Most foreign direct investment (FDI) theories assume that foreign subsidiaries are at a disadvantage relative to domestic firms; that is, they suffer a liability of foreignness. Following this reasoning, most FDI research has focused on advantages foreign investors must possess to overcome whatever disadvantages they face. Research directly investigating the sources of foreign subsidiary disadvantages has been notably lacking, despite the fact that understanding disadvantages could uncover ways to reduce exposure to these liabilities of foreignness and improve management of FDI. This study focuses on whether labor lawsuit judgments represent a liability for foreign subsidiaries operating in the United States (U.S.). Specifically, I tested whether 486 British, German, and Japanese subsidiaries operating in the U.S. had more labor lawsuits brought to judgment than a matched sample of U.S.‐owned firms. Results indicate that foreign subsidiaries faced significantly more labor lawsuit judgments in both federal and state jurisdictions. I also investigated several variables hypothesized to be associated with a reduction in labor lawsuit judgments facing foreign subsidiaries. Foreign subsidiaries who used American top officers or whose parent firms had more U.S. operations faced fewer lawsuits, while foreign subsidiaries using human resource professionals actually faced more labor lawsuit judgments. Implications of these findings and avenues for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Although effective in improving socialization, development, and retention in the US domestic context, mentoring would likely benefit expatriates and their firms, but it remains theoretically underdeveloped in the international context. We develop a theory of international mentoring by integrating current perspectives on protean and boundaryless careers with the literature on mentoring and expatriates. Expatriates need multiple mentors to assist their adjustment and development during the pre-departure, expatriation, and repatriation stages of international assignments. We discuss both hierarchical and peer, and formal and informal, mentoring relationships to delineate which relationships best address specific expatriate needs. International mentoring may improve expatriate adjustment, development, and retention, and thus may affect outcomes of international strategy. We conclude by discussing implications and avenues for future research. Journal of International Business Studies (2005), 36, 519–538. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400159

Mezias]; bill_starbuck@attglobal.net [Starbuck] Much organizational activity and academic research relies on the accuracy of managers' perceptions. However, few studies have assessed the accuracy of managerial perceptions, and these studies indicate that managers' perceptions are often very inaccurate. This article discusses an odyssey into the study of managerial perceptions spanning two decades and two empirical studies. It depicts the evolution of research questions, samples, study designs, problems with such research and inferences drawn. It also identifies some errors that tend to be especially large and suggests some corrective actions. These corrective actions include using education and training to inform managers about organizational and environmental properties, exploiting improved technology, helping organizations to identify and correct misperceptions and designing robust organizations that can tolerate misperceptions.

We treat the sudden technology sector crash as a natural experiment to investigate how dramatic changes in resource availability in the e-commerce sector affect stock market response to interfirm alliances. This environmental jolt demarcated two distinctly different periods of ecommerce resource munificence: pre-crash, characterized by high munificence, and post-crash, characterized by low munificence. Using data on alliances involving 75 e-commerce firms from 1995 to 2001, we find that the stock market responds more favorably to alliances during the less munificent period. Further, stock market response to alliance partner and type is also affected by the change in environmental munificence between the two periods. Our findings demonstrate the importance of environmental conditions and how these affect stock market interpretation of signals inherent in alliance announcements.