Living Like A Monk: Motivations and Experiences of International Participants in Templestay

Templestay has transformed the perception and traditional role of Buddhist monasteries into a hybrid form of leisure and recreational dwelling that transcends religious boundaries. We identify four domains of motivational variables including learning, self-growth, being with nature, and relaxation. Based on data from 299 international participants in Templestay, empirical tests of the hypotheses revealed that motivational domains such as self-growth, nature, and learning exhibited significant differences based on the various socio-demographic backgrounds of international participants. Strategies are suggested for crafting Templestay as a cultural and monastic experience as well as segmenting and targeting international participants based on their needs

The impact of alliance management capabilities on alliance attributes and performance: A literature review

The literature on alliances has identified a variety of inter-firm antecedents of performance, including information and knowledge sharing between partners, shared partner understanding, and a focus on collective objectives. Recent studies have focused on alliance management capabilities (AMC) - firms' abilities to capture, share, store and apply alliance management knowledge - as an important antecedent of performance. This paper reviews 90 studies on AMC and makes two important contributions to the literature. First, the review provides an overview of and classification scheme for the different types of AMC to better organise the diverse empirical findings that have been presented in the literature. The novel classification distinguishes between general and partner-specific AMC and between AMC stored within the firm and within the alliance. Second, consistent with the dynamic capabilities perspective, this paper offers a more detailed understanding of why AMC improve performance, by highlighting the intermediate impact of AMC on alliance attributes. In particular, the review demonstrates how the different categories of AMC influence alliances in terms of information and knowledge-sharing between partners, shared partner understanding and the pursuit of collective goals. The review also demonstrates that these attributes improve performance. The authors note promising avenues for future empirical research that involve combining the classification scheme with research on the impact of AMC on alliance attributes and performance

A Fly That Has No Counselor Will Follow the Corpse to the Grave: Nigerian Culture’s Influence on Negotiation

Gaining global economic advantages in the current era involves transcending national borders and forming collaborative business relationships within frontier markets such as Nigeria. The negotiations mandated by these relationships are highly culturally-dependent as such, foreign entities must learn the Nigerian negotiating style before engaging in business within the nation. We thus present, in this research, a profile of the Nigerian negotiating style. We empirically test a previously published series of propositions on the Nigerian negotiation profile and find that even though higher status negotiators are desired, informal and collectivistic/consensus-driven negotiations that result in complex agreements are preferred