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It is particularly important for developing countries to define useful TQM constructs to measure these principles, and their effect on improvement of performance. This research is aimed at measuring TQM constructs in the Thai manufacturing industry and Thai culture. The research identifies nine TQM implementation constructs and one outcome construct. A measurement instrument is developed based on a survey of some 275 ISO 9000 certified manufacturing companies in Thailand. A stepwise regression model is then used to identify the primary implementation construct regressors that significantly influence the outcome construct. The results show that customer focus, continuous improvement, top management commitment, employee involvement and product innovation are significantly and positively related to product quality. The findings are useful for practitioners and academia in developing countries.

This study demonstrates how top management team (TMT) conflict impacts new product development (NPD) under cultural differences between Taiwan and the United States. Based on cultural differences, we compare Taiwan and the United States to explore how the heterogeneity of TMT composition leads to team conflict and how TMT conflict affects NPD outcomes in different stages. Several research propositions are presented and indicate that the higher TMT heterogeneity results in a higher degree of team conflict. Furthermore, cognitive conflict positively affects NPD initiation stage, but negative in the implementation stage. From a perspective of cultural differences, managers in Taiwan, compared with those in the United States, tend to sustain organizational cohesion and harmony, emphasize personal relationships, and sidestep direct conflict as much as possible. This cultural characteristic negatively affects NPD initiation, and also wears away the competitive advantages for Taiwanese companies.

This paper applies the multiple-perspective decision-making approach [Linstone (1984, 1999); Linstone and Zhu (2000)] and the concepts of discounting and technological forecasting and planning as a framework to study the influence of culture on technology development and management in Korea. Korea was an early innovator of both metallic movable type printing and MP3 players and they had the first-mover advantage of developing both technologies earlier than other technologically advanced countries in the same era. However, these two innovations were not commercially successful in Korea. Many reasons could have attributed to the failure. By analyzing these two cases and an additional case on Korea's plan to build an Internet-centric economy, we conclude that the imbalance among the technical, organizational, and personal (TOP) perspectives was the major factor. Business executives and policy makers need to deal with not only issues related to discounting and forecasting when planning for commercialization and diffusion of new technologies, but also the organizational and cultural factors which play an important role that bridges inventions and the successful diffusion of innovations. In sum, the balance of multiple perspectives of decision-making, the applications of the principles of discounting and technology forecasting and planning, and the roles of diversity and government policy are all crucial for the success of an innovation in a global context.

Although knowledge has been cited as one of the most important strategic assets, the creation and sharing of knowledge at the organizational level is a difficult process that will not proceed without incentives and conscious efforts by management. The complexity of knowledge management (KM) is further compounded by the influence of a wide variety of factors such as leadership, ba, organizational culture, organizational control and individual work styles.

Based on a large dataset gathered from a questionnaire survey of a multi-national Japanese pharmaceutical company and its subsidiary in the US, we compare how the aforementioned organizational factors influence KM, expressed through the SECI model of socialization, externalization, combination and internalization. The results of a structural equation modeling path analysis show that a single model of KM should not be applied unilaterally to both organizations, although part of the same company, and instead may need to be adapted to each stage of KM maturity.

This study identifies the cultural influences on the adoption of mobile commerce based on the comparative cases of Taiwan and Malaysia, so as to give insights to mobile operators' global entries. Using Hofstede's five cultural orientations as moderators in conjunction to Davis' technology acceptance model (TAM), the combined model has been tested by the confirmatory factor analysis for measurement validity and the multiple regression approach for the moderation effect of cultural influences on the adoption of novel mobile services. This results show that uncertainty avoidance (UA), individualism (ID), and long-term (LT) orientation have significant influences on the influence of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) regarding the adoption intentions of mobile commerce. However, the power distance (PD) and masculinity (MA) have different effects in Taiwan and Malaysia. These results not only supplement the explanation of the technology adoption, but also hold strategic implications for the global expansion of mobile operators by emphasizing on local preferences and their differentiation advantages.

In high-tech projects, which we refer to as technology challenging projects, all or mostly new technologies are used. While an effective project manager may be the source for a project team's spirit, there are other possibilities, like the satisfying nature of the technical challenge of high-tech projects or the opportunity for new learning on the job. In the current case study, we center on the views of partakers' in successful and failed technology challenging projects, and examine the importance of maintaining and managing a project's spirit, regardless of the level of spirit partakers bring to the project, and irrespective of the satisfying level of the technical challenge. The project cases highlight the value of managing employees' emotions, attitudes and behavioral norms that are focused on expected project outcomes, termed spirit, in technology challenging projects. Qualitative findings imply that leaders can be trained to execute behaviors that generate spirit in high-tech projects, which boosts contextual performance behavior and increases success.

We examined the effect of project team culture on the evolution of team efficacy in a sample of 118 project teams. Little is known about the factors responsible for the development of team efficacy — the collective belief of a project team that it can be effective. Results reveal that culture in project-based work, is related to the project team’s efficacy, and the project team’s efficacy is related to success. Our findings provide project leaders with an alternative informal lever to enhance project success, by influencing team efficacy in project-based work.

Can individual differences in the personal style of the leader contribute to project culture? How might culture boost behavioral outcomes and success in projects? Drawing on a sample of 189 participants in 59 projects, we illustrate that leader personal style plays a part in the development of culture in project-based work. Additionally, we show that culture in projects can be exercised by the leader to initiate contextual performance — when workers willingly exert extra effort during project implementation. Finally, we show that contextual performance contributes to project success. Recommendations for selecting and coaching persons designated as project leaders are provided.

To look into the assumed difference between East and West in acceptance and use of robots, we performed a content analysis on 120 papers about social robots in two Asian-English (China Daily and The Japan Times) and two Western-English newspapers (The Guardian and New York Times) written between 2009 and 2018. From these papers, we drew a number of statements ($N=118$). We analyzed tone of voice (TOV) as well as the positive or negative framing of the consequences of the implementation of social robots in society, economy, health, and safety. Intercoder reliability $\mathrm{\text{was}}>0.7$, according to Krippendorff’s $\alpha$-reliability. Western newspapers presented significantly more negative social frames, negative fairness-and-equality frames, and negative safety-and-health frames than did Eastern papers, which presented significantly more positive economic frames than did Western papers. Western newspapers expected more negative social, health, safety, and equality issues than did the East. The West anticipated little economic benefit. The East expected little harm to society, safety, health, and equality but rather foresaw beneficial economic outcomes.