Although it is well established in the current staffing literature that why and how multinational enterprises (MNEs) allocate more or fewer expatriates in some subsidiaries than others, little is known about why and how some MNEs utilize more or fewer expatriates than other MNEs. This paper builds on regionalization theory to argue that intra-and inter-regional diversification has to do with the overall use of expatriates in MNEs. An empirical investigation of Korean MNEs demonstrates that the degree of intra-and inter-regional diversification has significant impacts on the level of expatriate utilization by MNEs. The results also reveal an interesting moderating influence of subsidiary value chain activities. MNEs tend to vigorously adjust their use of expatriates in downstream subsidiaries depending on the degree of intra-and interregional diversification. However, they do not adjust their use of expatriates in manufacturing subsidiaries upon the degree of international diversification. Overall, this study extends our understanding of how MNEs manage a geographically dispersed organization in a semiglobalized world.

This study presents a cross-temporal comparison of managerial ethics in China and the US. Although it is well established that cross-cultural differences exist in business ethics and that culture and values in a society may evolve over time, little attention has been paid to the longitudinal changes in such cross-cultural differences that might have occurred over time. Building on three different perspectives on values evolution, namely, convergence, divergence, and crossvergence, we investigate whether and how cross-cultural differences in managerial ethical decision-making and the associated moral philosophy have changed in China and the US over the decade between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. Our analysis reveals that the difference in Chinese and American managers' ethical decision-making evolved in many different directions over the decade, lending support to the crossvergence perspective. Interestingly, however, we discover that the divergence outlook prevails when it comes to the moral philosophies behind their decision-making. These findings provide critical insights into cross-cultural as well cross-temporal evolution in business ethics in a world of increasing cross-cultural and multicultural interactions.