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The purpose of this research is to understand how brand-building is used to lend credibility to investor information and to differentiate countries competing for foreign investment. Brand signals, such as slogans and logos, are frequently used by governments and their investment promotion agencies to enhance the presentation of information to potential investors interested in acquiring or establishing a business within their country. Yet, little is known about how governments use brand building to foster professionalism and convey their expertise in international expansion assistance and differentiate themselves from one another in an investment promotion context.

This research content analyzes the slogans and logos found in 55 months of print advertising and on the websites of 181 countries engaged in investment-seeking activities.

The research finds that slogans and logos are frequently used across both samples, but slogan use is greater in print advertising than on the Web, which is likely because of the greater effort required to develop an advertising campaign than to maintain a website. Regardless of medium, logo use is greater than slogan use. In the sample, slogans tended to be generic or undifferentiated and do not appear to facilitate brand credibility. However, logos were better designed than slogans and incorporated more territorial and cultural symbols and elements of expertise.

This study provides for a deeper understanding of investment promotion, especially, as it relates to brand building both on the Web and in print advertising. It also extends the author’s understanding of brand building within a specialized area of business-to-business organizational buying. From a managerial perspective, the research highlights the need for differentiated slogans and for logos using territorial and cultural symbols to better assist governments with appearing more professional, conveying expertise and differentiating their country from potential rivals.

The purpose of this paper is to draw upon the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm in order to assess the “who, when, where, and how” questions about use of resources in shaping market positioning by global and local firms in a transitional economy (TE).

The paper utilizes a longitudinal case‐study approach to present and discuss resource asymmetry between global and local advertising agencies operating in Hungary.

RBV proves to be valuable theory, revealing an interesting and unexpected range of sources and types of resources that are being used to advantage by local and global agencies competing in Hungary. Earlier historical asymmetries in resource endowments contributed to a notable division between global and local agencies according to market sector. Specific resources, such as reputation, access to global resources, and use of Western‐style business practices, proved beneficial to global firms after Hungarian market liberalization in 1989, while interpersonal relationships have emerged as a valuable resource, regardless of context.

Use of a convenience cross‐sectional sampling method may contribute to some halo effects and personal bias. Additionally, results may be limited in their applicability only to the advertising industry and to Hungary as a specific TE. Future research should validate these findings in other industries and other TEs.

Findings from this study offer marketing managers operating in TEs fresh insights into how asymmetries in resource endowments at various points in an infant industry's life cycle act to influence choice of market positioning strategies and subsequent success of firms competing in the industry.

This paper provides rich detail of the advertising industry in Hungary, suggesting directions for study of advertising industries in other TEs, not only in Eastern Europe. Results from this study increase confidence in the generalizability of RBV theory by demonstrating its usefulness and flexibility when applied to an unusual context in terms of time and space.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the validity of different operationalizations of cultural and institutional distance.

First, a review of the theoretical background for Hofstede's, Schwartz's, Trompenaars's, and Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness' (GLOBE) cultural frameworks is provided, as well as the institutional environment. Then, the validity of each framework is assessed by evaluating how well each framework groups countries into appropriate clusters, and finally comparisons between the different frameworks are drawn.

It was found that the cultural distance (CD) constructs based on Hofstede and Trompenaars have strong convergent validity. CD constructs based on Schwartz and GLOBE are found to have the weakest validity. The institutional distance (ID) constructs are conceptualized to be broader than the traditional CD constructs. However, high correlations indicate a strong overlap between ID and CD. Additionally, the ID constructs are highly correlated with factors related to economic development, potentially limiting their usefulness.

Both researchers and practitioners can choose from a variety of CD/ID frameworks to fill their needs; however, variance in the performance between frameworks may lead to faulty conclusions. In response to this need to accurately capture cross‐cultural differences, the validity of nine different operationalizations of CD/ID have been examined. Contrary to popular belief, the traditional CD construct based on Hofstede is shown to compare favorably with other frameworks and calls for the abandonment of this index may be premature.

Philosophers and political theorists have long warned of the “perils of dogmatism” for public discourse and identified intellectual humility as a necessary corrective. Sufficient intellectual humility encompasses at least four elements: openness to error, recognition of bias, recognition of intellectual parity in interlocutors, and avoidance of recourse to authority. Religions seem to present obstacles on all four fronts, particularly when actors embody more conservative renderings of a given religion’s repertoire. As such, a case involving different groups of religious exclusivists engaging one another on topics that directly interact their deepest faith commitments and political visions presents a useful test case for our theories of intellectual humility. This chapter considers conservative protestants engaging in public discourse with Muslims about whether or not Muslim and Christian understandings of “loving God” and “loving neighbor” have sufficient overlap to support political cooperation. The results of the dialogue effort were a mixture of controversy and cooperation. For evangelicals, the engagement produced sharp conflict and yet helped to shift the community’s plausibility structures, opening further the possibility of fruitful public discourse and strategic action in cooperation with Muslims. The analysis suggests a conceptualization of practical intellectual humility that emphasizes recognition of the other.

The library automation marketplace is characterized by five significant realities. The first is the changing status of vendors in the marketplace. The development of capabilities and the support of installed systems compete for the same corporate resources, resulting in an evolution in the leadership position of vendors. Second, the market is polarized, containing experienced institutions that are replacing systems and institutions that are entering the market for the first time. Communication within the marketplace is intense, which can contribute to the success of a project; the peer network also can increase the chances of replicating older, proven technologies while making it more difficult for new vendors to enter the marketplace. The institutions that comprise the marketplace are extremely slow to develop their plans and commit their resources. The library automation marketplace is also very small and relatively poor. Library automation vendors must recognize and contend with these realities.

Since the early 1980s, western governments are assumed to have been either moving toward post-bureaucratic models or transforming into so-called neo-Weberian bureaucracies. As different public-sector (reform) models imply different ideal typical personality traits for civil servants, the purpose of this paper is to ask the question to what extent personality requirements that governments demand from their employees have evolved over time in line with these models.

The authors analyzed the use of big-five traits in a sample of 21,003 job advertisements for local government jobs published between 1980 and 2017, applying tools for computer-assisted text analysis.

Using multilevel regression analyses, the authors conclude that, over time, there is a significant increase in the use of personality descriptors related to all big-five factors.

The authors postulate that governments nowadays are actively looking for the “renaissance bureaucrat” in line with the neo-Weberian bureaucracy paradigm. The authors end with a discussion of both positive and negative consequences of this development.

First, the authors explicitly link personality, public administration, and public management using the Abridged Big-Five-Dimensional Circumflex model of personality. Second, by linking observed trends in civil servant personality requirements to larger theories of public-sector reform models, the authors narrow the gap between public administration theories and practice. Third, the software tools that the authors use to digitalize and analyze a large number of documents (the job ads) are new to the discipline of public administration. The research can therefore serve as a guideline for scholars who want to use software tools to study large amounts of unstructured, qualitative data.

The extra-low minimum wage for US restaurant workers has remained unchanged for over 30 years. Periodic campaigns have brought this wage, and its connection to the perpetuation of inequality and exploitative work, to public attention, but these campaigns have met resistance from both employers and restaurant workers. This article draws on a workplace ethnography in a restaurant front-of-house, and in-depth interviews with tipped food service workers, to examine the tipped labour process and begin to answer a central question: why would any workers oppose a wage increase? It argues that the constituting of tips as a formal wage created for workers a two-employer problem, wherein customers assume the role of secondary, unregulated, employers in the workplace. Ultimately, the tipped wage poses a longer-term strategic obstacle for workers in their position relative to management and ability to organize to shape the terms and conditions of their work.