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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the management development (MD) programme in the Ghanaian mining industry. A legal requirement aimed at equipping national managers for eventual takeover of the management of industry from expatriates, the programme is analysed to ascertain the willingness to implement and the state of implementation by multinational companies operation in the industry.

The study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA), a problem-identification and problem-solving analytical tool to identify any obstacles suppressing the implementation and possible ways past the obstacles. Data for analysis were collected from 26 national managers from industry who were interviewed to gather views and expectations on their development.

Key findings include domination and hegemonic dynamics of expatriates through sustained power over the control of the MD process, CDA’s emancipatory power succeeds in identifying unrealised possibilities for tackling the MD problem for a social change (development of national managers) in industry, and non-implementation of the MD programme contributed by expatriates, the government of Ghana, and senior national managers.

The programme has the potential of developing national managers for eventual takeover from expatriates, but requires implementing the law to the latter, including denying foreign subsidiaries mining lease if they fail to provide the adhere to localisation plans.

The paper extends literature on management of Western multinational subsidiaries in developing countries, revealing power and control over human resource practices, and MD in their foreign subsidiaries. It also contributes to literature on suppression of indigenous employees by other indigenous employees (the “colonised elites”), contrary to what is expected from indigenous people towards the development of their colleagues.

This paper aims to examine resource allocation behaviors of US and Taiwanese managers to help multinational firms understand the potential for divergence in resource allocations under different contextual conditions by managers from different national cultures.

The experimental design was developed as a 2 (national culture) × 2 (degree of project completion) × 2 (nature of market information) factorial design. The first two were between-subject factors. Because we would investigate subjects’ responses to both favorable and unfavorable conditions, the nature of market information was designed as a within-subject factor. Also, to avoid an order effect, half of the subjects first received favorable information and then unfavorable information, and the other half received the market information in the opposite order. Questionnaires were distributed randomly to subjects.

The results show that Taiwanese managers are less willing than US managers to continue a project in the presence of favorable information, but that both groups are equally willing to continue the project when receiving unfavorable information. Furthermore, Taiwanese managers allocate more funds than US managers do when the project is near completion. The authors use uncertainty avoidance and individualism to explain the different judgment and decision behaviors of these two cultural groups.

In this study, the authors examine only two contextual factors in resource allocation contexts. There are other important contextual factors associated with national culture that should be scrutinized, such as risks involved in each project, incentive plans related to performance evaluation and information asymmetry between central managers and division managers. It would be interesting for future studies to examine these factors in conjunction with different dimensions of national culture.

This study provides empirical evidence of the impact of different aspects of national culture (i.e. uncertainty avoidance and collectivism/individualism) on managerial resource allocation in light of different degrees of project completion and different types of market information. The results of our experiment add to both practice and theory of management. The findings of this study help top-level managers better understand the effects of national culture on division managers’ resource allocations. Hence, it may be possible to design incentive schemes and decision aids to mitigate the divergence in judgments and decision-making that can be attributed to cultural differences. This study also contributes to the management literature by extending our knowledge of complex managerial resource allocation decisions by incorporating the role of national culture with contextual factors.

This paper investigates the impacts of globalization processes on the Swiss business elite community during the 1980–2010 period. Switzerland has been characterized in the 20th century by its extraordinary stability and by the strong cohesion of its elite community. To study recent changes, we focus on Switzerland’s 110 largest firms’ by adopting a diachronic perspective based on three elite cohorts (1980, 2000, and 2010). An analysis of interlocking directorates allows us to describe the decline of the Swiss corporate network. The second analysis focuses on top managers’ profiles in terms of education, nationality as well as participation in national community networks that used to reinforce the cultural cohesion of the Swiss elite community, especially the militia army. Our results highlight a slow but profound transformation of top management profiles, characterized by a decline of traditional national elements of legitimacy and the emergence of new “global” elements. The diachronic and combined analysis brings into light the strong cultural changes experienced by the national business elite community.

During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, debate about the governance and management of national cultural institutions has largely focused on the problematic relationship between art and the economy. However, several more recent changes have made this discussion outdated. These include loss of autonomy in the art world, transformation of cultural production and distribution and instrumentalisation of cultural policies to generate a new context leading to the emergence of art managers.

In terms of cultural policy, the interplay between the governance and management of national cultural institutions is currently problematic, with the work of art managers now replacing the previous “art versus economy” binomial. Here, we demonstrate the growing centrality of the governance paradigm and generation of public value in the local context, by qualitatively examining the discourses of politicians and national cultural institution managers in Barcelona.

We concluded that a new interface between policymakers and managers has appeared in twenty-first century cultural institutions, and that this has replaced the previous antagonism between artistic directors and managers. Finally, although there is a consensus that the objective of national cultural institutions should be to enhance public value, we also identified the presence of a symbolic battle over how this public value is defined and who should evaluate it.

This paper reveals the centrality of this new debate: policymakers and managers have developed discourses and strategies so that their vision of public value now predominates. In turn, this debate has become the new “battlefield” of cultural policy and reflects a rebalancing between the artistic and political spheres.

This monograph is devoted to the countries of Eastern Europe, which are experiencing the dramatic changes following on from the fundamental developments of the last few years. These countries, Albania, Bulgaria, Czecho‐slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the USSR and Yugoslavia, are likely to become members of a greater Europe in the future. Their economic and educational systems are examined and the structures of their management training systems are described.

Understanding how managers in position of leadership experience culture is essential to avoid instability and poor performance in international strategic alliances. This study tests the proposition that national culture, top management team culture, and manager's personality influence leadership and shapes intercultural fit through the predominant management style in US‐Mexican strategic alliances.

Strategic leadership and personality theories constitute the framework for this study. Managers from the US‐Mexican strategic alliances which partners hold an equity position were surveyed and provided data to test the hypotheses.

Findings show that American and Mexican managers construct their own social reality with rules and norms bounded primarily by the existing organizational culture in the alliance. Both managers' management styles are similar and converge into a participative “consultative” style emerging as a “third culture” characterized by task innovation and emotional concern as American managers' input and task support and social relationships as Mexican managers' contribution. This study suggests that if adequately balanced, individualism‐collectivism is a source of intercultural fit while building shared leadership.

Managers of international alliances may reconfigure individual and cultural orientations and styles of alliance partners in the design of management teams to build high levels of social effectiveness. The innovator style of American managers supports the dynamics of change for the alliance to advance while the adaptor style of Mexican managers builds stability, order, and maintains group cohesion and cooperation.

Intercultural fit in international strategic alliances is achieved through designing organizational cultures that incorporate partners' cognitive diversity into the relationship.

This paper is based on the research of middle managers in three countries (The Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK) in public and private sector organisations. The findings indicate that increasing pressures on managers to perform within a surge of management initiatives and policy moves to make organisations more profitable (in the private sector) and more “efficient” and accountable (in the public sector) invariably lead to contradictions in their performance and perceived roles. In the context of the oxymoron that “they are to do more with less”, this will lead to increased stresses and strains on those performing this pivotal operational role. Terminologically, middle managers are becoming increasingly “depowered”.

The increasing internationalisation of business and transition to a global economy are discussed, with special detail on the views of UK and Scandinavian managers as revealed by a “Management for the Future” project carried out at Ashridge Management College. Cultural factors, including national differences in management style, and readiness to learn foreign languages, can be modified by management development processes. For the international manager of the future, however, attitudes and values may also need to develop a greater openness.

Identifies some managerially relevant factors that influence the size of the price premium that consumers will pay for national brands over store brands in grocery products. We define price premium as the maximum price consumers will pay for a national brand over a store brand, expressed as the proportionate price differential between a national brand and a store brand. Overall, perceived quality differential accounts for about 12 percent of the variation in price premiums across consumers and product categories and is the most important variable influencing price premiums.

Examines to what extent Swedish executives are familiar with the work values of their own host country national subordinates in Singapore. Investigates the work values of host country national middle managers who were employed in Swedish subsidiaries in Singapore as well as their Swedish bosses’ perceptions of those values. The results showed a considerable lack of insight on the part of the expatriate managers. Discusses implications for international business and future research.