Search results

Multinational corporations (MNCs) at their foreign subsidiaries hire local employees, whose cultural values may differ from the organisations' home cultures. Such value differences may pose managerial difficulties, making it critical to observe whether working at MNCs changes local employees' cultural values, reducing these differences. This study investigates how and to what extent local employees from a collectivistic culture acculturate their ethics-related values when working at MNCs' foreign subsidiaries. The authors examine (1) whether local employees change their values to become closer to the MNCs' home cultures, and if so, (2) whether the cultural distance between the MNCs' home and host national cultures affect the degree of such adaptation.

Survey data were collected through stratified random sampling from Thai employees of a Japanese-owned MNC (n = 196), a UK-owned MNC (n = 143) and a Thai-owned organisation (n = 137), all operating in Thailand. Hypotheses were developed using Berry's bidimensional acculturation model and were tested using OLS and logistic regression analyses.

The study's findings indicate that MNCs' local employees from collectivistic cultures adopt Berry's integration acculturation strategy and acculturate their ethics-related values – collectivism, ethical relativism, collective responsibility preference and executive pay differentiation tolerance – towards the values prevalent in MNCs' home cultures. Overall, acculturation is greater when cultural distance is greater. New insights are presented in relation to collective responsibility preference and pay differentiation tolerance.

Findings add to current knowledge on acculturation in management by (1) providing new insights into value acculturation (2) utilising Berry's acculturation model to analyse employees' acculturation within an organisation in the context of an emerging economy, outside the more frequently studied topic of mergers and acquisitions, and (3) investigating the impact of cultural distance on the degree of employee acculturation outside the field of expatriate adjustment.

The remarkable achievements being promoted through inclusive education practices make the deficiencies associated with educational exclusion all the more noticeable. Despite many schools adopting the philosophy of inclusion, avoidable educational exclusion of students with special needs still persists in educational systems worldwide. This is because the preparation of competent teachers to respond to variations in student populations in schools is very difficult to achieve. A major reason for this difficulty is that most student education programs fail to nurture collaborative instructional practice culture in student teachers, which can enable them to work well with others to teach all students. Utilizing the status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (SCARF) model developed by David Rock, this chapter contributes to existing knowledge on student teacher development by theorizing and offering practical ways to enact collaborative instructional practices in inclusive education. The chapter addresses this issue by reporting student teachers' experiences in a course unit on inclusive education in one Australian university that adopted a collaborative instructional practice, deepening their understanding and practice of inclusion.

WHEN John I. Snyder Jr. flew over from the United States he probably did not relish the Cassandra rôle into which circumstances had forced him. As president of U.S. Industries he gave one of the most depressing addresses of modern times. Since his firm is a large manufacturer of automation machines it was probably natural that he should say: ‘Automation is inevitable. Its use is rapidly increasing. Positive action by the makers of automation machines must be taken now to preserve the human values which could otherwise become cannon fodder of the automation barrage.’

Designing and developing safe systems has been a persistent challenge in health care, and in surgical settings in particular. In efforts to promote safety, safety culture, i.e., shared values regarding safety management, is considered a key driver of high-quality, safe healthcare delivery. However, changing organizational culture so that it emphasizes and promotes safety is often an elusive goal. The Safe Surgery Checklist is an innovative tool for improving safety culture and surgical care safety, but evidence about Safe Surgery Checklist effectiveness is mixed. We examined the relationship between changes in management practices and changes in perceived safety culture during implementation of safe surgery checklists. Using a pre-posttest design and survey methods, we evaluated Safe Surgery Checklist implementation in a national sample of 42 general acute care hospitals in a leading hospital network. We measured perceived management practices among managers (n = 99) using the World Management Survey. We measured perceived preoperative safety and safety culture among clinical operating room personnel (N = 2,380 (2016); N = 1,433 (2017)) using the Safe Surgical Practice Survey. We collected data in two consecutive years. Multivariable linear regression analysis demonstrated a significant relationship between changes in management practices and overall safety culture and perceived teamwork following Safe Surgery Checklist implementation.

Historical studies of the expert management of childhood in Australia often make passing reference to the establishment of child guidance clinics. Yet beyond acknowledgement of their founding during the interwar years, there has been little explication of the dynamics of their institutional development. The purpose of this article is to examine the introduction of child guidance in Australia against the backdrop of the international influences that shaped local developments.

The article investigates the establishment of child guidance clinics in Melbourne and Sydney in the 1930s. In doing so, it explores the influence of American philanthropy, the promise of prevention that inspired the mental hygiene movement, and some of the difficulties faced in putting its child guidance ideals into practice in Australia.

American philanthropy played an important role in the transnational carriage of ideas about mental hygiene and child guidance into Australia. However, it was state support of child guidance activities that proved critical to its establishment. In addition to institutional developments, what also emerges as important in the 1930s is the traction gained in the broader realm of ideas about “adjustment” and mental health, particularly in relation to the efficacy of early intervention and multidisciplinary approaches to treating problems of childhood.

In tracing its early development, the article argues for the importance of understanding child guidance not only in terms of its administrative successes and failures, but also more broadly in terms of how early intervention as an influential mode of thought and practice took root internationally.