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The aim of this study is to investigate factors - specifically stakeholder pressures - that may affect the likelihood that firms will respond to violent conflict. Survey and archival data on respondents from 471 multinational and local firms operating in 80 countries were used to explore these issues. Key findings include: (1) local stakeholder pressure is associated with the likelihood that firms will respond directly to violent conflict, collaborating with other organizations or working alone when doing so; and (2) international stakeholder pressure is associated with the likelihood that firms will respond indirectly to violent conflict, collaborating with other organizations or working alone.

Business organizations may expand internationally by replicating a part of their value chain, such as a sales and marketing format, in other countries. However, little is known regarding how such \"international replicators\" build a format for replication, or how they can adjust it in order to adapt to local environments and under the impact of new learning. To illuminate these issues, we draw on a longitudinal in-depth study of Swedish home furnishing giant IKEA, involving more than 70 interviews. We find that IKEA has developed organizational mechanisms that support an ongoing learning process aimed at frequent modification of the format for replication. Another finding is that IKEA treats replication as hierarchical: lower-level features (marketing efforts, pricing, etc.) are allowed to vary across IKEA stores in response to market-based learning, while higher-level features (fundamental values, vision, etc.) are replicated in a uniform manner across stores, and change only very slowly (if at all) in response to learning (\"flexible replication\"). We conclude by discussing the factors that influence the approach to replication adopted by an international replicator.

Studies of political dynamics between multinational enterprise (MNE) parents and subsidiaries during subsidiary role evolution have focused largely on control and resistance. This paper adopts a critical discursive approach to enable an exploration of subtle dynamics in the way that both headquarters and subsidiaries subjectively reconstruct their independent-interdependent relationships with each other during change. We draw from a real-time qualitative study of a revealing case of charter change in an important European subsidiary of an MNE attempting to build closer integration across European country operations. Our results illustrate the role of three discourses - selling, resistance and reconciliation - in the reconstruction of the subsidiary-parent relationship. From this analysis we develop a process framework that elucidates the important role of these three discourses in the reconstruction of subsidiary roles, showing how resistance is not simply subversive but an important part of integration. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the micro-level political dynamics in subsidiary role evolution, and of how voice is exercised in MNEs. This study also provides a rare example of discourse-based analysis in an MNE context, advancing our knowledge of how discursive methods can help to advance international business research more generally.

The objective of this study is to advance a theoretical framework pertaining to how interpartner learning in international joint ventures (IJV) may affect IJV instability in emerging economies. The proposed framework expands the interpartner learning theory of IJV instability in the current literature, which is focused on absorptive learning of IJV partners, by incorporating IJV partners' joint learning. Using longitudinal dyadic data from IJVs in China, we found that local and foreign IJV parties' absorptive learning capacity decreases one party's dependence on the other, while joint learning capacity in IJV increases both parties' dependence on each other. In addition, an IJV partner's absorptive learning capacity positively moderates the effect of joint learning capacity on its dependence on another partner. These findings lend support to the expanded interpartner learning perspective of IJV instability, and have important theoretical and managerial implications for IJVs in emerging economies. The results underscore the importance of the IJV actively developing organizational rules, procedures, and structures to create and embed new knowledge in order to maintain the stability of the IJV. Finally, we found that IJV partners' dependence asymmetry increases IJV instability, whereas their total dependence decreases IJV instability.

Vulnerability is salient among international managers, who tend to be wary when operating in transition economies like China. Systematic research is lacking, though, on how the local environment influences foreign managers' perception of vulnerability, and how foreign managers can develop trust even when their perceived vulnerability is high. We conducted in-depth case studies of two foreign-controlled enterprises in China, and developed a theoretical model that links perceptions of the macro-level environment to micro-level management. Our results illustrate the antecedents and consequences of perceived vulnerability and the processes of trust building in unfavorable environments. Through comparative analysis of the two cases, we found that the foreign managers' perceived vulnerability was shaped by the institutional, technological, and market conditions of the local environment, and we learned how this perceived vulnerability influenced their trust in the local workforce and the joint investment in formal and social control they used in building trust. The effect of perceived vulnerability on trust was moderated over time when the implementation of control was combined with active investments in trust, which led to behavioral changes on the part of the local employees, which in turn increased their trustworthiness. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This chapter highlights the importance of data as the lifeblood of a quantitative trading strategy, then outlines the types and sources of data that quant strategies might utilize. Cleaning of data, a critical step in the systematic trading process, is detailed. Finally, various approaches to the storing of data are explained.