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Dear Tunga, My thanks to you and my fellow AIB members for your helpful comments. I'm guessing your suppositions in 2) are spot on, although they are probably impossible to confirm. In the case of Map 4.4, we chose to report Ronen & Shenkar's results verbatim--hence the inclusion of both Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates and the exclusion of Qatar. After reading and thinking about Nnamdi's email, I believe it would have been better to include the United Arab Emirates but exclude both Abu Dhabi and Qatar if one were to rely solely on the R&S article. (Abu Dhabi because it is part of the UAE; Qatar because it wasn't part of Badawy's (1979) study on which R&S based their Arab cluster.) However, as you and Nnamdi suggest, it would be beneficial to incorporate the results of more recent research in this area, which has broadened the sample of countries examined, including such important international players as Qatar. AIB members with an interest in the country clusters literature might find Professor Littrell's paper of interest, which was sent earlier as part of this discussion. A link to it follows: Littrell's email on the AIB listserve: I find attempting to cluster societal cultures to be a fallacy, with unresolvable method variance, see: CCCC WP 2013.2: Citation: Littrell, Romie F. (2012). Clustering national cultures: A fallacy, or not, or not always? Proceedings Academy of International Business 2012 Annual Meeting (online), Washington, DC, USA, June 30-July 3, 2012, East Lansing, MI, USA: MSU-CIBER & Eli Brad College of Business at Michigan State University. Also available as working paper CCCC WP 2013.2 athttp://crossculturalcentre.homestead.com/WorkingPapers.html From: Academy of International Business List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tunga Kiyak Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 9:35 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [AIB-L] Griffin & Pustay Dear Nnamdi, Your questions were intriguing so I had to put aside my work and investigate, since as you mentioned Griffin and Pustay is one of the more established textbooks in the market. So, here are a few clarifications to assist your students: 1) I don't know how the Global Edition was printed, but in the US Edition, there is a direct reference to the Ronen and Shenkar (1985) article, right below the map. So, I think, if there is an error there, it was a printing error by the publisher and not an intended omission by the authors. This is not surprising, since in textbook publishing these days, copyright and permissions are quite carefully monitored, so I would have found it hard to believe that something like that could have sneaked through, especially in an established textbook. 2) One of the things I always teach my students is that, if there is something they question in a book or article, to always seek out the original citation and look at the original work to see if the peculiarities have been addressed. So, I went and looked at the Ronen and Shenkar article, which actually reviews several other articles to put together the clusters. Specifically, the "Arab" cluster comes from Badawy 1979 which is an Academy of Management Conference Proceedings article. I did manage to download that article as well and the data comes from a survey of Middle Eastern executives that were attending an executive development program in 1978. So, that partially explains a few things: (a) Qatar was omitted because there were probably no executives from Qatar at the executive development program where the survey was conducted. In addition, if you look at that map, it's not a comprehensive analysis. Only 47 countries are marked on the map, which means over 150 countries are missing from the analysis, in addition to Qatar. So there is no conspiracy to exclude Qatar. (b) The original 1979 article also includes both Abu Dhabi and United Arab Emirates on the list. I'm going to assume these were self-reported by the managers that were surveyed. I'm not an expert in UAE history, but I know that the emirates joined together in 1971 so it would not be surprising that some managers still felt a stronger affiliation with Abu Dhabi than with the UAE only eight years later. The author of the original study could have corrected this, but probably chose to report it exactly as the managers did. So, I don't think there is any huge error or mistake in the map. But, I would question the utility of using that map in an 2013 book, when the map was first published in 1985, and most of the analysis was done back in the late 1970s. Surely there has been much more insightful research published in IB literature in the 30 years since that article that could have be of higher benefit to the students. Best Regards, Tunga --- Tunga Kiyak Michigan State University ________________________________ From: Nnamdi Madichie <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 1:57 PM Subject: [AIB-L] Griffin & Pustay Dear Colleagues, I was going to use the subject "Just when you thought they weren't paying attention," but decided against it. My normally detached students have brought up, at different times in the last week, some serious flaw in what many see as a key IB text - i.e. Griffin, R., and Pustay, M. (2013) International Business. Harlow, England: Pearson. Global Edition. The key contention relates to Map 4.4 entitled "A synthesis of country clusters" (see p. 126) where Arab Clusters included both Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates. Surprise, surprise, Qatar was clearly left out. Just after class today, another student suggested that Griffin and Pustay might have lifted the clustering without checking the facts, from Ronen and Shenkar (1985) paper in the Academy of Management Review, Vol. 10(3) where upon checking this out I quite agreed because the evidence is on p. 445 of this seminal article. I need to get back to my students after your responses have been received. Cheers, Nnamdi _________________________________________________________________ "Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter" - Achebe (R.I.P.) 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