Based on the insight that superior access to knowledge can help foreign firms overcome liabilities of foreignness, we examine whether possession of firm-specific advantages shifts foreign firms' CEO staffing strategies from local managers, who provide host-market insight, toward expatriates, who possess knowledge transfer and coordination capabilities. We find that, as institutional distance increases, firm-specific advantages from multinationality, regional agglomeration, and host-country experience substitute for the host-market insight of local CEOs. Foreign firms with such advantages instead staff the CEO role with expatriates. Our results are practically relevant to MNCs seeking to allocate a limited talent pool across different institutional contexts.
On the basis of the observation that today’s executives increasingly possess significant international experiences, this study of foreign subsidiary executive staffing strategies looks beyond the local/expatriate dichotomy and shifts the theoretical and empirical focus from executive nationality to a more nuanced examination of subsidiary executives’ international experience portfolios. The intended contribution of this study is to explore the relationship between home country–host country institutional differences and the quantity and quality of subsidiary executives’ previous international experience. I draw on executive cognition theory and the literature on international experience to hypothesize that variety and specificity of previous educational and professional international experiences facilitate subsidiary executives’ abilities to manage liabilities of foreignness arising from institutional distance. The findings indicate a positive relationship between home country–host country institutional distance and the presence of subsidiary executives with higher duration, count, and variety of international experiences. However, the findings provide no statistical evidence of higher levels of institutional distance being associated with a higher presence of subsidiary executives with specific international experiences that are relevant to the home country–host country pair.
PurposeThis study presents a conceptual model of knowledge sharing in global organizations, examining the facilitating role of international experience through cognitive, relational and structural social capital perspectives.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that applies multilevel thinking to the issue of knowledge sharing in global environments.FindingsThe presented conceptual model contributes to our understanding of the microfoundational role of international experience in facilitating knowledge sharing in global organizations by integrating individual, dyadic and group perspectives.Practical implicationsManagerial implications are discussed for how to strengthen individuals' propensities for knowledge sharing from international experience through strategic hiring, employee development, succession planning and expatriate mobility.Originality/valueThe presented framework explicitly considers the implications of individual heterogeneity in international experience for differences in organizational knowledge sharing capabilities, thereby contributing to the search for microfoundations of competitive advantage in global organizations.
In seeking competitive advantage, many online graduate programs have turned to improving the quality of video lectures by investing in instructional designers and in-studio production. However, it is unclear how much video lecture design and production quality improve student outcomes. We used a regression discontinuity to evaluate how video lecture design and production practices that adhere to principles of multimedia learning affect perceived learning and student satisfaction. The study involved 300 students taking an online graduate course at a large, public research university, where 194 students were exposed to video lectures designed and produced by the instructor and 106 students were exposed to video lectures designed in collaboration between the instructor and instructional designers and produced in studio. Our findings indicate that designing and producing video lectures in accordance with principles of multimedia learning has a meaningful causal effect on students’ perceived learning and a marginal effect on student satisfaction. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for video lecture development and design in the context of online business education and the COVID-19 pandemic.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.