourism experiences.

The purpose of this chapter is to characterize knowledge organization (KO) as a field that is affected by geographic and diachronic variations in such a way that the recognition of a slanted KO could be considered an ethical option in the KO theory and practice. KO can be considered a dynamic social product that reflects a construction that is altered in space and time. Slants are inherent to any organization of knowledge and are manifested in multiple dimensions. There is a need to find a balance between the respect for the local specificities and the necessity of global access to information. Conceptual and terminological time and space slants in KO are presented. Examples of possible day-by-day searches are analyzed in order to evidence the different cultures that are involved in the different social-linguistic characteristics. The recognition of time and space as operational axes for an ethical approach to a slanted KO is important because: (a) it tries to intervene in represented and possibly disseminated biases that are practiced so far; (b) it recognizes the coexistence of diverse groups and communities, with local characteristics, meanings, and idiosyncrasies, that will need to communicate with each other in global information systems of information; and (c) it can promote an intercultural ethics of mediation, culturally warranted, in order to avoid cultural damages and to guarantee that descriptions can reflect the past while keeping an eye in the future, based on KOS whose functionality remains over time.

This paper illuminates the distinction between individual and organizational actors in business-to-business markets as well as the coexistence of formal and informal mechanisms of coordination in multinational corporations. The main questions addressed include the following. (1) What factors influence the occurrence of personal contacts of foreign subsidiary managers in industrial multinational corporations? (2) How such personal contacts enable coordination in industrial markets and within multinational firms? The theoretical context of the paper is based on: (1) the interaction approach to industrial markets, (2) the network approach to industrial markets, and (3) the process approach to multinational management. The unit of analysis is the foreign subsidiary manager as the focal actor of a contact network. The paper is empirically focused on Portuguese sales subsidiaries of Finnish multinational corporations, which are managed by either a parent country national (Finnish), a host country national (Portuguese) or a third country national. The paper suggests eight scenarios of individual dependence and uncertainty, which are determined by individual, organizational, and/or market factors. Such scenarios are, in turn, thought to require personal contacts with specific functions. The paper suggests eight interpersonal roles of foreign subsidiary managers, by which the functions of their personal contacts enable inter-firm coordination in industrial markets. In addition, the paper suggests eight propositions on how the functions of their personal contacts enable centralization, formalization, socialization and horizontal communication in multinational corporations.

Cartoons have these last years represented an excellent way to lead debates on various socio-political and economic issues affecting Nigeria and to engage and enlighten Nigerian audiences. Almost all Nigerian newspapers and magazines have found them instrumental in their criticism of political malpractices and socio-cultural maladies plaguing the country. In line with this, many social forces (particularly NGOs) have embraced cartooning as a strong tool for environmental activism. Such social entities have in various platforms, deployed cartoons as a fruitful sensitization machinery to mobilize various segments of the Nigerian populace in favor of environmental protection. These sensitization efforts have most often entailed the construction/composition of emotionally and ideologically loaded cartoons that reflect many local myths and which are founded on local idiosyncrasies and worldviews. Understanding some Nigerian environmental cartoons has thus often been a complex task which in many instances, necessitates not only a full grasp of the principles of visual rhetoric but equally sufficient knowledge of some local myths and socio-cultural realities. In view of this fact, it may be interesting to apply semiotics in the reading of environmental cartoons. This chapter addresses this issue. It is divided into three main parts. The first part explores the state of environmental protection in Nigeria. The second part examines cartoons as a tool for social and political activism. The third part provides theoretical illuminations on the use of semiotics in the interpretation of cartoons and the last part provides a semiotic analysis of selected environmental cartoons.

In order to be able to advance scientific knowledge, researchers should consciously explore and critically evaluate alternative explanations of the phenomena under investigation. We feel that research in the area of entry-mode choice has neglected these recommendations where it concerns the impact of cultural distance (CD) on entry-mode choice. In this article, we argue that sample idiosyncrasies, coupled with an almost blind confidence in one specific measurement of CD, have led researchers in this field to systematically overestimate the role of CD in entry-mode decisions. We argue that specific home and/or host-country characteristics are equally plausible explanatory factors for entry-mode decisions as CD and plead for a more sophisticated treatment of culture in the entry-mode choice literature.

This paper develops an integrative framework explaining multinational firms’ managerial staffing decisions in initial foreign-entry situations from resource-based theory, agency theory, and transaction-costs theory, and it offers a set of theoretically grounded, testable propositions concerning these staffing decisions. In particular, we maintain that managerial staffing decisions are influenced by: (1) the value that managerial expatriates and local hires could potentially add to the firm; and (2) the relative contractual risks associated with the use of managerial expatriates and local managers.

This paper indicates that the use of managerial expatriates can improve contractual efficiencies in at least four ways. First, the use of expatriates helps align the economic incentives between the headquarters and the foreign subsidiaries. Second, the headquarters knows better the characteristics of expatriates relative to local hires. The use of expatriates reduces the uncertainty of the headquarters in recruiting managers and mitigates the incomplete contracting problem. Third, expatriates are better equipped with firm-specific capabilities than local hires, reducing contractual (small-numbers) problems. Fourth, expatriates have committed greater sunk cost investments in the multinational firm than local hires. These investments support their cooperative relationships with the firm and mitigate potential bargaining problems in employment contracting. However, although managerial expatriates can potentially improve contractual efficiency and may relieve a firm’s concern over its limited control on managers, expatriates may not have adequate abilities in managing local idiosyncrasy.