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In this special issue, we present a research forum on current issues in cross cultural management in New Zealand, Australia and the Asian‐Pacific Region. Our theme is new horizons in cross cultural management, which is reflected in both topic and approach. Our topics are related to the Asia Pacific Region and its relations with the rest of the world, such as with Africa (South‐Africa), America (US) and Europe (The Netherlands). They are interdisciplinary in nature; our approach focuses on promoting culture‐specific perspectives. Moreover, the research forum intends to push forward knowledge toward new boundaries by means of developing new models and paradigms for comparing cultures and management practices.

AbstractThe growing significance of global electronic commerce has led to the increased use of computer support during negotiation of deals, which until now has been carried out almost exclusively via face-to-face (FTF) communication or other high-feedback media (e. g., telephone), but not via computer-mediated communication (CMC). To analyze this process and its outcomes, the following research questions were examined in this study: How do CMC and FTF contribute to a win-win strategy in negotiation? How do CMC and FTF affect the participants' ability to empathize with each other? Are the negotiation strategies of Anglo, Nordic, and Latin negotiators affected differently depending on the medium? Is the ability of Anglo, Nordic, and Latin negotiators to empathize with each other affected differently depending on the medium? On the basis of our results, we surmise that CMC does not allow negotiators to employ a cooperative win-win strategy (as recommended by negotiation-strategy training). We see significant differences when we examine the use of personal pronouns and speech acts by the Anglo, Nordic, and Latin culture clusters. When we look at the use of cooperative speech acts, a similar situation occurs: in contrast to Anglos, who behave in a cooperative way, Latins are significantly less cooperative and Nordics use many more general speech acts in the CMC setting.

What role do cultural play in the survival of companies that face existential problems? We try to provide some answers by looking at the decline of the Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker. In 1996 this company went bankrupt and among the causes of this event cultural factors rank high, at least at first sight. We show that differences in national culture could have played a role in one of the defining moments in Fokker's existence: the failed take-over by the German aerospace giant Deutsche Aerospace (DASA). But we also show that an over-ambitious management was responsible for the situation in which there were no other options to survive besides a take-over by DASA. An increasing gap between the ambitions of the management to be one of the worlds prime aerospace companies and the limited resources of what was essentially a second-league player put Fokker in such a bad financial condition that it surely had to become an unbearable burden for DASA. So culture played a role in Fokker's decline, but its influence was at its peak long before the problems that brought the company down were recognised.

AbstractDifferent business settings may induce different types of negotiation behavior. More specifically, clearly defined problems in an operations management (OM) setting may lead to different negotiation behavior than more diffuse innovation management (IM) problems. In addition, negotiators from different national cultures may react differently to such variations in business settings. This article addresses these issues through a set of experiments. The specific goal of our study is to understand whether there is a difference between German and Dutch negotiators regarding their negotiation behavior in IM and OM settings. To analyze possible cross-cultural differences, negotiations that took place in a German monocultural setting and those which occurred in a Dutch monocultural setting are compared. Two hypotheses were tested: • German negotiators are more cooperative in the OM context than in the IM context. • Dutch negotiators are more cooperative in the IM context than in the OM context. Both hypotheses were confirmed by using speech act analysis and personal pronoun analysis in a 2 × 2 experimental design. Dutch negotiators had difficulties adopting a cooperative attitude and building empathy in an OM context, whereas German negotiators encountered these problems in the IM setting.

Innovation literature advocates the transition from a technological orientation to market orientation on the part of innovator and entrepreneur. However, the transition requires a change in mindset on the part of these innovation agents, who may be affected by their national contexts. This paper reports a study is to example factors that account for a different transition from a Technological Orientation (TO) towards a Market Orientation (MO) and the impact of national cultures. To analyse possible intercultural differences, the study involved two independent samples from Germany and the Netherlands. The study found that the orientation to versus MO of the Dutch engineer is not different from that of the German engineer, probably because of a common professional culture (PC), which is different from an MO. The transition from technological orientation towards market orientation occurred earlier for the Dutch engineers than for the German engineers. However German engineers demonstrated less MO than Dutch firms. A plausible reason for this is that the strong feminine values of Dutch national and corporate culture (NC and CC, Hofstede, 1980a and b and 1991) might lead more easily to a customer orientation (Market Pull) than the more masculine German values keeping a strong technological base. In sum, firms might consider carefully an optimal CC x PC interaction instead of NC-differences to reach effective technological innovation in the global market.

1. Innovation, entrepreneurship and culture, a matter of interaction between technology, progress and economic growth? : an introduction -- 2. Conceptualizing innovation management and culture in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) : an exploratory study of organization-specific critical success factors -- 3. Knowledge management, institutions and professional cultures in engineering consulting services : the case of Hong Kong -- 4. Scientometrics and the evaluation of European integration -- 5. Schumpeter's theory of economic development revisited -- 6. Skunk works : a sign of failure, a sign of hope? -- 7. Entrepreneurship and the design process : the paradox of innovation in a routine design process -- 8. Culture's role in entrepreneurship : self-employment out of dissatisfaction -- 9. Towards cooperation between European start-ups : the position of the French -- Dutch and German entrepreneurial and innovative engineer -- 10. Multi-path system emergence : an evolutionary framework to analyse process innovation.

We conducted a pilot study to compare the emotions experienced by Dutch and Chinese students during a face‐to‐face negotiation role play. Emotions play an important role in negotiations because they influence the behaviour and judgments of negotiators. The Data Printer case developed by Greenhalgh was used to examine the patterns of feelings that emerge during negotiations. One hundred and four participants (62 Chinese and 42 Dutch post graduate students) role‐played two different characters who were confronted with a payment dispute regarding the servicing of a defective printer. The results of the MANOVA and of the Factorial Analysis demonstrates that culture as a carrier of social values and norms did influence the emotional reactions of the people socialised in different cultural contexts. The paper concludes that in order to facilitate conflict resolution and interpersonal communication amongst protagonists in mono as well as in inter‐cultural negotiation context individuals should learn to manage their emotions constructively.

Pt. 1. The role of the individual versus that of the institution -- Pt. 2. The econo-geographic aspects of emergence, cooperation and survival -- Pt. 3. The cultural levels of nation, gender, profession, sector and region in emergence, cooperation and survival.