INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT
Lecture 1
Elements of the course
Contingency factors (onvoorspelbaarheids factors)
Contingency Approach in organization theory:
Characteristics of management & organization depends on task environment and
related contingency factors
• A contingency is a circumstance or condition that may or may not apply
• Be aware of the danger of “cultural attribution”
• When looking for the influence of differences in institutional/cultural
environment, always control for differences in:
o organization size; age
o Industry; technology
o Etc.
• Two strategies for dealing with contingency factors in empirical research:
inclusion of control variables and matching of samples
What is globalization?
A qualitative shift towards a global economic system that is no longer based on
autonomous national economies but on a consolidated global marketplace for
production, distribution, and consumption (Holm & Sørensen, 1995)
Not for the exams, just an example
, INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT
Forces promoting (further) globalization:
• Decrease of transportation costs
• Decrease of communication costs
• Integration international financial markets
• Mass media, social media
• International migration
Forces impeding (further) globalization:
• Economic: Lower company profits outside home market; decreasing economic
gains of trade liberalization
• Social: Unbalanced distribution of benefits
• Cultural: Search for cultural authenticity
• Political Limits of democracy
1. Limits to globalization: economic
• Lower company profits outside home market
• At company level: shift in emphasis from efficiency, productivity and just-in-
time to resilience, robustness and slack (Madhok 2021)
• At country/region level: increasing desire to harbor integral supply chains
• At the country level globalization has two effects:
- Wealth creation
- Wealth redistribution
• The redistributive effects get larger relative to the wealth creation effects as
the level of trade liberalization increases
• What if the “losers from free trade” need to be compensated?
2. Limits to globalization: social
• Unbalanced distribution of benefits
• Developing/emerging countries have profited from globalization
• Ordinary workers in the USA have not profited from globalization
3. Limits to globalization: cultural
• Search for cultural authenticity
• The issue of “cultural appropriation”
4. Limits to globalization: political (Madhok: governance)
• The trilemma of globalization, sovereignty, and democracy
• Madhok (2021) mentions an additional factor leading to de-globalization:
technological development
• Digital technologies (e.g., AI, robotics) have made the share of labor cost in
value added smaller.
, INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT
Scenarios of globalization
Four possible scenarios:
1. Convergence
2. Specialization
3. Incremental adaption
4. Hybridization
Scenario 1; Convergence
• The Anglo-American version of capitalism will be adopted worldwide (as in
Europe after WW-II)
• But: contradicted by successes of, e.g., Japan, Korea, China
Scenario 2; Specialization
• Economies will specialize in where they have a comparative advantage, e.g.,
based on Porter’s “diamond” factors
• But: a large proportion of trade is intra-industry trade
Scenario 3; Incremental adaption
• Countries tend to evolve in the direction of the most efficient system and
practices
• However, cultures and institutions constrain countries & firms in this process
Scenario 4; Hybridization
• Parts of the economy/society become part of the global system
• Other parts may remain largely unaffected, e.g.:
- Healthcare
- Education
- Personal services
- Construction
Lecture 2
§1. What is culture?
Culture is difficult to define because it encompasses so many elements:
à ideas and values, patterns of behavior, artifacts, symbols, etc.
A synthetic definition:
Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and
transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups,
including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of
traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached
, INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT
values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action,
on the other as conditioning elements of further action
Another synthetic definition:
Culture is a property of a group. It is a group’s shared collective meaning system
through which the group’s collective values, attitudes, beliefs, customs, and thoughts
are understood. It is an emergent property of the member’s social interaction and a
determinant of how group members communicate .... Culture may be taken to be a
consensus about the meanings of symbols, verbal and nonverbal, held by members
of a community
The concept of “culture”
What are values? (values ~ needs)
Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” is an example of the cultural relativity of values
What are beliefs?
à beliefs are propositions about objects or concepts or relations between
objects/concepts
- E.g, causality (“working hard leads to success”)
- Traditional beliefs in Chinese culture:
o All individuals have the potential to self-cultivate (Confucianism)
Lecture 1
Elements of the course
Contingency factors (onvoorspelbaarheids factors)
Contingency Approach in organization theory:
Characteristics of management & organization depends on task environment and
related contingency factors
• A contingency is a circumstance or condition that may or may not apply
• Be aware of the danger of “cultural attribution”
• When looking for the influence of differences in institutional/cultural
environment, always control for differences in:
o organization size; age
o Industry; technology
o Etc.
• Two strategies for dealing with contingency factors in empirical research:
inclusion of control variables and matching of samples
What is globalization?
A qualitative shift towards a global economic system that is no longer based on
autonomous national economies but on a consolidated global marketplace for
production, distribution, and consumption (Holm & Sørensen, 1995)
Not for the exams, just an example
, INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT
Forces promoting (further) globalization:
• Decrease of transportation costs
• Decrease of communication costs
• Integration international financial markets
• Mass media, social media
• International migration
Forces impeding (further) globalization:
• Economic: Lower company profits outside home market; decreasing economic
gains of trade liberalization
• Social: Unbalanced distribution of benefits
• Cultural: Search for cultural authenticity
• Political Limits of democracy
1. Limits to globalization: economic
• Lower company profits outside home market
• At company level: shift in emphasis from efficiency, productivity and just-in-
time to resilience, robustness and slack (Madhok 2021)
• At country/region level: increasing desire to harbor integral supply chains
• At the country level globalization has two effects:
- Wealth creation
- Wealth redistribution
• The redistributive effects get larger relative to the wealth creation effects as
the level of trade liberalization increases
• What if the “losers from free trade” need to be compensated?
2. Limits to globalization: social
• Unbalanced distribution of benefits
• Developing/emerging countries have profited from globalization
• Ordinary workers in the USA have not profited from globalization
3. Limits to globalization: cultural
• Search for cultural authenticity
• The issue of “cultural appropriation”
4. Limits to globalization: political (Madhok: governance)
• The trilemma of globalization, sovereignty, and democracy
• Madhok (2021) mentions an additional factor leading to de-globalization:
technological development
• Digital technologies (e.g., AI, robotics) have made the share of labor cost in
value added smaller.
, INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT
Scenarios of globalization
Four possible scenarios:
1. Convergence
2. Specialization
3. Incremental adaption
4. Hybridization
Scenario 1; Convergence
• The Anglo-American version of capitalism will be adopted worldwide (as in
Europe after WW-II)
• But: contradicted by successes of, e.g., Japan, Korea, China
Scenario 2; Specialization
• Economies will specialize in where they have a comparative advantage, e.g.,
based on Porter’s “diamond” factors
• But: a large proportion of trade is intra-industry trade
Scenario 3; Incremental adaption
• Countries tend to evolve in the direction of the most efficient system and
practices
• However, cultures and institutions constrain countries & firms in this process
Scenario 4; Hybridization
• Parts of the economy/society become part of the global system
• Other parts may remain largely unaffected, e.g.:
- Healthcare
- Education
- Personal services
- Construction
Lecture 2
§1. What is culture?
Culture is difficult to define because it encompasses so many elements:
à ideas and values, patterns of behavior, artifacts, symbols, etc.
A synthetic definition:
Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and
transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups,
including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of
traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached
, INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT
values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action,
on the other as conditioning elements of further action
Another synthetic definition:
Culture is a property of a group. It is a group’s shared collective meaning system
through which the group’s collective values, attitudes, beliefs, customs, and thoughts
are understood. It is an emergent property of the member’s social interaction and a
determinant of how group members communicate .... Culture may be taken to be a
consensus about the meanings of symbols, verbal and nonverbal, held by members
of a community
The concept of “culture”
What are values? (values ~ needs)
Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” is an example of the cultural relativity of values
What are beliefs?
à beliefs are propositions about objects or concepts or relations between
objects/concepts
- E.g, causality (“working hard leads to success”)
- Traditional beliefs in Chinese culture:
o All individuals have the potential to self-cultivate (Confucianism)
