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Although there is substantial and accumulating evidence on the link between market entry modes and performance, evidence regarding their impact on employee’s perceptions and thereby their commitment is scarce. This is more so in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) where employee’s commitment has a significant impact on post-entry performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between perceptions of justice and organisational commitment in cross-border M&As.

The authors draw on market entry and M&As’ literature and studies on the link between perception of justice and commitment to develop the hypotheses. The authors test the hypotheses with survey data from a merger of two culturally different partners – British and Japanese. A total of 128 responses were received, out of a sample of 151 non-managerial employees within the firm.

The results show a strong association between employees’ perceptions of justice during the merger and commitment to the new organisation. Surprisingly, the results do not support the widely reported interaction effects between different organisational justices and employees’ commitment.

Obtaining data from a single M&A is a potential limitation of this study.

The study underscores the importance of post-market entry. The results suggest that particular attention needs to be paid to the way employees of the acquired firm are treated during their interactions with their counterparts.

The link between market entry and performance is well documented. However, little progress has been made in understanding the antecedents/factors that influence commitment in foreign market entry and in particular cross-border M&As. This study helps close this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the theories used to study the international equity-based entry mode strategies of emerging market multinationals (EMMs) and the contribution of these studies to extant literature.

The authors conducted a systematic review of the literature. A total of 73 articles were identified from key management, international business and international marketing journals published between 2000 and June 2015. Articles were analysed according to the theory(ies) used, thematic area, methodology, home/host countries studied and findings.

Despite the great interest around the topic of how the antecedents and outcomes of EMMs’ international entry mode strategies may challenge and amend existing theories, the findings that come out of this research mirror patterns observed in the entry mode literature in general. Whilst traditional perspectives such as internalisation theory and the OLI paradigm remain prevalent, a growing number of studies draw on institutional theory and combine multiple theoretical perspectives. Newer theories developed specifically to study EMMs (e.g., the springboard perspective) are used in only five studies and challenged to differentiate their theoretical underpinnings from extant literature. Overall, the theoretical contribution of EMM studies is simply a change in emphasis from the role of firm-specific factors towards the influence of home country institutions on entry mode strategies. The authors conclude that the literature has only made tweaks at the edge of theories with no significant changes to extant theorisations.

This is the first systematic review of the literature focusing specifically on the international equity-based entry mode strategies of EMMs.

This paper aims to analyse the impact of dynamic capability (DC) of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) on their firm technological performance by teasing out the concepts of agility and knowledge management (KM) through DC.

Evidence from this study is contextualised on EMNEs that operate in the UK, Germany and France. This study examines the investment in intangible assets which EMNEs use to develop their DC over the period 2005-2016 and how this leads to increased firm technological performance.

Results show that higher investments in DC allow EMNEs to be more agile and gain competencies through KM and thereby sustain competitiveness in the three leading European countries. This research also identifies which EMNE groupings show greater technological performance and how such EMNE groupings are able to translate dynamic capabilities into greater technological performance compared to others over time. In summary, the role of DC during of the global financial crisis was also examined, where they are required to be more agile.

This paper sheds light on a novel way and motivation of successful EMNEs in using developed host countries as a location for generating DC through agility and KM.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between positive perceptions of politics (i.e. positive politics) and decision creativity and propitiousness (i.e. reaching unforeseen advantages while limiting unexpected problems). In addition, drawing from threat-rigidity effect theory the authors argue that such relationships will be resilient to external environmental threats and specifically macro-economic uncertainty.

The database for the analyses consisted of 200 strategic decisions gathered from firms located in Dubai.

Positive politics significantly influence decision creativity and propitiousness. Also, macro-economic uncertainty moderates this relationship.

Although this research has tried to adopt a more neutral perspective on political behavior, much more work is required to better understand the role and implications of neutral politics in decision-making.

If decision makers ensure that the concern for the organization’s welfare remains a priority over the self-serving motives of the actors, then politics can enhance decision success.

This paper challenges the long held conventional wisdom that politics in organizations are an important underlying cause of unethical practices, poor decisions and organizational ineffectiveness.

The findings serve to further the understanding of complexities involved in the relationships between political behavior and its consequences.

Whilst substantial evidence from low-corruption, developed market environments supports the view that more productive firms are more likely to export, there has been little research into analysing the link between productivity and exports in high corruption, developing market environments. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to test the premise of self-selection theory whether the association between productivity and export is maintained in high-corruption environments, and second to identify other variables explaining export activity in high-corruption contexts, including cluster networks and firms’ competences.

The authors draw on the World Bank Enterprise survey to undertake a cross-section analysis including 1,233 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) located in nine African countries. The advantage of this database is that it contains information about the level of perceived corruption at firm level. Logistic regressions are performed for the full sample and for subsamples of firms in high- and low-corruption environments.

The findings demonstrate that the self-selection theory only applies to low-corruption environments, whereas in high-corruption environments, alternative factors such as cluster networks and outward-looking competences (OLC) exert a stronger influence on the exporting activity of African SMEs.

This research contributes to the theory as it provides evidence that contradicts the validity of self-selection theory in high-corruption environments. The findings would benefit from further longitudinal investigation.

African SMEs need to consider cluster networks and OLC as important strategic factors that might enhance their international competitiveness.

The criticism of the self-selection theory is distinctive in the literature and has important implications for future research. The authors show that the contextualisation of existing theories matters and this opens a research avenue for further more sensitive contextualisation of existing theories in developing economies.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue on Islam and human resource management (HRM).

The paper introduces the papers in this special issue, which further current understanding of the association between Islam and HRM, and HRM practices in Islamic countries. The papers debate whether it makes sense to talk about an Islamic HRM, and try to identify the key features of an Islamic HRM model that is substantially distinctive from existing normative models of HRM.

The papers examine the impact of Islamic values on HRM practices and organisational outcomes, but more research is needed to gain a deeper understanding of the role Islam plays at the work place, and specifically how Islamic ideals, culture, values and norms are used in practice and implications thereof on workplace environment and overall organisational performance.

The paper introduces the concept of Islam and human resource management.

Highlights the opinion that the importance of national culture in cross‐cultural management is diminishing, suggesting that the world is moving towards a single, global management culture that is basically Western and, more specifically, American. Attempts to test this hypothesis by examining values held by future managers from five different cultures. Uses the Kruskal‐Wallis One Way ANOVA and the Mann‐Whitney tests to show that future managers from different cultural backgrounds will neigher adopt a mirror image of current management style in their cultures nor a global unified management style regardless of local culture.

This paper explores the issue of transferring western human resource management (HRM) practices to Algeria. Drawing on a case study of a large industrial company, the research identifies the motives for the transfer and examines the selection and implementation process of western HRM practices in Algeria. Evidence generated from the case study reveals that while management justifications for the transfer of western HRM practices capture the economic and technical rationale for western HRM practices, they fail to identify local conditions under which these HRM practices might be transferred. The applicability of western HRM is hindered by the unplanned and haphazard importation of western HRM practices.