The latest issue of Critical Perspectives on International Business is
now available. It can be accessed at the following URL:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/cpoib/cpoib.jsp
 

Critical Perspectives on International Business: Volume 4 Issue 1 2008 

 
Articles

"Thumbs-up is a rude gesture in Australia": The presentation of culture
in international business textbooks 
Frank B. Tipton (pp. 7-24) 
Keywords: Business studies, Culture, International business 
ArticleType:Conceptual paper 

Managing talent across national borders: the challenges faced by an
international retail group 
Mehdi Boussebaa, Glenn Morgan (pp. 25-41) 
Keywords: Critical management, France, Globalization, Multinational
companies, United Kingdom 
ArticleType:Research paper 

Taking the mess back to business: studying international business from
behind 
Gard Hopsdal Hansen (pp. 42-54) 
Keywords: China, International business, Qualitative methods 
ArticleType:Viewpoint 
 
Maximizing shareholder-value: A panacea for economic growth or a recipe
for economic and social disintegration? 
Brendan McSweeney (pp. 55-74) 
Keywords: Corporate governance, Shareholder value analysis, Wealth 
ArticleType:Conceptual paper 
 
The internet and potentialities of emancipatory change: The case of the
institutions and politics of accounting 
Prem Sikka (pp. 75-83) 
Keywords: Internet, Newspapers, Politics 
ArticleType:Case study 
 

 
 
Editorial

Introduction from the Editors

Welcome to issue 1 of volume 4 of critical perspectives on international
business. As we enter our fourth year of publication, we have recently
received data on how cpoib is being accessed and used by the academic
community globally. We are delighted to find that cpoib has been taken
up by customers across the world, with institutions on every continent
subscribing to it, and similarly, with downloads being made by readers
on every continent. Overall figures on customer and download numbers
show an upward trend and whilst, as might be expected, the UK and USA
are the main country markets, around half of downloads are taken up by
readers in other countries, with Australia, Malaysia, Canada, South
Africa, Colombia and India being in the top ten download markets. In
terms of numbers of downloads, the "best seller" paper has now been
downloaded over 2,400 times in total and, in terms of "immediacy" of
impact, the highest impact paper achieved over 500 downloads in the six
months following publication.
In addition to the above data gathered by Emerald, in the run up to the
UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), cpoib is one of very few "new"
journals that have been included in the journal quality ranking of the
Association of Business Schools (ABS). In addition, it has, at the time
of writing, been listed on the Business Academic Research Directors
Network (BARDsNET) draft journal rankings list for the Australian
Research Quality Framework (RQF) exercise. Overall, we feel that these
data show that cpoib is making an impact at a global level.

We are also pleased to note a growing number of submissions that cite
extant publications in the journal, building upon and developing the
discussions within cpoib. For all of these indicators of success, we
must thank you, our contributors and readers, along with our reviewers
and Editorial Advisory Board colleagues. However, we must point out that
we seek to maintain the highest standards of writing and of peer review
within cpoib. As such, we continue to reject over half of the
submissions made and to ask many submitting authors to develop a more
critical engagement with their topics before moving to the review stage.
We need, therefore, to continue to urge you - and to urge you to
encourage others - to submit top quality academic papers and stimulating
position papers for our consideration.

In this issue, we present three academic papers, each of which engages
with an issue of critical importance to the discourse of international
business (IB) in a unique way. First, we present Ben Tipton's paper
which challenges, amongst others, the assertion of many mainstream IB
textbook writers that "Thumbs-up is a rude gesture in Australia". Tipton
draws upon examples from a range of popular IB textbooks and, in
particular, upon engagement by the authors of these with the concept of
"culture". Through a detailed analysis of the origins of ideas and of
the perpetuation of error across multiple editions and multiple texts,
and drawing upon the work of other critical academics, he shows that
what is presented as evidence and example of cultural traits and
behavioural norms within various cultures is frequently based upon
"straightforward errors of fact, more subtle errors of interpretation,
and serious problems with definitions and application of theories of
cultural difference". Tipton's text provides educators in the field of
IB with a salutary caution on the unquestioning acceptance of what is
presented as "fact" and "knowledge" in the field of cultural theory, as
presented in popular and enduring textbooks, even where this is seen to
be consistent across different authors and over time.

The second academic paper, by Mehdi Boussebaa and Glenn Morgan, engages
with the issue of how international firms "manage talent" across
national boundaries. They do this through presentation of evidence from
an empirical study of management perceptions and understandings of the
success and/or failure of attempts to transfer organizational practices
from the British to the French business unit of an international firm.
The British unit had taken over the French unit - not, as the writers
point out, in the way of a successful "big fish" swallowing a failing
"small fish", but at the level of the British firm acquiring ownership
of its equal in France. Considering this position of equal strength of
the two units at the time of takeover, and drawing upon the literature
on talent management, the authors discuss how the different
institutional frameworks for education and development in Britain and
France present "the impossibility of treating the social categories of
cadres in France and managers in the UK along the same lines". They
conclude that, in seeking to promote a programme of talent management
across different national settings, the international firm should avoid
assuming the transferability of organizational frameworks across
business units, without consideration of the institutional frameworks of
the country into which is seeks to transplant its practices.

In the final academic paper, Gard Hopsdal Hansen contemplates the role
of the qualitative researcher in the field of IB and, in particular, the
different subjectivities that she or he can adopt as a theorist, a
fieldworker, or a narrator - engaging with issues of detached
observation, "messy" engagement and (re)presentation. In doing this,
Hansen draws metaphorically upon the voices of "the Geographer" and "the
Explorer" from Saint-Exupery's novel The Little Prince. In questioning
these two characters, Hansen's dialogue is one of self-interrogation as
he seeks to analyse his own practices as an IB researcher. He engages in
reflexive thinking about the benefits and limitations of both the
Geographer's and the Explorer's approaches and what they constitute as
"knowledge". This is an engaging text in which the author posits that
"we will never capture the full complexity of the situations and
phenomena we attempt to study", but in which he challenges us,
occasionally, to "leave our studies and take a look at the far side in
order to learn from the unknown".

In addition to the three academic papers, we include two position
papers, each of which engages with the issues of hegemonic self-interest
by parties involved in IB. In the first paper, Brendan McSweeney
questions the "taken-for-granted" assumption within much IB literature,
that profit maximization by multinational enterprises is beneficial, and
asks if it might, rather, be "a recipe for economic and social
disintegration". He outlines the historical antecedents and genealogy of
the contemporary logic of shareholder value, but questions whether its
perpetuation in the present is based upon self-reinforcing anecdotal
evidence that lacks empirical evidence. McSweeney presents data that
show that, in the age of corporate profit generation and individual
wealth maximization for the few, the economic and physical well being of
the many is at as great a risk as ever. He challenges those who assert
that criticism of individual wealth is based upon a "politics of envy",
and asks that we "as academics... at least try to question claims which
are not evidence-based, indeed which are often contradicted by the
evidence, and to consider in whose interests particular policies serve".

The final piece in this issue, by Prem Sikka, is based upon two "blogs"
that he wrote for publication in the web issue of The Guardian newspaper
in the UK. The blogs present a critique of the hegemonic rule over
international accounting practices by the International Accounting
Standards Board (IASB). Sikka states that "the IASB claims to advance
business accountability and transparency, but is itself a highly
secretive organisation. It is the offshoot of a private company
registered in the US state of Delaware, a place well known for corporate
secrecy". He tells how the Board is funded by the "big four" global
accounting firms and asserts that it acts in their interests and those
of their corporate clients, restricting the possibilities for any form
of public accountability. In their original context, the blogs elicited
a stream of responses, both supportive and critical, which showed that
the academic debate can be opened up to wider public participation. In
the context of cpoib, Sikka prefaces and follows the substantive content
of the blogs, on global accounting practices, with a text that develops
the notion that, through engagement in a different form of discourse and
using alternative media, academics can engage a wider audience than that
of the academic journal.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this issue of cpoib, that it will
stimulate further critical debate and discussion about key issues of
relevance to IB, and that it will provoke further responses not only
within the academic community through the pages of this journal, but in
the wider context of global society through transfer into the classroom
and beyond.

Joanne Roberts, George Cairns

Best wishes.

Joanne.

--------------------------------------------
Dr Joanne Roberts
Senior Lecturer in Management
Newcastle University Business School
Room 20, 2nd Floor,
Armstrong Building,
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
United Kingdom 
Tel: +44 (0)191 222 6232
Email: [log in to unmask]

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/nubs/staff/profile/joanne.roberts

Co-editor of Critical Perspectives on International Business 
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/cpoib/cpoib.jsp