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Over the last decade, scholars extensively discuss talent management phenomenon in various country contexts paying much attention to different exogenous and endogenous factors influencing talent management systems and practices and their relationships with other organizational processes. In this chapter we particularly talk about the peculiarities of talent management in Brazil and Russia and explore the potential impact key management practices aimed at attracting, developing and retaining high potentials and high performers have on the development of firms’ absorptive capacity. We argue that for Brazilian and Russian firms “crossverging” context-specific talent management practices play a key role in the acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation of external and internal valuable knowledge, thus becoming one of the main drivers of organizational performance and competitive advantage.

This paper investigates the influence of modernisation on the moral judgements of 211 managers residing in the People’s Republic of China, based on their responses to a series of vignettes depicting potentially unethical behaviour in organisations. Results suggest that there is a significant association between moral judgement and modernisation. Managers from the more industrialised and economically advanced provinces in China gave harsher moral judgements, that is, higher ratings of unethicality, in five out of six vignettes. The study reported in this paper offers valueable insights into the nature of value and attitude change, or “convergence”, as China adopts elements of a more modernised market style economy.

Examines the interaction between Western leader ship and authority practices and those of a non Western culture (Nigeria) in their managerial and or ganisational context. Data concerning the experience of an organisational change in a non‐Western cultural context fail to confirm some of the ideas advanced in the convergence and divergence theses. An alternative framework for conceptualising the process of interaction and outcome of organisational development in situations of cross‐cultural transfer and application of management practices is proposed.

This article examines the interaction between Western leadership and authority practices and those of a non‐Western culture in their managerial and organizational contexts. Specifically, it examines the mechanism for organizational commitment through the use of a non‐Western authority relationship in a Western organization situated in a non‐Western culture. Data concerning the experience of an organizational change in a non‐Western cultural context fail to confirm some of the ideas advanced in the divergence and convergence thesis. An alternative framework for conceptualizing the process of interaction and outcome of organizational development in situations of cross‐cultural transfer and application of management practices is proposed.

Based on a review of over 450 articles on multinational enterprises published in leading management journals from 1990‐2000, we identified eighteen issues that had engaged the attention of academic scholarship and evaluated their topical relevance. Ironically, very few of them addressed two of the most pressing issues facing business and society at the turn of the last millennium: terrorism and socio‐economic inequality. These glaring omissions suggest a gap between academic scholarship that focuses on “what is,” and research that speculates as to “what could be.” Suggestions are offered on how to close this important gap in the fi eld of international business.

There is an ongoing debate over the transference of managerial and organizational skills, techniques, values and culture from developed countries to developing countries. We argue there is a false underlying assumption among academics in developed countries that the theoretical template of managerial and organizational attributes in developing countries is similar to what one finds in developed countries. Two key analytical insights are offered. First, we explicitly differentiate organizational, environmental and cultural characteristics of developed and developing countries. Second, we apply Scott’s (1992) natural/ecological level of analysis to create a framework to better carry out organizational analysis in developing countries.

Hugh Africa, Council on Higher Education (South Africa)