Using Military Strategy to Teach Marketing Strategy: Preparing Students for the Global Economy

Young Americans have a distinct knowledge deficit regarding history, culture, and geography (Hess, 2008; National Geographic, 2006) that is so severe that they “lack even the most basic skills for navigating the international economy” (National Geographic 2006, p. 7). This manuscript provides an outline for a marketing strategy course that is designed to address these deficits. By applying concepts from military strategy to marketing strategy – with a strong emphasis on historical and geographical literacy – students achieve a deeper understanding of marketing strategy and a more flexible use of strategic principles across a variety of contexts, time frames, and national boundaries.

Co-opted Directors and Board Effectiveness: The Impact of Director Gender

Independent directors are viewed as critical to effective corporate governance. However Coles et al. (2014) introduce the concept of a “co-opted” director, one appointed after the firm’s CEO took office. They argue that, although technically independent, co-opted directors’ interests are more aligned with the CEO who was instrumental in their selection than with shareholders. However, research has shown that woman directors are more conscientious about their board duties than are men. This study investigates whether director gender mitigates the impact of co-option on board effectiveness, as measured by the frequency of board meetings. The results indicate that an increase in the proportion of co-opted male directors on a board is associated with a less effective board. However, no such relation is found for co-opted female directors. Despite incentives to act otherwise, boards with higher percentages of co-opted women directors appear to continue to fulfill their duties to shareholders.

Leveraging Language Proficiency Through Cultural Intelligence to Improve Global Virtual Team Performance

We examine the effect of group level skills on group processes and collective outcomes in multilingual, multicultural global virtual teams. We test a moderated mediation model in which cultural intelligence (CQ) is found to moderate the relationship between average team perceived English language proficiency, team creativity, and team performance with the variables of elaboration of task information and task conflict serving as mediators in the relationship. Data was gathered from 5,852 people working in 895 teams to test the model. Results show that the average English proficiency of the team is positively associated with both team creativity and overall team performance through the mediator of elaboration of task information. CQ moderates this relationship such that teams high in average CQ are much better at elaborating task information as average team English skills increase while teams with low average CQ experience only minimal increases in task elaboration as English skills increase. The model is not significant, however, when using average levels of task conflict on the team as a mediating variable. CQ does not moderate conflict, and conflict is not significantly related to either creativity or overall team performance. We explore implications for managerial practice and directions for future research. Keywords: GVTs; CQ; English proficiency; elaboration of task-relevant information; task conflict; team creativity; team performance