About AMA

Executive Summary
Effectively adjusting to national culture in the administration and development of relationship and knowledge resources continues to be a hurdle for interorganizational relationships. Given this, Griffith, Myers, and Harvey work to understand the following research question: How does national culture influence how firms from different national cultures perceive the linkages of relationship and knowledge resources in their (1) intracultural and (2) intercultural interorganizational exchanges?

To answer this question, Griffith, Myers, and Harvey use a resource-based view of the firm to frame relationship resources (i.e., the influence of trust on commitment), knowledge resources (i.e., the influence of information sharing on problem resolution), and their linkage (i.e., the influence of commitment on information sharing). They then integrate Hofstede’s (2001) multidimensional national cultural framework to theorize relationships among relationship resources, knowledge resources, and their linkage in intra- and intercultural relationships. They examine the hypotheses using data sets from Japan (n = 113) and the United States (n = 105).

The results of cross-cultural testing (across Japanese and U.S. intracultural data sets) indicate that unique cultural influences exist in two of the three relationships studied. Specifically, Griffith, Myers, and Harvey find that the magnitude of the associations between trust and commitment and between commitment and information sharing in intracultural relationships is significantly stronger in the Japanese data set than in the U.S. data set (they find no differences cross-culturally for the relationship between information and problem resolution explored in this study). Furthermore, they do not find magnitude differences in their examination of the knowledge resource linkage of information sharing to problem resolution either cross-culturally or interculturally.

These results suggest how managers can standardize or adapt their strategies in relation to relationship and knowledge resources. Specifically, Griffith, Myers, and Harvey contend that differences in the magnitude of effects between trust and commitment and between commitment and information sharing speak directly to the culturally founded managerial expectations of a partner and suggest the need for culturally adapted strategies for relationship building. Furthermore, they contend that the lack of national culture influence on the association between the knowledge resources of information sharing and problem resolution provides opportunities for strategic process standardization in the administration of intercultural relationships.

Biography
David A. Griffith is Assistant Professor of Marketing & Supply Chain Management in the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, at Michigan State University. He received his PhD and MBA from Kent State University and his BS and BA from the University of Akron. His areas of marketing expertise include international marketing strategy and global supply chain management, and he has worked in manufacturing, services, and exporting. He has recently published in Journal of Operations Management, Journal of International Business Studies, and Journal of International Marketing.

Matthew B. Myers is Nestle Professor of Marketing and Associate Professor of Marketing in the Department of Marketing, Logistics, and Transportation, College of Business Administration, at the University of Tennessee, and he is Director of the Global Business Institute. He received his PhD from Michigan State University. Professor Myers has published in several outlets, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of Business Logistics, and he is departmental editor for supply chain and operations management for Journal of International Business Studies.

Michael G. Harvey is Hearin Chair in Global Business in the School of Business Administration at the University of Mississippi. He received his PhD from the University of Arizona (1976). Professor Harvey has been an active researcher and consultant for global organizations over the past 30 years. His area of research interest is global human resource management relative to marketing functions.