Word from the editor

Readers should enjoy Management international’s May issue, featuring eight articles covering a variety of topics replete with original methodologies and intriguing findings.

The initial article by Mohamed Akli Achabou and Sihem Dekhili - entitled “The challenge of price transparency for consumers: An application to fair trade products” – focuses on a topic that has heretofore received relatively little attention in literature, namely how price decomposition affects consumer preference. Transparency becomes particularly poignant in the case of sustainable products, given the values that these items are supposed to convey. An empirical investigation of fair trade chocolate combining a qualitative and a quantitative method generates findings confirming that while consumers are generally skeptical of high prices, their preference increases when the prices are decomposed, so that, for example, they tend to find fair trade chocolate premiums more acceptable. The study also offers a cluster analysis highlighting the role that people’s prosocial values and experience with fair trade products plays in their preference for detailed price information.

Clotilde Coron’s article “Gender and job satisfaction: European analysis through the prism of gender stereotyping” draws from the academic debate surrounding the relationship between gender and job satisfaction to criticise the lack of attention paid to this topic at a national level within the Anglosphere. Studying the moderating role that gender stereotypes perform across Europe, it notes that the more egalitarian countries tend to have a greater job satisfaction gender gap (to women’s detriment) than their less egalitarian counterparts – findings that pave the way for further discussion of both expectations theory and the transitory nature of the gender/job satisfaction paradox.

Sophie Le Bris and Dominique Philippe Martin’s article “Under which circumstances can interactions between different hierarchical levels within an HRO be a source of reliability or, on the contrary, disturb the sensemaking process and ultimately the reliability of decision-making in a CTI situation? What we can learn from the testimony of the Director of the Fukushima power plant.” discusses how decisions are made in contexts where it is necessary to act quickly and where the slightest mistake can undermine the perceived integrity of both an organisation and its members. The authors ask what happens when actors operating at different hierarchical levels fail to converge quickly around a mutual understanding of a situation and the priorities that must then be defined. Based on Fukushima’s 2011 Dai Ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, the study shows how inter-hierarchical interactions can produce a range of contrasting reliability outcomes – a finding at odds with what would normally be expected from a sensemaking approach (Weick, 1993). The study concludes by detailing different decision-making processes apt to improve interactional reliability.

Hadj Nekka, Sébastien Diné and Sihem Anne Essayah’s article “Applying commitment regime theory to revisit the management of seniors: The case of the French Social Security system” focuses on the complexity characterising this domain. A critical literature review is followed by the formulation of research questions conducive to an empirical investigation centred on Thévenot’s commitment regime theory (2006). A longitudinal case study generates findings intimating this theory’s ability to identify the limitations of age management models. By so doing, it helps to develop knowledge in this domain.

Samy Mansouri, Joseph Kaswengi and Janine Hobeika’s article “Investigating African firms’ export performance: The role of marketing adaptation and institutional conditions” starts by noting internationalisation literature’s general focus on multinational enterprises’ operations in Africa, even as African companies’ own cross-border entrepreneurial activities remain under-studied. What has yet to be identified is how corporate resources interact with environmental conditions to shape marketing adaptation and export performance. Rooted in resource-based view theory and an institutional perspective, the study uses survey data from 308 companies in Nigeria and Ghana to ascertain how these concepts relate to one another. It finds that networking capabilities and the availability of financial resources exert a positive influence on marketing adaptation, which then mediates the relationship between corporate resources and export performance. The conclusion - that all these effects are contingent on institutional conditions - has significant implications for the internationalisation of African firms.

Pierre El Haddad and Véronique Zardet’s article “Exploring the field of NGO cooperation in Lebanon: A frontline snapshot” notes the survival challenges facing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Lebanon and their subsequent need to cooperate. Exploring dysfunctions that have stymied NGO cooperations on several occasions, the study adopts a research-intervention method intended to help 15 organisations identify cooperation problems and develop solutions. Towards this end, the authors have grouped major inter-organisational dysfunctions into categories determined by their strategic axes, decision-making approaches, procedures and language. They then move on to help target organisations achieve collectively designed solutions apt to improve cooperation. The results point to both a moderating relationship between intra- and inter-organisational improvements, and to the possibility of pervasive intra-organisational dysfunctions being directly commuted to issues that can be dealt with via inter-organisational cooperation.

Pedro Gonzalo and Domitille Bonneton’s article “The benefits of codevelopment for talent management: A case study in the banking sector” starts with the view that despite talent management’s crucial importance for organisations, there has been insufficient study of one of its components, namely talent development. The article scrutinises the usefulness of codevelopment – itself an experiential learning method - as an original talent development practice that can enhance professional practice by enabling one’s peers to improve their own practice. Based on a multinational bank case study, the findings reveal that codevelopment comprises a resourcing space capable of offsetting a number of organisational pressures, and that it is therefore beneficial at an individual, group and organisational level. On top of this, it can also help to counterbalance some of the negative effects associated with talent management.

The final article by Fabrice Hervé, Ibtissem Rouine, Mohamed Firas Thraya and Mohamed Zouaoui - entitled “Does investor sentiment impact premiums in M&A transactions?” – mobilises a 2000-2021 sample of operations initiated in 54 countries. It discovers that the sentiment of investors in the buyer’s country has a positive effect on acquisition premiums, all the more so when the national business culture tends towards over-responsiveness or herd behaviour. Conversely, the effect is weaker both in countries featuring an efficient institutional framework and in companies that have already undertaken a string of acquisitions. The results remain stable when multiple robustness tests are applied.

Happy reading – and enjoy the summer once it gets going!