Workplace bullying is behavior that threatens, intimidates, humiliates, or isolates people at work, or undermines their reputation or job performance. Moving beyond research, academics and employment practitioners are beginning to address the need to design and implement organizational anti-bullying policies, training, conflict management programs and systems, and possibly anti-bullying public policy and legislation. Consultants will play a key role in helping organizations develop and implement internal organizational programs. In this paper we describe alternative dispute resolution systems and workplace training. Key objectives include arriving at a clear definition of workplace bullying, fostering individual, organizational, and societal awareness of the prevalence and consequences of workplace bullying; and providing specific guidance and mechanisms for individuals, managers, Human Resource departments, corporate leadership, union representatives, attorneys, physicians, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists, for preventing and handling bullying incidents. 

Varma, A., Budhwar, P., & Pichler, S. (in press). Chinese host country nationals’ willingness to help expatriates: The role of social categorization. Thunderbird International Business Review. In this study, we examine Chinese HCNs’ willingness to offer role information and social support to expatriates from the U.S. Using data from 132 Chinese managers, we find that ethnocentrism, interpersonal affect, and guanxi significantly impact HCNs’ willingness to offer help to expatriates. Furthermore, we find that job level of expatriate has a significant impact on HCN willingness to offer role information, but not on willingness to offer social support. The results suggest that paying attention to the perceptions and reactions of HCNs towards expatriates is imperative for multinational companies, if expatriates are to succeed on their assignments.

Stanko, B. B., Kostolansky, J., & Landgraf, E. L. "Composite Manufacturing Company: A Financial (Mis)Statement Case." Journal of Business Case Studies (2010), 6, 10, 1-12.
Composite Manufacturing is a thriving privately-held company whose owners need to attract outside investors. Composite’s financial statements have not been professionally prepared nor audited. Although there is no fraud or intentional wrongdoing, the inexperience of the owners and their bookkeeper has resulted in improper financial reporting. In this case students will have to identify and restate revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, and retained earnings in so far as they are not reported in accord with generally accepted accounting principles. Students are provided with a “Student Adjustment Template” and a “Student Worksheet Template” that allow them to make correcting entries in an organized manner as well as make subsequent changes to the financial statements. Instructors are provided with teaching notes, a “Student Adjustment Template Solution” and a “Student Worksheet Template Solution”.

Shultz, C. & Mittelstaedt, J., "The Changing Face of Markets and Marketing Systems in Socioeconomic Development: Introductory Comments on the Special Issue." Journal of Macromarketing, 29. 4 (2009), 346-348.
The challenges facing rural or depressed communities in developed countries cannot be separated from the issues facing towns or villages in the developing world. The premise that “marketing and development” is an issue important exclusively to developing countries must be challenged. While it is typically assumed that knowledge transfer on marketing and development moves from the developed world to the developing world, there is much that developed market economies can learn from developing market economies. For example, how does a country with a well-established marketing system ensure adequate economic development for its rural communities? Similarly, how does a developed marketing system deal with systemic shock from a product, regulatory or other failure? There are lessons in the market development perspective that strengthen our understanding of marketing systems. At the same time, the systems perspective of macromarketing offers a valuable viewpoint on growth and development, both historically and in contemporary context. Over the last three decades scholars have applied the lessons gained from Macromarketing and market-and-development research to emerging and war-torn economies, and the interdependent relationships between developed and developing worlds as a result of globalization.

Shultz, C., Renko, S., & Brcic-Stipcevic, V. "Grocery Store-Attributes in Recovering Economies: An Empirical Investigation of Their Importance, Using Three Component Contour Plotting." Journal of International Food & Agribusiness Marketing, 22. 1-2 (2010), 37-51.
The authors share results of a study conducted to measure the attributes of grocery stores that are the most important for consumers in a market recovering from war and transitioning to a market economy. Applying a trilinear coordinate plot, the authors develop a model that consists of those attributes. The findings led to conclusions that services and location, rather than the historically favored attribute of price, increasingly are key factors affecting store choice. Managerial implications are discussed and future research directions are suggested.

Purpose – Increasing turnover of frontline staff in call centres is detrimental to the delivery of quality service to customers. This paper aims to present the context for the rapid growth of the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector in India, and to address a critical issue faced by call centre organisations in this sector – the high employee turnover.
 

Design/methodology/approach – Following a triangulation approach, two separate empirical investigations are conducted to examine various aspects of high labour turnover rates in the call centre sector in India. Study one examines the research issue via 51 in-depth interviews in as many units. Study two reports results from a questionnaire survey with 204 frontline agents across 11 call centres regarding employee turnover.

Findings – This research reveals a range of reasons – from monotonous work, stressful work environment, adverse working conditions, lack of career
development opportunities; to better job opportunities elsewhere, which emerge as the key causes of increasing attrition rates in the Indian call centre industry.
 

Research limitations/implications – The research suggests that there are several issues that need to be handled carefully by management of call centres in India to overcome the problem of increasing employee turnover, and that this also demands support from the Indian government.
 

Originality/value – The contributions of this study untangle the issues underlying a key problem in the call centre industry, i.e. employee turnover in the Indian call centre industry context. Adopting an internal marketing approach, it provides useful information for both academics and practitioners and suggests internal marketing interventions, and avenues for future research to combat the problem of employee turnover.

The purpose of this study is to compare women’s mentoring experience in 9 countries within the Americas, and to explore linkages between personal characteristics, mentoring practices, mentoring functions and consequences of being a mentee.
Most of the women had more than one mentor. Across all countries mentoring practices were more strongly linked to career mentoring function while the age and gender of the mentor were more strongly linked to psychosocial mentoring. Mentoring from the perspective of mentee had the same directional relationship with situational and individual variables, but the significance of those relationships varied by country. A possible cultural difference was detected between Spanish and non-Spanish speaking countries on the issue of mentoring practice.
Companies interested in fostering mentoring among their members, particularly women, should be aware that different mentoring functions are influenced by different factors. For example, formal mentoring programs appear to have a greater impact on career mentoring functions than on psychosocial mentoring functions. To support women in their careers, companies should institute formal mentoring programs; this is especially important in South American countries. Moreover, mentoring programs must be designed to be adaptive since the analyses indicated that there are significant differences by country.

Tata, J. & Prasad, S. (2010). Micro-Credit Programmes, Social Capital, and Micro-Enterprise Performance. International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 5 (1), 31-45.
icro-credit programs (generally considered to be initiated by the 2006 Nobel Prize winner Mohammed Yunus of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh) are a form of social (global) entrepreneurship that work with low-income micro-enterprise owners and construct alternate means of approving, disbursing, and monitoring loans for micro-enterprises. In this paper we develop a model that identifies several characteristics of group-based micro-credit programs that are necessary to incubate the development of borrowers’ social capital and increase the performance of their micro-enterprises.

A majority of citizens in the developing world rely upon self-employment and micro-enterprise operations as their primary and only source of income.  Such individuals can improve their livelihood by applying good management methods in their micro-enterprises.  In this research, we employ case study methodology to examine how operational methods could be potentially employed in increasing the quality of such micro-enterprises. A number of general propositions are developed and potentially fruitful research areas identified.