Dr Joanna Karmowska

Language plays a complex role in coaching, facilitating communication, comprehension, and meaning construction. Yet, the implications of coaching in a non-native language are uncertain and under-researched. This study explores the role of non-native language (NNL) in dyadic workplace coaching practice. Specifically, it explores how working in a NNL influences the coaching experience from the coach’s perspective.
A qualitative approach was chosen to explore the way coaches view coaching in a NNL. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted with coaches experienced in coaching in NNL. Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) was applied for data analysis.
NNL coaching presents a paradoxical mix of negative and positive tensions for the coach and coachee in communication, relationship, and insight. NNL coaching is nuanced and may be accommodated using coaching competencies to mitigate the potential for misunderstanding and relationship rupture. It offers alternative perspectives to existing worldviews, eliciting deeper insights. Coaches’ confidence in coaching in a NNL varies from a challenging struggle that perceptually hinders performance, through ambivalence, to a sense of greater resourcefulness.
The study contributes to the stream of literature on language in international business, sociolinguistic research, and how meaning is constructed in a coaching process. First, the work develops a distinction between coaching in a native language (NL) and a NNL. Second, study results indicate that the context of NNL creates challenges as well as opportunities in a dyadic coaching process, particularly regarding aspects of the coach–coachee relationship and insight elicitation via alternative perspectives. Moreover, several practical implications of the study for the coaching practice are discussed.

Purpose: Drawing on an organizational learning perspective, this paper examines the effect of levels of foreign market involvement (intensity and geographic spread) on internationalization outcomes recognizing that the moderating influence of entry-mode learning potential is not well-documented in the literature on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 

Methodology: Our sample includes 180 SMEs evenly selected from three industries: biotechnology, software and clothing (60 firms in each industry). The sampled firms employ less than 250 employees and are equally distributed between three developed economies and three emerging economies. All were engaged in foreign business.

Findings: We find that there is a direct relationship between levels of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes. Entry-mode learning potential moderates the relationship between intensity of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes but not the relationship between geographic spread and internationalization outcomes.

Originality: We conclude that the positive relationship between intensity of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes is strengthened when SMEs also use an entry mode with a higher learning potential than exporting only.

Practical Implications: This study reveals several new insights that help explain the pathway through which foreign market involvement activities are translated into internationalization outcomes.

This paper investigates whether different categories of links (core and discretionary) to external resource providers are associated with the international performance of SMEs, as well as the perceived importance of external links for providing specific forms of assistance toward inter- nationalization. A study of 180 internationally active SMEs examines whether these features vary according to the SMEs’ contexts, specifically their industry and level of home economy devel- opment. The relevance of these two contexts is theoretically informed by resource dependence, environmental munificence and institutional perspectives. SME decision-makers’ attribution of importance to discretionary external links predicts stronger international performance, but this is not the case with core market transactional links. Different external parties emerge as important sources of specific forms of assistance toward internationalization. Many of these results are associated with the SME’s industry and home economy context. The paper concludes with a new contextually-informed model of SME egocentric networking and implications for practice.

This article reviews how context has been considered in studies on SME internationalization. It examines 333 articles published during the period 2010–2020 in leading international business, entrepreneurship, strategy and international marketing journals. It identifies their key findings, discusses the theoretical perspectives informing this literature, analyzes conceptual and methodological challenges, and suggests paths for theory development and future research. The review also provides a platform from which to address some of the limitations in in- ternational business [IB] theories when applied to SMEs, including organizational size as a boundary condition.

This paper explores the effects of flexible working arrangements on employees and their managers in a service sector. Analyzing a case study of a global management consultancy, the study concerns the impact of flexible working arrangements on job satisfaction, commitment and performance as well as well-being. While it is generally accepted that flexible working arrangements have a positive impact on employees, there has been only limited theorizing and research explaining how and why such impact is generated and which contextual organizational factors might be significant in shaping the outcome. The study provides mixed evidence for benefits from flexible working arrangements where potential for increased employee performance, well-being and job satisfaction is offset by work intensification, blurred work/home boundaries, professional isolation and perceived organizational injustice. Practical implications of the study results have been intensified by accelerated organizational transition into flexible working arrangements caused by restrictions imposed as a result of Covid-19 pandemic. 

This paper contributes to a multidimensional perspective on the speed of SME internationalization. It examines the influence of entrepreneurial characteristics – experience, rationales and innovation strategies – on multiple dimensions of internationalization speed. Findings from a sample of 180 SMEs show that earliness, speed of deepening, and speed of geographic diversification can be viewed as three different strategic alternatives and that each dimension is predicted by a different set of entrepreneurial antecedents. Earliness of internationalization is associated with entrepreneurs’ international business experience and their perception of opportunities abroad as well as preference for an innovation strategy characterized by ambidextrous innovation. Speed of deepening is related to entrepreneurs’ international business experience, their orientation towards differentiation vis-à-vis competitors, and commitment to innovation and a strategy focusing on exploration. These results indicate the importance of distinguishing between different forms of innovation. Speed of geographic diversification is predicted only by entrepreneurs’ orientation towards differentiation vis-à-vis competitors.

The paper examines a union initiative to recruit among migrant workers through the provision of individual services outside of the workplace.  While the initiative is shown to have initially generated new members, questions are raised about the viability of such an approach in the absence of mutually supportive access to workplace representation.

This article is based on a recent study of attempts by a range of British trade unions to access and engage with Polish migrant workers at the community or labour market level, rather than workplace level. The findings suggest that migrant workers can indeed be recruited at this level. Doubts are expressed, however, about the sustainability of new membership gained in this way. These doubts are linked to a marked absence of clear union strategies to create a longer-term nexus of interest with those who are recruited, of the type advocated in, for example, the North American ‘new labor movement’ literature. This absence – it is argued – may be less a reflection of a lack of strategic leadership than a product of the difficulties unions face in identifying viable strategies relating to the representation and organization of workers above the workplace level.

Neo-liberalism may intensify competition, not only between, but also within cities, as local authorities collaborate with commercial and third-sector organisations to nurture emerging visitor economies. This article considers reimaging strategies that trade upon features of the place-product that include ethnic cuisine, street markets and festivals, set against the backdrop of an exoticised urban landscape. Through longitudinal case studies of two multicultural districts in east London, the authors examine the public policy rationale for their selection and redefinition as new destinations for leisure and tourism, identifying the key agents of change and the range of techniques used to market ethnic and cultural difference. This leads to a critical discussion of the issues arising for urban governance and the reconciliation of their role as social and commercial hubs for minority groups, with the accommodation of high-spending leisure consumers from the dominant culture and, in some cases, international tourists.