There are grounds for believing that international companies operating in European countries could, and should, make a strategic choice whether or not to develop a 'European' approach and style in management. Several pressures are currently encouraging enterprises to adopt such an approach:...

The institutional approach treats organizational forms and behaviour as contingent upon institutions that are durable and socially embedded and so several authors have argued that the nature and modes of operation of multinational enterprises (MNEs) vary according to their national origins. This...

Alice Lam is Professor of Organisation Studies at the School of Management, Royal Holloway University of London. Her research focuses on the relationship between organizational forms, knowledge creation and societal institutions. Her current work examines the changing nature of academic...

This article examines employee agency in psychological contracts by exploring how young scientists proactively shape their careers in response to unmet expectations induced by academic entrepreneurialism. It uses the lens of social exchange to examine their relationships with the professors...

Tacit knowledge, embedded agency and learning: local nodes and global networks

This paper employs the three concepts of ‘gold’ (financial rewards), ‘ribbon’ (reputational/career rewards) and ‘puzzle’ (intrinsic satisfaction) to examine the extrinsic and intrinsic aspects of scientists’ motivation for pursuing commercial activities. The study is based on 36...

This paper is based on a hypothesis that we have entered a specific phase of economic development, which we refer to as the 'learning economy', where knowledge and learning have become more important than in any earlier historical period. In this new context the learning capability of firms...

This paper examines the ‘cognitive’ and ‘societal’ aspects of the tacit knowledge transfer problem in MNCs. Based on a comparative analysis of the overseas R&D labs of US and Japanese MNCs in the UK, it examines how home-based models of learning influence MNCs’ transnational social...

In May 1985, the Japanese government passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (hereafter refer to as EEO Law) which took effect from April 1986. The enactment of the EEO Law has aroused much controversy and debate unprecedented in the history of labour legislation in Japan. It prohibits...