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An assessment of the measurement of performance in international business research

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Abstract

A sizeable body of international business (IB) research is devoted to building knowledge about the determinants of organizational performance. A key precursor to accurately diagnosing why some organizations succeed in the international marketplace while others struggle is operationalizing performance appropriately. Yet, to date, no systematic investigation has considered how well IB research measures performance. We examine the measurement of performance in 96 articles published in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of International Business Studies, Management Science, Organization Science, and the Strategic Management Journal between 1995 and 2005. The findings reveal that most studies do not measure performance in a manner that captures the multifaceted nature of the construct. We describe the implications of these results, and offer suggestions for improving future practice.

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Notes

  1. In this study, to be consistent with the extant literature, we use Venkatraman and Ramanujam's (1986) terminology, where “primary” refers to subjective data and “secondary” refers to objective data.

  2. This time period was also selected based upon the initial discussions of measurement invariance in the IB literature initiated by Mullen (1995) and Singh (1995).

  3. Although the Journal of Consumer Research is considered influential in the marketing field (Werner & Brouthers, 2002), its primary unit of analysis is the consumer, not the firm. Also, no articles in Marketing Science, another important marketing journal, were found to be within the domain of our analysis.

  4. Based on a reviewer's comment, we also examined the data using two 5-year periods. The findings were substantively the same: thus we report findings that draw on all 11 years of data.

  5. See Heckman (1979) for a full explanation of the selection correction procedure, or Shaver (1998) for the adaptation to entry mode research.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the guidance provided by Editor-in-Chief Arie Y Lewin and the anonymous reviewers, as well as research funding from the Center for International Business Education and Research at Michigan State University (MSU-CIBER).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    G Tomas M Hult, David A Griffith, Mary K Hamman, Bernadine Johnson Dykes, Wesley A Pollitte & S Tamer Cavusgil

  2. Auburn University, Auburn, USA

    David J Ketchen Jr

  3. University of Tulsa, Tulsa, USA

    Brian R Chabowski

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  1. G Tomas M Hult
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  2. David J Ketchen Jr
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  3. David A Griffith
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  4. Brian R Chabowski
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  7. Wesley A Pollitte
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  8. S Tamer Cavusgil
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Correspondence to G Tomas M Hult.

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Accepted by Arie Y Lewin, Editor-in-Chief, 24 September 2007. This paper has been with the authors for two revisions.

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Hult, G., Ketchen, D., Griffith, D. et al. An assessment of the measurement of performance in international business research. J Int Bus Stud 39, 1064–1080 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400398

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400398

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