Topic: Article Review
Order Description
It will run into 2-3 page with single space. The flow of the article review will be as:
You will start with complete article title, author(s)’s name, journal name, volume no., issue no., and year of publication. (1st paragraph)
Write about what this article is all about in terms of the concepts/issues being studied in this article. (2nd-3rd paragraph)
Write about the main focus of the business paper (5th -6th Paragraph)
Write about recommendations and implications of the study as discussed by the author(s) in the article (7th-8th Paragraph)
Write about what you think of the utility as well as drawbacks/demerits of this study vis-à-vis its usage in the organizations (9th Paragraph).
There will be no reference section as this is an article review.
Global performance management systems: The role of trust as
perceived by country managers
Jane F. Maley a,?, Miriam Moeller b,1
a Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
b School of Business, Economics and Law, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 1 January 2012
Received in revised form 1 July 2012
Accepted 1 July 2012
Available online 27 August 2012
Keywords:
Multinational corporation
Country manager
Global performance management
Trust
This study focuses on a critical mechanism of the international human resource management process: performance
management. The study specifically explores how the process of global performance management is
perceived by the country managers of multinational corporations’ subsidiaries in Australia. The study reveals
that a multinational corporation’s systemic demand for short-term profit has the potential for inhibiting
employee–supervisor relationships and perceived effectiveness of performance management appears to be dependent
on the relationship and level of trust between the country manager and her/his supervisor. On the basis
of the research findings, relational communication and psychosocial factors such as trust play an important role
in the functioning of a countrymanager vis-à-vis their perceptions of the performance management process. The
study suggests that, with the current approach to global performance management for country managers, despite
the expense involved in the process, many of the potential benefits may not be realized. Social exchange
theory is proposed as the foundation for developing more effective and fluent global relationships based on trust.
© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The country manager of a multinational corporation’s (MNC’s)
subsidiary is usually a local national, typically geographically isolated
from her/his supervisor, and is routinely responsible for the functioning
of the subsidiary and the operationalization of strategically significant
tasks, such as the management of a number of staff and the
achievement of the revenue and profitability targets of the subsidiary
(Schmid & Kretschmer, 2010).
Past theoretical and empirical research has heavily focused on
expatriation-based staffing for managing the MNC subsidiary. This
fact gives the impression that the expatriate manager is the sole principal
global player of interest to global performance management (PM)
studies, and that the contributions of the country manager are only of
minor consequence and therefore not worthy of study in the overall
representation of MNC operations (Vance, Vaiman, & Andersen, 2009).
The disregard by many scholars of country managers is surprising
considering that there are currently 850,000 subsidiaries ofMNCs operating
globally (Colakoglu & Caligiuri, 2008) and 75% of these subsidiaries
have country managers at the helm (Brookfield Global Relocation
Services, 2010). These figures underline the worldwide growth in recent
years in the number of country managers. In the light of the important
function that country managers perform, they are expected to have a
significant impact on the success ofMNCs. Thus, theMNC’s understanding
of and control over the subsidiary and its country managers are
central in understanding the dynamics between the country manager,
their supervisors, and the MNC (Birkinshaw & Hood, 1998).
Effective PM of this key resource (i.e., country managers) is, therefore,
imperative to the success of theMNC and deserves some reflection
(Harvey, Speier, & Novicevic, 2001). PM is an activity that enables the
MNC to evaluate corporate performance and is part of the coordination
and control process within MNCs (Claus & Briscoe, 2009; Schmid &
Kretschmer, 2010). Furthermore, PM has been found to play an important
role in trust building between international managers and their
supervisors (Harvey, Reiche, & Moeller, 2011; Mayer & Gavin, 2005).
Therefore, MNCs who neglect attention to the country manager as a
critical source of expertise and information may greatly limit their
global management success (Vance et al., 2009). This claimis consistent
with a growing call for a refocus in international management research
on the needs and contributions of country nationals in the success of
MNC subsidiaries (Chung & Gibbons, 2006; Schmid & Kretschmer,
2010; Vance et al., 2009).
The limitations of extant research urge us to focus our study on
the PM of country managers in Australia. The paper is organized as
follows. First, we articulate pertinent and fundamental characteristics
of the global PM process, while highlighting implications of the relationships
between PM and feedback, trust, culture, and language,
among others. We then review and discuss social exchange theory
Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 2803–2810
? Corresponding author at: Department of Marketing and Management, Faculty of
Business and Economics, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW2109, Australia. Tel.:+61 2
9922 3431.
E-mail addresses: jane@janemaleyconsulting.com (J.F. Maley),
m.moeller@uq.edu.au (M. Moeller).
1 Tel.: +61 7 3346 8175; fax: +61 7 3346 8199.
0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.08.003
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Research
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