Frithjof Arp

Numerous microfinance initiatives around the world aim to alleviate poverty in developing countries. However, debate persists about their effectiveness and sustainability – a concern for transnational corporations and the international business community, which contribute about $9.4 billion to microfinance funding. In this policy-oriented article w...

The phenomenon of emerging market organizations appointing foreign executives from distant cultural contexts to headquarter positions has stirred public and academic interest. Emerging giants, aspiring multinationals, and even local organizations that focus entirely on domestic markets have joined the global hunt for management talent. This article...

Current issues in international human resource management include global careers that differ from traditional expatriate assignments. A number of foreign executives have in recent years been appointed to positions in the headquarter operations of culturally distant organisations. These appointments of foreign executives in local organisations (FELO...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate foreign executives appointed into cultural contexts distant from their country of origin and headquarters of organisations to which host-country nationals (HCNs) they supervise and HCN superiors they report to attribute a “local” national identity. Significant differences of these foreign execut...

With major goals of acquiring international strategic assets, including managerial and technical know-how, the human resource management (HRM) of Chinese multinational organizations (MNOs) now includes the hiring of foreign experts and executives. Such recruitment is nothing new for MNOs headquartered in advanced economies, which often pursue geoce...

Competence to enact responsible practices, such as recycling waste or boycotting irresponsible companies, is core to learning for responsibility. We explore the role of apps in learning such responsible practices ‘in the wild,’ outside formal educational environments over a 3-week period. Learners maintained a daily diary in which they reflected on...

Citation counts are widely used to evaluate academic publications and individual researchers. Their derivatives, such as the h-index and the journal impact factor, influence hiring and promotion decisions, journal rankings, and funding of research organizations. The underlying theoretical assumption is that citations are meaningful, indicating enga...

Among the most highly cited books in the international business literature, 'Managing across borders: The transnational solution' by Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) discusses the conflicting pressures faced by firms outside of their domestic markets. We complement impact metrics of this seminal work with qualitative insight. Taking a sociology-of-knowl...

Transnational strategies have been conceptualized as depending on knowledge exchange by networks of culturally and nationally diverse individuals with a mindset that stands above cultural particularism, overcomes ingrained ethnocentrism and transcends nationally entrenched perceptions (Farndale & Paauwe, 2007; Levy et al., 2007). This manuscript dr...

An increasing number of foreign employees are recruited in China. In addition to recruitment by subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs), this includes local firms hiring foreign executives, experts and fresh foreign graduates. This study draws on data from a longitudinal research project to provide an analysis of the earliest stages of rec...

See text on the World Economic Forum website: https://www.WEForum.org/agenda/2018/01/the-34-billion-dollar-question-is-microfinance-the-answer-to-poverty

Organizations depending on globally mobile knowledge workers are assumed to institute suitably international recruitment processes. However, data from 235 advertised positions and 164 recruitment processes in 41 countries suggest they do not. This phenomenon is problematized and, drawing on institutional theory, global isomorphism offered as explan...

Poor entrepreneurs benefit less from poverty alleviation initiatives than less-poor entrepreneurs and access to formal microfinance reduces the incidence but not the amount of borrowing (Islam, Nguyen, & Smyth, 2015) from various types of informal sources (Arp & Ardisa, 2016b). Over time, less poor entrepreneurs reduce their reliance on informal bo...

Chinese firms increasingly recruit foreign executives and experts into their headquarters but little is known about this phenomenon. To close this gap we conduct interviews with international knowledge workers and their local peers. We find that the integration of foreign expertise is hampered by organizational mindsets that manifest in utilitarian...

Rational choice and resource dependence theories suggest that external resources are crucial to organizations. Organizations depending on globally mobile knowledge workers as a resource are assumed to choose rational processes for international recruitment. However, an empirical study of recruitment processes in UK universities indicates that this...

Arp, Frithjof (2016). Reference letters as components of the personal tutor and career services systems: Action research and policy formalisation. Teaching Development Seminar, Nottingham University Business School, Ningbo, China 21 September 2016. doi:10.5281/zenodo.160157

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine and reflect on the mobility of ideas between multinational corporation (MNC) headquarters and subsidiaries. Does it always represent (positively perceived) knowledge transfer or can it sometimes constitute (negatively perceived) intra-corporate plagiarism? What are antecedents and consequences of ne...

This extended abstract of the conference presentation is part of the public dissemination and consultation stage in the broader action research project 'Linkage of Student Services'

International debate persists about the effectiveness of microcredit for poverty alleviation. Much of this debate is due to discipline-specific research approaches, methodological complexities, and a lack of focus on fundamental issues. Microfinance organisations around the world do not operate in a vacuum: other forms of collateral-free lending in...

Debate persists about the effectiveness of microcredit for poverty alleviation. We argue that much of this debate is due to discipline-specific research approaches and methodological complexities obscuring fundamental issues. Microfinance organisations do not operate in a vacuum: other forms of collateral-free lending must be taken into account. We...

Foreign executives in local organisations (FELOs) of culturally distant countries are a rare international management phenomenon that differs significantly from expatriate assignments in the subsidiaries of multinational organisations. The phenomenon has not been systematically researched, although media reports and executive search firm publicatio...

Foreign executives in local organisations (FELOs) of culturally distant countries are a rare international management phenomenon that differs significantly from expatriate assignments in the subsidiaries of multinational organisations. The phenomenon has not been systematically researched, although media reports and executive search firm publicatio...

The increasing globalization of the world economy challenges multinational as well as small and medium-sized local organizations to attract and retain global talent. Academic researchers have lately turned their attention from organizational expatriate assignments to various new types of global careers, including self-initiated expatriation in geog...

This paper introduces an international cross-cultural workplace phenomenon that has not been systematically researched: Foreign Executives in Local Organisations (FELOs) of culturally distant countries. Significant differences to expatriates in the foreign subsidiaries of multinational organisations are identified and discussed. This research emplo...