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The purpose of this paper is to test whether Top Management Team (TMT) international experience is positively associated to international information acquisition from managerial international contacts and whether international information partially mediates the positive relationship between TMT international experience and international strategic decision rationality.

Data were collected through a survey of small- and medium-sized of international Pakistani software firms.

This study reports that TMT international experience-international strategic decision rationality relationship to international information acquisition and that this information acquisition partially mediates the TMT international experience, i.e. international strategic decision rationality relationship.

When selecting the members of their TMT, international firms should pay careful attention to their international experience.

Previous research demonstrates that TMT international experience has a positive effect on international strategic decision rationality and that this effect is transferred to performance. This study shows that the positive effect of TMT international experience is derived from the personal international knowledge and the international information collected from managers’ international contacts. This ability to make rational international strategic decisions could have a positive effect on decision-making and firm performance.

The purpose of this study is to test a model for cross-border technological acquisitions (CBTAs) focusing on the level of ownership acquired in the target firm and the acquiring firm's post-acquisition innovation performance (PAIP), with the degree of integration as a mediator, based on the dynamic capability perspective of the resource-based view. This study further concludes the role of the country-of-origin effect (COE) (when emerging economies' acquiring firms purchase technological resources from developed economies' target firms) on the success of the acquiring firms in CBTAs.

Data on CBTAs initiated by 542 acquiring firms was quantified from four high technology industries from 1995 to 2015 for the empirical investigation of the research hypotheses. Hierarchical fixed year effect negative binomial regression technique was used to analyze the proposed model for the success of CBTAs.

The analysis of the CBTAs confirmed that acquiring firms who opt for a higher level of acquired ownership strategy increase the degree of integration of the target firm's technological resource stock. The level of acquired ownership improves the PAIP of the acquiring firms; however, the degree of integration positively accelerates the relationship between the acquired ownership and the PAIP. Considering the COE, acquiring firms that initiated CBTAs from emerging economies to purchase technological resources from developed economies' targets have firm-specific technological capability holes to execute the integration, which negatively impacts the emerging economies acquiring firm's PAIP.

This study contributes to the CBTAs literature by exploring the enabling role of the degree of integration between the level of acquired ownership and the PAIP of the acquiring firms. Further, this study put forward empirics on the COE of the acquiring firms for their integrative capability to integrate the target firm's resource stock and subsequent innovation performance.

This study aims to examine how international small and medium-sized enterprises (ISMEs) improve adaptive marketing capabilities (AMCs) through exploration, exploitation and ambidexterity (EEA) and thereby increase exporting performance. In addition, the present study attempts to examine conditions under which EEA can more effectively improve AMCs.

The theoretical model was tested by using survey data collected from 119 ISMEs based in the U.S. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was deployed to analyze the data.

The results show that exploration increases ISMEs’ performance through improving AMCs while ambidexterity reduces ISMEs’ performance through weakening AMCs. However, the negative influence of ambidexterity on AMCs attenuates in a dissimilar host country where ISMEs can conveniently learn new information. Finally, when ISMEs pursue exploitation in an either similar or dissimilar host country, their AMCs do not improve.

We provide empirical evidence of SMEs increasing AMCs and firm performance via EEA within the context of exporting. However, we did not collect objective financial performance of ISMEs.

Our findings provide guidance for ISMEs’ marketing managers to build AMCs by learning something new. Moreover, the findings help ISMEs effectively identify and select the most appropriate international marketing strategy depending on the similarity between host and home countries.

Our findings contribute to the literature by explicating how ISMEs can heighten marketing capability to build competitive advantages in global markets through exploration. However, ISMEs should be cautious when pursuing ambidexterity, which may weaken AMCs and finally decrease firm performance. In addition, we identify external factors that influence effectiveness of EEA in building AMCs. By doing so, the findings help ISMEs understand how to increase AMCs so as to improve competencies in fast-changing global markets.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between a nursing group’s organizational socialization (OS) and the organizational learning (OL) subprocesses of information acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, information integration and organizational memory.

A cross-sectional study, with an anonymous self-report questionnaire, was conducted at two university hospitals in Japan. OL was measured using the scale for OL subprocesses, while OS was measured using the scale for learning about the external environment. The questionnaire was administered from August to October 2018. Among the 1,077 nurses recruited from 34 wards, data from 466 nurses from 24 wards were analyzed. To verify the influence of the group’s OS on each OL subprocess, two-level hierarchical linear modeling with fixed effects was performed. Individual nurses’ OS was analyzed using centering within clusters and the group’s OS was analyzed using each ward’s average OS score by performing grand mean centering.

Nursing groups’ OS was positively and significantly associated with information interpretation and information integration, but not with information acquisition, information distribution and organizational memory.

This study expands OS and OL research by focusing on the relationship between the degree of OS of an entire group and the OL subprocess. When the degree of homophily of value, rule, knowledge and behavior of the entire group increases, the information understanding and the formation of new explicit knowledge may also increase in the group.

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of social socialization tactics on the relationship between task‐ and organization‐related information (socialization content) and newcomers' affective commitment to their work organization.

A total of 280 new hires in a Greek service company participated in a survey. Moderated regression analyses were conducted to test research hypotheses.

The results supported the role of investiture‐divestiture tactics as a moderator in the relationship between newcomers' task‐related information acquisition and organizational affective commitment. In addition, serial‐disjunctive tactics were found to moderate the relationship between organization‐related information acquisition and newcomers' affective commitment. The study also demonstrated that both task‐related and organization‐related information acquisition are important to the development of newcomers' affective commitment at the early stages of the socialization process.

Owing to the cross‐sectional design of the research, causality cannot be drawn.

The knowledge of whether, and the extent to which, particular socialization tactics and content areas contribute to newcomers' adjustment would provide organizations a competitive advantage by incorporating them into their socialization programs.

Provision of feedback affirming newcomers' personal characteristics as well as assignment of established role models were found to provide the framework within which the acquisition of task and organization‐related information respectively are related to new hires' affective commitment towards their work organization.

This paper aims to provide a review of recent trends in the open access (OA) movement, as well as to discuss the significance of those trends for information access in developing countries.

An analysis of the recent literature was carried out, focusing on the benefits of a greater information access in developing countries. The paper also brings together the diverse experiences from the authors on OA publishing and archiving with institutions in a number of developing countries.

Knowledge workers in developing countries are now getting access to scholarly and scientific publications and electronic resources at a level that is unmatched historically. This is highly significant, if developing countries are to meet the millennium development goals. The OA movement and the growing number of Open Archive Initiative‐compliant institutional repositories promise to provide even greater access to resources and publications that were previously inaccessible. These low cost technology and interoperability standards are providing great opportunities for libraries and publishers in developing countries to disseminate local research and to bridge the south‐north knowledge gap.

This paper therefore provides recommendations for knowledge workers on how to actively participate in and contribute to the global knowledge commons. The results and recommendations contained in the paper should be of interest to authors, policy makers, funding agencies and information professionals in both developing and developed countries.

Examines the attendance objectives of Japanese visitors for both a domestic (Japanese) and offshore (US) trade show, and explores the relationship between a successful trade show visit and future attendance intentions. Results suggest that attendees maintain very similar goals for international show attendance regardless of the show’s geographical location, but conceptualize successful trade show participation differently. Also demonstrates that successfully achieving different types of attendee objectives significantly increases attendees’ interest levels in future attendance at each of the two shows examined. Success in seeing products and trends at the domestic show was found to affect future show interest significantly. Whereas at the offshore US show, successful supplier interaction only affects interest when combined with seeing products and trends and gathering buying process information. These findings have strong implications for researchers investigating the relatively under‐studied issues of international buyer behavior at trade shows and practitioners involved in the organization of and exhibition at international events.

In this paper, we suggest a contemporary view of learning during the process of organizational socialization. The relationship between learning and socialization is implicit in much of the existing socialization literature. In an attempt to make this research more explicit, we suggest a theoretical approach to the actual learning processes that underlie workers’ socialization experiences. In order to accomplish this, we review previous work on socialization, information seeking and feedback seeking during socialization, and learning. In doing so we describe the learning process that underlies socialization, highlighting the beginning of the process, the role of information during the process, and integrating three different types of learning (planned, deutero, and meta) into the process of organizational socialization. In addition, we also discuss the implications of these three types of learning during the process of socialization and directions in future research on the socialization process.

In the associated paper “Selecting overseas markets and entry modes: two decision processes or one?”, it was proposed that market selection and market entry mode selection be looked upon as two aspects of one decision process. Examines a wide spectrum of factor categories to be included in the proposed MEMS model and argues that an inclusive spectrum of analysis would make it a universally applicable model, capable of accommodating all business contexts and most relevant business practices.

This paper aims to assess the use of electronic journal resource at the University of Dar es Salaam. The study involved the postgraduate students in the School of Education at the University of Dar es Salaam.

A combination of questionnaires for postgraduate students and interview for the reference librarians was used, whereby 100 postgraduate students and six reference librarians were involved in the study. SPSS and content analysis were used to analyse the data.

Major findings of the study reveal that majority of the students reported using electronic journal resources for various purposes including working on the assignments, research proposal writing, literature review, research report writing, current awareness, leisure and for extra exploration of ongoing scientific debates through peer-reviewed papers. The challenges encountered in the use of electronic journal resources include power outage, inadequate bandwidth, slow download speed, inability to access the resources from home, lack of training, lack of awareness, limited access to computers and difficulty in searching. Finally, the recommendations for improving the use of electronic journal resources are provided.

This is the first time an effort has been made to assess the use of electronic journal resources by postgraduate students in the School of Education at the University of Dar es Salaam. The study could be used to assess the postgraduate students’ need for electronic resources at the University of Dar es Salaam and other users in higher learning institutions.