The focus of the present paper is to examine the strategy use in Australian small and medium enterprises exporting to Asia. A selection of strategic issues is examined in order to identify their relative importance to a firm's exporting activities. No attempt is made to establish a causal linkage between strategy and export performance. Rather, the paper attempts to appraise the level of importance of various strategic factors that are often dealt with by an exporting firm. The study was conducted with an expectation of assisting future research endeavours into the relevance of strategies to export-performance. A set of impediments and the extent of their negativity on the exporting activities have also been considered, the understanding of which may help a firm in achieving appropriate strategic direction. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used in an attempt to capture the intricacies and challenges of using strategies in a cross-cultural environment.

The planning-performance literature suggests that there is a weak positive correlation between strategic planning and financial performance. This study has been undertaken to determine whether this weak positive correlation is true for Australian firms.

Strategic planning for the purposes of this study is arranged in three levels of planning complexity. A sample of 77 listed firms was surveyed to determine their level of planning complexity, and this was correlated with the firm's financial performance over a three year period.

A range of statistical tests did not reveal any significant correlation between strategic planning at any of the three levels and the financial performance of the firm. This negative finding is generally in line with other recent studies conducted in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

However, positive correlations were found with several subjective performance measures, suggesting that respondents generally believe that strategic planning is helping their company.

The diversity of internal and external customers continues to increase with social, economic and global changes. This presents an array of opportunities and challenges for organisations. In the present paper we argue that whether interactions between diverse individuals results in benefits or deficits for the organisation depends largely on the level of openness to dissimilarity present in the exchange. This proposition is developed and presented in a model linking types of diversity to organisational group process and outcome effects. Implications for interactions with diverse internal and external customers are suggested. Structural and management characteristics expected to enhance dissimilarity openness in the workforce are offered.

The relationship between exporters and independent foreign channel intermediaries (FCIs) is complex. The present paper analyses and discusses the potential types of opportunistic behaviour that might be engaged in by foreign agents or distributors (FCIs) using an agency theory approach. A classification framework of opportunistic behaviour is developed and a detailed qualitative examination of the content of five agency-distributor agreements between Australian exporters and their FCIs. A five-category classification scheme for opportunistic behaviour was found that included (1) product, (2) price, (3) information, (4) logistical, and (5) legal opportunism. The implications of each type of opportunism for an exporter are discussed using examples obtained from ways to control opportunistic behaviour are discussed.

Studies have shown that management training and development (MTD) can be a strategic weapon in improving performance and in building and sustaining competitive advantage. However, recent studies suggest that MTD is under-valued and under-used as a strategic tool by New Zealand firms as, despite a managerial skill shortage, New Zealand firms have not invested heavily in MTD. The present paper discusses a study of employer-based MTD in New Zealand that investigated managerial attitudes towards, and propensity to engage in, MTD. The study found several indicators that predict four MTD related variables (the MTD index, the percent of payroll spent on MTD, the increase in training expenditure and expected future increases in the MTD budget). The results suggest organisations that engage in MTD improve organisational effectiveness and implement their business strategy better and that MTD was seen as an important tool in gaining a competitive advantage.

This article presents a conceptual framework that participants in cooperative ventures may use to protect core competencies and proprietary information, while allowing the cooperative venture to benefit from these. While strategic alliances, in various forms, are becoming more common (Beamish and Delios, 1997), a potentially issue that often remains unresolved is how to protect your core competencies, while still cooperating openly with your partner, particularly when advanced technology is involved. It can be difficult for partners in an alliance to cooperate and openly share strategic know-how. Cooperation and openness are necessary, however, if a joint venture is to succeed. Since the success of any strategic alliance is based on cooperation, trust and an open sharing of competencies, potentially sensitive knowledge might be exposed through the joint venture. This is why many executives regard strategic alliances with reservation (Lorenz, 1992). They resist giving away core strategic competencies that might be misused in other contexts.

Readers of management books frequently find themselves among experts who claim to know about motivational and personality dispositions. However, they find it impossible to agree on the most basic of details. This paper argues that dispositions are myths derived from an inadequate grasp of their dubious logical and linguistic status. Concepts such as need, motive and trait are logically deficient because of the inherent problem of circularity and linguistically inadequate because of the vagueness of definition that applies to all dispositional theories. Two leading representatives of the motivational dispositional perspective in management [David McClelland and Abraham Maslow] serve as the basis for case studies in which the notions of need and motive are shown to be problematic. Personality traits are also analysed critically and reveal similar deficiencies. An analysis of the authoritarian personality serves as a third case study and reveals an important negative relationship between personality and intelligence. It is argued that personality reflects deficiencies rather than dispositions and an alternative view is offered which treats individuals as pattern perceivers and rational choosers of goals. Such a view, however, works against dispositionalism's scientism, which has found much favour with managers and their consultants for the past fifty years. Why this should be the case is briefly explored.

Consumers the world over are becoming more homogeneous thanks to the unifying forces of travel, media, technology, information transfer and the like. Furthermore, today customers have higher expectations than ever before regarding the quality of service they should receive from a wide range of service organisations (professional as well as non-professional). As customers are increasingly exposed to world best practice in a wide range of service industries, expectations spiral upwards. Slow, discourteous, unresponsive and unprofessional service will no longer be tolerated - but especially when the service is highly customised, complex, costly and high involvement, professional service.

Few, if any, studies have examined service quality issues for professional services in an international context. Hence, this case study documents the problems experienced by the Australian Trade Commission's (Austrade) Bangkok, Thailand Post in providing a level of service consistent with clients' (and senior managements') expectations, the steps taken to overcome these long standing service quality shortcomings, as well as the key lessons to be learnt from the process. Today Austrade provides a professional consulting service and thus possesses similar characteristics to many professional service firms (project management, engineering consulting, general management consulting, etc.) and thus the lessons from this successful change management program may be generalisable to other professional services. Furthermore, the lessons should prove invaluable for Australian firms operating in South-East Asia staffed by expatriates and local nationals.