Vol. 18 No . 1ISSN 0872-84969 7 7 0 8 7 2 8 4 9 0 0 7ISSN 0872-8496EUROASIAJOURNALOFMANAGEMENT35Vol.18No.1JUNE2008SPECIAL SECTION ON COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENTEDITED BY GUEST EDITOR: SOW HUP CHANCommunicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive andCross-Cultural Are Business Graphics?An Exploratory Investigation of Locally ConstitutedChallenges to Communication Management inMultinational TeamsREGULAR SECTIONTheoretical and Historical Framework Underlying theQualstrategy ModelKey Considerations in Adopting Tourism as aDestination Development StrategyMeasuring the Quality of the Reference Services inAcademic Libraries: A Malaysian Perspective

AIM AND SCOPE Euro Asia Journal of Management (EAJM) is devoted to provide a forum for discussion over a wide range of management issues defined in the broad sense. However, particular emphases are placed on the advancement of management theory and practice in Asia, especially China, and the European continent. Published twice yearly by the Macau Foundation, EAJM welcomes submissions in the following areas: Accounting and finance, information technology management, strategic management, cross-cultural and international management, organizational behavior and learning, human resources management, public sector management, corporate governance, quality management, and tourism management. EAJM will include scholarly peer-reviewed papers in the form of empirical studies, qualitative inquiries, case studies, as well as critical literature reviews. From time to time, special sections are opened for debates, interviews, and commentaries. EDITORIAL BOARD Nelson António, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Portugal Virgínia Trigo, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Portugal Carlos Noronha, University of Macau, Macau Tiffany Lam, University of Macau, Macau EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Tetsuo Abo, Teikyo University, Japan Douglas Allen, University of Denver, USA Robert Boyer, Centre D’etudes Prospectives D’economie Mathematique, France Eduardo Gomes Cardoso, Instituto para o Desenvolvimento da Gestão Empresarial, Portugal Su Mi Park Dahlgaard, Linköpings University, Sweden Harukiyo Hasegawa, University of Sheffield, UK Hideo Inohara, Sophia University, Japan Jorge Correia Jesuino, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Portugal Ekkehard Kappler, University of Innsbruck, Austria Martin Kenney, University of California at Davis, USA Mário Murteira, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Portugal Terutomo Ozawa, Colorado State University, USA Sung Jo Park, Free University of Berlin, Germany Tanya Phonanan, ASEAN Human Resource Management Federation & Thompson Television Thailand Wan Ahmad Shaffie, Malaysian Association of Human Resources Management & Menara Maybank Malaysia Hannes Streim, Bochum University, Germany Kay-Chuan Tan, National University of Singapore, Singapore Robert Terpstra, University of Macau, Macau Ingemar Torbiörn, University of Stockholm, Sweden Tadashi Umezawa, Toyko Keizai University, Japan Gerald Vinten, European Business School, UK Youmin Xi, Xian Jiaotong University, China Oliver Yau, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Shuming Zhao, Nanjing University, China Note: The views of articles may not be those of the Journal.

Vol. 18 No. 1, June 2008http://www.geocities.com/eajm2002CONTENTSIndexed in Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory andCabell’s Directory of Publishing Opportunities in ManagementSPECIAL SECTION ON COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENTEDITED BY GUEST EDITOR: SOW HUP CHAN1. Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? ...... 3-22Martin J. Eppler, Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Lugano (USI), SwitzerlandJianxin Ge, Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE), Beijing, P.R. China2. An Exploratory Investigation of Locally Constituted Challenges to CommunicationManagement in Multinational Teams ............................................................................................. 23-36Jakob Lauring, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, DenmarkCharlotte Jonasson, DemarkREGULAR SECTION3. Theoretical and Historical Framework Underlying the Qualstrategy Model................................ 37-50António Teixeira, UNIDE, ISCTE Business School, ISCTE, Lisboa, PortugalNelson António, UNIDE, ISCTE Business School, ISCTE, Lisboa, Portugal4. Key Considerations in Adopting Tourism as a Destination Development Strategy ...................... 51-61Glenn McCartney, Faculty of International Tourism, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau5. Measuring the Quality of the Reference Services in Academic Libraries: A MalaysianPerspective ........................................................................................................................................ 63-76Wail Alhakimi, Faculty of Management and Human Resource Development, Universiti TeknologiMalaysia, MalaysiaZainab Khalifah, Faculty of Management and Human Resource Development, Universiti TeknologiMalaysia, Malaysia

Euro Asia Journal of Management Issue 35, Vol. 18, No.1, June 2008, pp.3-22 COMMUNICATING WITH DIAGRAMS: HOW INTUITIVE AND CROSS-CULTURAL ARE BUSINESS GRAPHICS?∗ MARTIN J. EPPLER1 and JIANXIN GE2 ABSTRACT This article reports on the results of an intercultural card sorting experiment with 104 students in Beijing and Cambridge (UK) to identify similarities and differences in the interpretation of visual business communication formats by students. The results show that English and Chinese strategy students differ dramatically in terms of their similarity and grouping decisions of business diagrams. The results indicate that communicators who employ business graphics for their presentations should pay attention to their target groups and visual formats to avoid misinterpretation in different cultural regions. The article is a contribution to visual approaches to communication management and highlights their limitations and risks. ∗ This paper was accepted by Dr Sow Hup Chan (Guest Editor for special section on Communication Management). 1 Institute for Corporate Communication, Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Lugano (USI), Via Buffi 13, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland. Email: Martin.Eppler@gmail.com 2 Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE), 39 South College Road, Haidjian, 100081 Beijing, P.R. China. Email: GeJianxin@gmail.com

Special Section on Communication Management 4 INTRODUCTION: THE RELEVANCE OF BUSINESS GRAPHICS Managers in the global business community frequently employ standardized graphic formats in their various business communication contexts, ranging from team meetings, strategy workshops, internal reports, employee newsletters or management presentations, to annual reports (Meyer, 1997; Jarvenpaa & Dickson, 1988; Galloway, 1994; Smelcer & Carmel, 1997; Hodgkinson et al., 2004). These graphic formats serve a variety of purposes – from representing financial results, to analyzing industry developments and forces, to outlining future options or prioritizing business activities. Typical examples of such business graphic formats for internal and external communication are pie charts, bar charts, management matrices, flow charts, or visual metaphors such as an iceberg or a temple. Managers may assume that these graphic formats are intuitively understood by employees across different levels of qualification and experience and across cultural boundaries and may consequently risk to be misunderstood or to create confusion if their charts cannot be interpreted properly by their staff or clients. Managers working in Asia as well as in Europe may also assume that they know how to choose the best graphic representation format for the content which they need to communicate, regardless of their target groups in both regions. They may choose their visual communication formats without the necessary empirical information on how these methods are actually understood and interpreted by employees and clients in Asia and Europe. In order to contribute to the emergence of a global visual business language (Horn, 1998) that can be understood by people in both Europe and Asia and thus facilitate intercultural business communication, we have to analyze which visual formats are easily understood and which are not, which graphic formats are well known and which are less widely known. This can also be useful in devising teaching strategies on business visualization by highlighting possible misinterpretations and by educating business communication students about methods that are less popular (and by explaining their application contexts). As visual communication can be especially useful in intercultural business contexts, one has to analyze which business graphics are perceived in similar ways and which provoke different interpretations across cultures (such as the European versus the Asian context). The main research question addressed in this paper is therefore: Do Asian and European students differ in the way they spontaneously categorize typical business visualization formats into groups, and if so in what way (and why)? A closely related, secondary research question regards the resulting groups: Which user-based classification of visual formats for business can be derived from the groups of the students?

Martin J. Eppler and Jianxin Ge Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? 5 METHODS: CARD SORTING AND CLUSTER ANALYSIS A feasible research method for this question of identifying differences in the perception of business graphics is the picture sorting procedure (Rugg & George, 2005) that is described further below. Picture sorting methods, as an empirical research method, also help to achieve another, closely related goal: They enable the creation of a user-based classification of management-related visual methods and to analyze the underlying characteristics as a basis for the subsequent development of comprehensible, sound and useful classifications (Ranking, 1990). In this paper, we view visual methods as standardized, rule- or procedure-based, diagrammatic (i.e., abstract) graphic depictions that can be used to represent information that is relevant for managerial decision making. By combining (through cluster analysis) the groupings of such methods of Chinese and English students we can generate a classification of such methods that may be more accessible to both cultural groups. There are numerous benefits that can be achieved through such a classification: First, it can provide a descriptive overview of the business graphics domain (Bailey, 1994: 12) and it can function as an inventory or repository (p. 13). In this way a classification can also become a problem solving heuristic. A classification reduces the complexity inherent in choosing a visualization format for a particular application context. As a further benefit, a classification helps to recognize the similarities and differences among different visualization techniques. It helps to compare different types along pertinent criteria. A classification, according to Bailey (1994) is the ordering of entities into groups or classes on the basis of their similarity. Classifications minimize within-group variance and maximize between-group variance (Bowker & Star, 1999). If a classification is derived empirically, i.e., ex-post through cluster analysis as in this paper, one can refer to this classification as a taxonomy (Bowker & Star, 1999). In the rest of this paper, we describe how such a taxonomy was created through a picture card sorting task completed by students and what we can learn from this for communication management in Asia and Europe. To test the assumption that standard business diagrams may provoke different kinds of interpretations and different levels of familiarity, we have conducted two image sorting experiments with students in Britain and China. In these experiments we have asked a total of 104 individuals to group a set of thirty typical business visualization thumbnails into groups based on their perceived similarity. The box below shows the slide that we have used to instruct the students in England for this procedure. It was translated into Chinese for the students in Beijing.

Special Section on Communication Management 6 1. Work on your own. Make sure you don’t mix your cards with your neighbours’ (use name block as separator). 2. Look at each card carefully. 3. Write on each card what the method/ visualisation form is called. If you don’t know it, leave it blank. 4. Then, put cards that belong together on a pile and put each pile into a separate enevelope. Label the envelope with an informative group name. 5. Having done that for all cards, try to combine the groups into clusters. Put each group cluster into a larger-size envelope and label each one with a category name. 6. Having done that, put your larger envelopes into your main envelope and mark it with either M(ale) or F(emale). We have aggregated, analyzed, and compared the resulting classifications through multi-dimensional scaling methods and cluster analysis (Borg & Groenen, 2005). We have opted for a card sorting approach, as this technique reveals the individual and collective similarity judgements among business visualizations which can be useful indicators on the interpretation of such charts. By analyzing the groups that students create to classify business diagrams, we can infer how they perceive and interpret such diagrams and consequently how British and Chinese students differ in those interpretations. In the remainder of this method section we describe the demographics of the participants as well as the sorting task that we have asked them to perform. Demographics of the Participants The two card sorting experiments were conducted in September and December of 2006 in Cambridge and Beijing respectively. Of the 65 participants in Beijing, 29 were men, while 36 were women. All were in their third year of undergraduate business studies and participating in the course on Strategic Management at the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE). The card sorting experiment conducted in the United Kingdom was held at the University of Cambridge. The participants consisted of 37 students in the fourth year of studies in the program of manufacturing management. Seven were female, while 30 were male. The card sorting instructions and time given to both students were identical. While the explanations given to the students in Cambridge were offered in English, they were given in Chinese to the students in Beijing. Chinese students completed the entire exercise in Chinese, while the Cambridge students proceeded in English.

Martin J. Eppler and Jianxin Ge Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? 7Task Description In order to elicit the classification attributes and salient features of diagrams that can be used in management, we have conducted two all in one, open picture card sorting experiments (Rugg & George, 2005: 97; Borg & Groenen, 2005: 113) where we have asked 67 business students from the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, China, as well as 37 fourth year engineering and manufacturing management students from Cambridge University (UK) to group thirty (4 cm by 5 cm) black and white cards (see figure 1 and table 1) into groups based on their similarity. The cards were given to each participant in an envelope. Each envelope contained the card set in a randomized order to prevent a sequence bias. The students were given 35 minutes to complete the picture sorting task. They were asked to label each resulting group by writing a label on each envelope that contained a grouped set. Unlike Lohse et al. (1994) we did not present any prior criteria, questions, or rating scales to the participants in order not to bias their responses through previous frames or anchors introduced by the researchers. We also tried to homogenize the sample and reduce misleading details by drawing all cards in the same (hand-drawn) style and by embedding the same generic content in all formats (represented through capitalized letters such as A, B, C, D., etc.). The following thirty visual formats were selected for the card sorting task.

Martin J. Eppler and Jianxin Ge Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? 9TABLE 1 A selection of 30 visualization-based methods (ordered by vertical column in figure 1) 1. Fishbone diagram 2. Porter’s value chain 3. The BCG portfolio matrix 4. Porter’s five forces diagram 5. Technology roadmap 6. Trail diagram 7. Iceberg diagram 8. Toulmin diagram 9. Radar chart 10. Gantt chart 11. Steps diagram 12. Concentric circles diagram 13. Decision tree 14. Pie chart 15. Cartesian coordinates 16. Connectance diagram 17. Temple diagram 18. Org chart / tree 19. Pyramid 20. Venn diagram 21. Profile chart 22. Loop (or system) diagram 23. Concept map 24. Bar chart 25. Life cycle diagram 26. Flow chart 27. Mind map 28. Morphological box 29. Line chart 30. Strategy map (BSC) These 30 formats were chosen because they have been used in management media, such as magazines (e.g., the Harvard Business Review), in management books (such as Huff, 1990) or on management resource websites that contain directories of typical management methods (such as www.valuebasedmanagement.net). The collection was also compiled so that the diversity of managerial visualization methods would be reflected adequately in the selection. The collection thus includes quantitative, and qualitative, generic and specific, conceptual and metaphoric, structural and procedural/temporal formats. We have paid special attention to homogenize their variance, and reduce distracting features in each diagram. For this purpose we have drawn all card pictures in the same visual, black and white style, with place holders (capital letters) as content elements, as mentioned above. Having explained the rationale, context, and procedure used in the card sort experiment, we turn to the main results in the next section. RESULTS The obtained results from the card sorting exercises can be structured into four sections: results regarding differences among the participants and resulting outliers, results regarding the

Special Section on Communication Management 10employed grouping labels, results regarding the emergent overall groups (the derived taxonomy of diagrams), and results regarding the differences among the two groups. Results Regarding Outliers We have analyzed the 104 participants through multidimensional scaling (Borg & Groenen, 2005) in order to find outliers. This has enabled us to identify students that have grouped the 30 cards in radically different ways than the rest of the participants. As the following figure illustrates, there are two such outliers among the 104 students, one from the English group and one from the Chinese group. The subsequent calculations were thus carried out with the remaining 102 students, excluding the two outliers CAM-71_9M and 64M (who were both males, as indicated in the figure below through the M letter). FIGURE 2 Differences among the participants and the resulting two outliers eliminated from the sample Stress NMDS: 0.202 CAM - 39_6MCAM - 76_29M CAM - 77_13MCAM - 43_35MCAM - 74_24MCAM - 42_1MCAM - 41_33FCAM - 44_17M - 75_16FCA - 45_22CAM - 52_36MCAM - 46_15M - 48_28CAM - 47_37MCAM - 50_3FCAM - 54_21MCAM - 72_12MCAM - 61_14MCAM - 51_26FCAM - 49_31MCAM - 53_34MCAM - 60_5FCAM - 62_11MCAM - 57_27MCAM - 71_9M CAM - 55_25M CAM - 64_10M - 68 4 - 70_32M CAM - 73_30MCAM - 66_20M59 MCAM - 5 _1 M CAM - 67_18FCAM - 65_CAM - 69_23F - 63 81F4F3M5F6F9F12 11M13F10F7F8F15M14F16M17F20M45F18M30F37F25F19M26F43F40F33M29F 28F32F27M21F41F24F22F36M4F12 F424435M38F39F46F48M59F64M 63M553M57F56M60M616655058F4962M652M68F47F51M

Martin J. Eppler and Jianxin Ge Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? 11 Results Regarding Group Labels The average number of categories into which the 30 methods were grouped was 7.7 for the Beijing students and 6.5 for the Cambridge students. This is not a surprising finding as seven is often reported as a convenient size for building groups or classifying phenomena. The number of categories created varied, however, from as little as four groups to as many as 16 groups into which the thirty cards were sorted. More informative than the amount of groups that were created are their names. In the following two tables we have compiled the group labels used most frequently by both student groups. The comparison of the two group labels reveals that the British students used a mixture of functional (such as ‘decision’, ‘growth’, or ‘strategy’) and format-based labels (such as ‘tree’, ‘2D’, ‘hierarchy’). Although the Chinese students have used much more functional or domain related labels (they tried to use labels from their strategy course), their groupings are in fact much more based on common shapes than common purpose. The most frequently used labels in the group from Cambridge were those distinguishing process from hierarchic charts, namely ‘flow charts’ and ‘tree charts’. In the Beijing group the most frequently used group labels were ‘analysis of strategic environment’, ‘strategy’, ‘relationships’, and ‘organizational structure/hierarchy’. TABLE 2 Summary of most frequently used group labels by the 37 Cambridge students 3≤ n ≤5 6≤ n≤ 10 >10 2D charts charts Flow charts Area based charts Decision diagrams Tree charts Growth charts Time diagrams Hierarchy charts Interrelationships charts Line/linear charts Xyz charts Mathematical charts Organizational charts Strategy diagrams Statistical diagrams

Special Section on Communication Management 12TABLE 3 Summary of most frequently used group labels by the CUFE students 6≤n≤10 11≤n≤20 n ≥20 Strategy layers Strategy evaluation Analysis of strategic environments (internal and external) Different ways to objectives Strategy control and strategy implementation Strategy Business development Influencing factors Relationships Matrix Market shares Organizational / corporate structure or hierarchy Firm’s competitiveness Life cycle Evolution Product related Coordinate or coordinate axis, quadrants Decision making Process or trend Trees or branches Value chain From these two tables, we can detect three types of classification attributes: those by function of a chart, those by the graphic format, and those by the application domain of a visual format (preferred by the Chinese students). Functional group examples are such labels as: decision making, classification, comparison, matching, planning, strategy, evaluate. While graphic format group examples are 2d, circle chart, flow chart, hierarchy, process, relationship, sectorial, spatial, static, tree. Domain-related group labels finally are for example: strategy, statistical diagrams, decision diagrams. The preference of Chinese students for thematic or domain-related category labels is consistent with Nisbett’s research findings that people from Asia have a preference for thematic clustering of items (Nisbett, 2003: 79-102). From these analyses one overall finding emerges: most students do not use a single classification principle to categorize graphic business formats, but rather mix different logical schemes in building or labelling groups of visual formats. While the British students remained close to what they saw and invented highly descriptive names, the Chinese students replicated and applied concepts or themes that they had heard in class and tried to match these with the charts that they had to label and sort. As a surprising result, very few students in either group (a few more in the Cambridge group than in the Beijing group) applied the logic that is typically found in the literature on classifying business diagrams (Ranking, 1990; Lohse et al., 1994; Blackwell & Engelhardt, 2002). Many researched-based classifications distinguish, for example,

Martin J. Eppler and Jianxin Ge Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? 13among quantitative and qualitative diagrams or among generic (such as pie charts or mind maps) and content-specific (‘pre-labeled’ such as Five Forces, the Strategy Map or the BCG matrix) diagrams (Fischer et al., 2002). This latter distinction was not made by even a single student. This indicates that the distinctions that business visualization researchers draw may not be as intuitive or intercultural as previously thought and that diagram purposes and similarities may be interpreted in quite idiosyncratic ways. Nevertheless certain patters have emerged from the groupings of the diagrams that are discussed in the next sub-section. Results Regarding Emergent Groups: An Empirical Classification of Business Diagrams One of the objectives of conducting the business visualization card sort experiments in China and the United Kingdom was to combine the results to create a grouping that would be accessible to both groups and that highlights commonalities among the two student groups. In this section we thus present the results of the picture sorting exercise in terms of the groups that resulted from the average cluster analysis performed with the Prodax statistical data analysis and visualization tool (www.prodax.ch), as well as the resulting groups from a multi-dimensional scaling analysis and rendering, transforming the similarity ratings into a Euclidian distance model (Borg & Groenen, 2005: 411). By applying cluster analysis to an aggregated similarity matrix (of all 102 respondents) – which rates the similarity scores of all thirty diagrams – we have generated a dendrogram (Everitt et al., 2001: 55) that classifies all 30 cards hierarchically. The further to the left the forking of a line, the more people have put the linked diagrams into the same group. The number attached to each furcation (or internal node) indicates the degree of perceived similarity between elements. The higher the value, the more often two items have been placed into the same groups by the participants. The numbers are the results of an average cluster analysis that has been performed on the collected data sets. They are reflected by the geometric arrangement represented by the dendrogram. In this sense, each number indicates the level of distinctness of the items that follow a furcation (a number close to 1 represents low distinctness, a number close to 0 high distinctness).

Special Section on Communication Management 14FIGURE 3 Combined groups of the 102 English and Chinese students

Martin J. Eppler and Jianxin Ge Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? 15As the figure above illustrates, six groups divided into two categories have emerged from the aggregation through average cluster analysis performed on the 102 card sorts, they are: 1. Graphics emphasizing relations: a) Links: Multiple relations (causal, rating, connections) b) Flows: Sequential relations (steps, events) c) Hierarchies: Hierarchic relations (main concept / sub-concepts) 2. Graphic emphasizing sets: a) Charts: Quantitative sets (along x-axes, pie segments) b) Shapes: Sets based on simple structures or shapes (pyramid, Venn) c) Grids: Tabular sets (table, matrix, coordinates, framework) While the hierarchic grouping represented in the above figure emerged from the aggregated groupings, the labels have been retro-attributed by us in order to make sense of these emergent groups. We can represent the aggregated similarity scores of all diagrams also in a Euclidian distance model and thus assess which methods were perceived as similar or distinct by the overall rating of both groups. The three dimensional rendering of the aggregated similarity judgements shows that Bar charts and Line charts, as well as life cycle charts were perceived as very similar (charts group). It also shows that hierarchic formats such as trees, decision trees, concept and mind maps, as well as fish bones are perceived as very similar by the two groups. Sequential diagrams (flow group), such as flow charts, roadmaps and value chains or stairs, are also perceived as similar but – and this becomes apparent in this rendering of the grouping decisions – to a lesser degree.

Special Section on Communication Management 16FIGURE 4 NMDS Rendering of the collective similarity judgements of all 102 students Differences among the Chinese and British Groups: Domains versus Attributes Having described the emerging overall patterns, we now focus on the differences among the two student groups. This can provide indications about intercultural or educational differences, specifically regarding differences in European and Asian perceptions of business diagrams. The following two classification diagrams show the resulting grouping of the Beijing and the Cambridge group.

Martin J. Eppler and Jianxin Ge Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? 19The dendrogram of the Beijing students shows that they group line and bar charts closely, but do not associate them with pie charts or radar charts that also represent quantitative information. They also do not group all of the process charts together as the British students do. The Beijing class seems to have grouped the cards relying on prima facie appearance rather than functions. Whereas British students clearly differentiate between quantitative and qualitative methods, Chinese students do not make this clear distinction. They grouped the quantitative method of pie charts together with concentric circles or Venn diagrams, which obviously only share their circle-based shape. Another odd member of this more quantitative group, that the Chinese students already knew, is the Five Forces diagram. One could infer that the Chinese students grouped these elements together, not because they share certain functional attributes, but because they are often used together in strategic analysis. As Nisbett (2003) reports, Asians pay more attention to the overall context of an image in their visual perceptions and categorizations, whereas Westerners tend to have a ‘tunnel vision’ that focuses on the individual picture and its elements. Nevertheless, the BCG Matrix, also used in strategic analysis, was not placed in that same group by the Chinese students. The greatest similarities among the Cambridge and Beijing Students regard the grouping of the life cycle and line charts, the decision tree and tree, the BCG and coordinates, and the temple and pyramid. These are quantitative and qualitative, abstract and metaphoric diagrams that seem to be perceived as similar regardless of differences in cultural or education. To test for the impact of gender on the grouping, we have generated an aggregated grouping of the 30 men present in the Beijing group. But this group did not yield a consistent quantitative grouping either. Further interesting differences and commonalities among the two classes in Asia and Europe relate to the agreement or disagreement regarding the grouping of particular graphic formats: Whereas the Beijing students had the least agreement regarding the group membership of the ‘stairs’ visualization (i.e., the furcation for that picture is farthest to the right), the ‘connectance’ chart was the graphic format that the Cambridge students least agreed on regarding its co-membership with other formats. In terms of the elements that were most often grouped together, they were the life cycle and line charts in the Beijing class (which were also often put into the same group by the Cambridge students) and the flow chart and Toulmin chart in the Cambridge group. Although the flow chart and Toulmin diagram may look similar, they serve vastly different purposes. The Toulmin chart (an argument visualization technique) was the least known method in both student classes (it was never correctly labelled by the students). In this sense, the Cambridge students’ grouping shows that the Toulmin chart and flow chart are ‘false friends’, i.e., they may seem similar but serve very different purposes. The notion of false friends in this context is different from its use in linguistics (see Berry et al. 2004: 263) where it designates a word, phrase, intonation, or style of communication that is understood differently by people from different linguistic cultures. In our context, we label diagrams as false friends which are perceived to look very similar, but serve vastly different purposes and whose symbols consequently represent different meanings.

Special Section on Communication Management 20 DISCUSSION The results presented in the previous sections show that students in our sample cannot reliably distinguish among key visual formats and frequently group them according to misleading detail aspects (such as the simple presence of arrows or circles). They also create groupings of ‘false friends’, i.e., diagrams that look similar, but serve different purposes, such as Toulmin charts and flow charts in the case of the English students, or Venn and pie charts in the case of the Chinese students. The most frequently used grouping criterion was shape or orientation (such as circle, node-link, left-to-right, and bottom-up) which does not provide any guidance in choosing a visualization format. A few individuals, however, have organized the set of 30 methods by purpose, indicating a higher level of expertise or reflection. But none of the participants, as mentioned previously, has distinguished methods with fixed categories, such as Five Forces, Life Cycle, or BCG Matrix, from generic formats such as tree diagrams, bar charts, or mind maps. In terms of practical implications, this paper has made it clear that one should provide classifications that educate students about the differing functions of visual formats and inform them about frequent misunderstanding and ambiguities inherent in certain visualization formats (such as the misinterpretation of the meaning of unlabelled arrows). The inconsistent groupings also reveal that diagram understanding is neither intuitive nor cross-cultural. Communication managers who wish to profit from the findings reported in this paper are well advised to carefully plan the use of graphic communication formats and to steer clear of lesser known formats such as Toulmin charts or connectance diagrams (although the findings reported in this article are only based on tests with students). They should make sure, for example, to label arrows, as they are a frequent source of misinterpretation. Our inquiry has not been without limitations. Methodologically, the restrictions on the allocated time for the card sorting (35 minutes), the missing prior knowledge about some of the visualization formats on behalf of the participants, and the generic picture thumbnails (i.e., the lack of illustrative content in the diagrams) and their schematic style (and thus perhaps drawing particular attention to the arrangement of the elements) may have negatively affected the reliability of our findings. In addition, the selection of 30 methods can be criticized as arbitrary, as it is not based on absolute measures, but rather on individual ratings of importance and representation. The study is also limited with regard to the choice of participants. While students are a good proxy for future or inexperienced managers, they cannot be seen as representative of the current generation of managers. Future studies should thus apply the card sort experimental method to a management population, and this ideally not just within the scope of a two country comparison, but with multiple countries in Asia and Europe (and feasibly with managers of different experience levels). Ideally such a study would make use of real-life, authentic business diagram examples instead of generic templates as in this study. In such a

Martin J. Eppler and Jianxin Ge Communicating with Diagrams: How Intuitive and Cross-Cultural Are Business Graphics? 21follow-up study, the issue of gender as a variable that has an impact on the sorting behaviour of the visualizations should also be addressed and evaluated. In our pre-tests with students in Switzerland, we have seen considerable differences among male and female groupings. This aspect has not yet been analyzed in the scope of this research and needs further analysis. A final limitation regards the card sorting activity itself and its use in an Asian context. According to Nisbett (2003), Asians generally are less keen to strictly group or classify elements based on their attributes compared to people from the west. They see things in relation to one another (p. 141) and emphasize the context in which something is used (which was absent in our generic diagrams). They often do not feel comfortable in separating things into mutually exclusive groups (p.138). Various experiments reported in Nisbett (2003: 141-147) document that people from the East have greater difficulty in coherently categorizing items than people from the West. This may have contributed to the differences reported in our study. CONCLUSION In this paper we have reported on the experience of conducting two card sorting experiments with strategy students in Beijing and Cambridge. The cluster analysis of the aggregated cards sorts resulted in an empirical classification of business graphics according to two overall groups: graphics emphasizing relations and graphics emphasizing sets. The first group consists of linking diagrams, flow diagrams, and hierarchic diagrams. The second group consists of quantitative charts, simple shapes with embedded information, and grids. Although these groups can be seen as reasonable collections, they do not seem, from a researcher’s point of view, highly consistent (as they mix different classification principles). As a major finding we have thus seen that the students in our sample – regardless of their home country – were not able to generate a highly consistent ad-hoc grouping of the 30 visual business formats. This is partly due to the fact that they did not know all of the business visualization formats or their conventions and that no application context was provided. This makes the education regarding such formats all the more necessary, including key differences, similarities, and application parameters. Based on these results, one should be careful in using business graphics without providing elaborate explanations as to their interpretation. Our comparative results among the British and the Chinese students further suggest (tentatively) that Europeans should be especially careful when using visual means of communication in China, as Chinese employees may not be highly familiar with these formats or interpret them differently (i.e., as with regard to quantitative vs. qualitative charts). Future studies should show whether these generalizations based on our limited student sample are indeed justified. Nevertheless, these results already show that communicating with diagrams can be problematic, and that it cannot simply rely on intuition and must consider intercultural differences.

Special Section on Communication Management 22 REFERENCES Bailey, K.D. (1994). Typologies and Taxonomies: An Introduction to Classification Techniques. Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage. Berry, M., Carbaugh, D.& Marjatta, N. (2004). Communicating Finnish quietude: A pedagogical process for discovering implicit cultural meanings in language. Language and Intercultural Communication, 4, 261- 280. Blackwell, A.F. & Engelhardt, Y. (2002). A meta taxonomy for diagram research. In Anderson, M., Meyer, B., Olivier, P. (eds.) Diagrammatic Representation and Reasoning. Berlin: Springer. Borg, I. & Groenen, P.J.F. (2005). Modern Multidimensional Scaling, 2nd Edition. New York: Springer. Bowker, G. & Star, S.L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Everitt, B.S., Landau, S. & Morven, L. (2001). Cluster Analysis, 4th Edition. London: Arnold. Fischer, F., Bruhn, J., Gräsel, C. & Mandl, H. (2002). Fostering collaborative knowledge construction with visualization tools. Learning and Instruction, 12(2), 213- 232. Galloway, D. (1994). Mapping Work Processes. Milwaukee, WI: ASQC Quality Press. Horn, R.E. (1998). Visual Language. Lexington: MacroVue. Hodgkinson, G.P., Maule, A.J. & Brown, N.J. (2004). Causal cognitive mapping in the organizational strategy field: A comparison of alternative elicitation procedures. Organizational Research Methods, 7, (1), 3-26. Huff, A. (ed.) (1990). Mapping Strategic Thought. New York: Wiley. Jarvenpaa, S.L. & Dickson, G.W. (1988). Graphics and managerial decision making: research-based guidelines. Communications of the ACM, 31, (6), 764 – 774. Lohse, G., Biolsi, K., Walker, N. & Rueter, H. (1994). A classification of visual representations. Communications of the ACM, 37, (12), 36-49. Meyer, J.A. (1997). The acceptance of visual information in management. Information & Management, 32, 275-287. Nisbett, R.E. (2003). The Geography of Thought. Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Ranking, R.A. (1990). A taxonomy of graph types. Information Design Journal, 6, (2), 147-159. Rugg, G. & McGeorge, P. (2005). The sorting techniques: A tutorial paper on card sorts, picture sorts and item sorts. Expert Systems, 22, (8), 94-107. Smelcer, J.B. & Carmel, E. (1997). The effectiveness of different representations for managerial problem solving: Comparing Tables and Maps. Decision Sciences, 28, (2), 391-420.

Euro Asia Journal of Management Issue 35, Vol. 18, No.1, June 2008, pp.23-36 AN EXPLORATORY INVESTIGATION OF LOCALLY CONSTITUTED CHALLENGES TO COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT IN MULTINATIONAL TEAMS∗ JAKOB LAURING1 and CHARLOTTE JONASSON2 ABSTRACT It has been argued that multinational teams create a number of competitive advantages when used strategically. However, multinational teams are not always successful, and a number of studies indicate that communication between team members may be the main obstacle. The purpose of this article is to investigate communication problems in organizations consisting of multinational teams. It is argued that researchers should not only look for differences in national culture when analyzing barriers to the communication flow. Challenges to communication may also develop in the locally constituted organizational culture. This is illustrated by an ethnographic field study in a multinational department of a Danish organization. ∗ This paper was accepted by Dr Sow Hup Chan (Guest Editor for special section on Communication Management). 1 Department of Management, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Haslegaardsvej 10, 8210, Aarhus V. Denmark. Email: JaLa@asb.dk 2 Skovvangsvej 11, 8200 Aarhus N. Denmark.

Special Section on Communication Management 24 INTRODUCTION Most scholars acknowledge that there is an increase in internationalization in contemporary business communities (Griffith, 2002; Palmer-Silveira et al., 2006). Managing cultural and linguistic diversity of multinational teams has become a daily issue for a growing number of managers (Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000; Welch et al., 2001). Hence, understanding the dynamics of multinational teams has become an important issue in management research (Goodall & Roberts, 2003). In the management of multinational teams, the diverse nature of the group has often been described as a competitive advantage, to be utilized by organizations for innovation and problem solving (Adler, 1997; Miller et al., 2000; Paulus, 2000). Nonetheless, the success of the multinational team is not to be presupposed, and managerial challenges should not be taken lightly (Leonard & Swap, 1999). A number of studies indicate that communication management is especially important (Distefano & Maznevski, 2000; Loosemore & Lee, 2002; Maznevski, 1994). Communication is central to management since challenges to communication inflict on all managerial processes in one way or another (Cheney et al., 2004). Furthermore, communication is the basis of all employee collaboration. In a multinational context, linguistic and cultural differences make communication even more of a concern (Beamer & Varner, 2005). In relation to this, the main managerial challenge of the multinational team is that efficient communication actually occurs (McDonough et al., 2001). If team members do not communicate well, cultural diversity will most likely become unfavorable (Distefano & Maznevski, 2000; Hambrick et al., 1998). Therefore, the arguments presented in this article rely on the fundamental premise that communication is necessary in all coordination and organization of human resources. Accordingly, fostering a rich communication flow within a multinational organization is an important source of competitive advantage. The focus of the study is directed at multinational teams, meaning small working groups whose members originally come from different countries, but are now physically working together on a daily basis. Because of their daily assignments, the different team members need to communicate across linguistic and cultural barriers. In this article, it is recognized that culture influences communicative behavior, but also that culture itself is created in communication (Gumperz, 1965; Hymes, 1996). This implies that there exists a dynamic interrelation between the two concepts. The interaction of the members of multinational teams creates a negotiated organizational culture that will be influenced by both the combination of the different national cultures in the organization, and more locally created structures (cf. Alvesson, 2002; Hannerz, 1992). However, the character of this created organizational culture, according to Brannen and Salk (2000), cannot easily be predicted and it may take many different forms. This may also be said of the communicative behavior of the multinational organization.

Jakob Lauring and Charlotte Jonasson An Exploratory Investigation of Locally Constituted Challenges to Communication Management in Multinational Teams 25Based on an explorative ethnographic field work study, in a multinational Danish organization, this study proposes to analyze the relationship between a locally constituted organizational culture and communication processes. The research objectives have been defined using the following research question: What challenges to communication management may develop in the negotiated local culture of an organization consisting of multinational teams? MULTINATIONAL TEAMS AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION A number of studies on multinational teams refer to the early work of Hoffman and Maier (1961). Hoffman and Maier found that group heterogeneity was positively associated with the quality of problem solutions (cf. Earley & Mosakowski, 2000). Most of the following studies focus primarily on relating differences in team members’ demographic variables to organizational performance (e.g. Cox et al., 1991; Jackson et al., 1991). The positive potential of cultural diversity has frequently been attributed to the multiplicity of perspectives and skills imbedded in the group composition (Maznevski, 1994). Consequently, multinational teams are often perceived as an organizational asset. While cultural diversity in teams may provide groups with the potential for improved performance, multinational teams often fail to utilize this advantage (Adler, 1997). In this line of thought, Hambrick (1998) and his associates argue that the effect of diversity in multinational teams depends on the groups tasks. Other studies have argued that multinational teams are either highly effective or highly ineffective (Smith & Berg, 1997). When multinational teams fail, it has often been related to national cultural differences, hindering communication flow (Loosemore & Lee, 2002; Maznevski, 1994; McDonough et al., 2001). National cultural challenges to communication With regards to national culture inflicting on communication, Hall’s (1976, 2000) dimensions of high- and low-context culture, concerning styles of expression, have often been used in order to understand general differences (e.g. Beamer & Varner, 2005; Chen & Starosta, 1998). Another frequently cited taxonomy of cultural differences affecting communication, is Hofstede’s (1991) description of variations of individualist and collectivist cultures (e.g. Buchan et al., 2006; Kim, 2005). By using these frameworks, a number of scholars argue that communicative norms and practices are likely to be more similar, within the same national culture than across national cultures (Kim, 2005). As Von Glinow and her associates (2004) suggest, the greater the multinational team’s cultural diversity is, the greater the diversity in members’ behavior and frame of reference (cf. Marcus & Lin, 1999). Varying socialization experiences influence

Special Section on Communication Management 26individuals’ values, beliefs, and language systems in different ways, and consequently, create interpretive barriers (Dougherty, 1992). Accordingly, individuals tend to prefer interacting with others within national cultural boundaries, rather than across them (Lane & Beamish, 1990). This suggests that national cultural background represents in some ways, a perceptual filter through which individuals interpret received information. Consequently, misunderstandings and group conflicts may occur when differences in behavior and communication styles collide (Von Glinow et al., 2004). While the relative distance of national cultural differences can effect communication in multinational teams, some studies call into question the predictive power of these theories. Brannen and Salk (2000) argue that when individuals meet in multinational teams, they may adjust their norms and behavior and create some kind of shared organizational culture. According to Brannen and Salk (2000), individuals may exhibit a range of personal fit with their national cultures of origin, ranging from ‘marginal’ to ‘hyper-normal’. This way, individuals manoeuvre and situate themselves in an organizational setting, by assuming different stances in relation to their national culture. The work by Brannen and Salk (2000) indicate that obstacles to communication in multinational environments are more complex than what can be learned from comparing relative differences between national cultures. As a result, the link between national culture and organizational culture and its relation to communication practices needs closer attention. The formation of local organizational culture Most scholars of organizational culture have argued that socially integrated or ‘strong’ cultures are beneficial to performance (e.g. Deal & Kennedy, 1983; Peters & Waterman, 2004; Schein, 1992). This view perceives culture as the social glue of organizations, creating an overall consensus on behavior and values. One problem with this perspective, is that organizational culture becomes a rather static homogenous construct, that does not represent daily life in complex organizations (Alvesson, 2002; Martin, 2002). Martin (1992) argues that organizational culture can be both integrated (one homogeneous entity), differentiated (opposing subcultures), or fragmented (changing equivocal identifications). According to Martin (1992), most organizations should be understood and analyzed from the three perspectives at the same time. Thus, organizational cultures in departments that consist of multinational teams may be highly complex constructs, encompassing both elements of consensus and disagreement or conflict. To understand the relation between culture and communication, this article seeks to bridge the often separated domains of national culture and corporate culture. This is achieved by turning to theories developed in the field of anthropology. The anthropologist Ulf Hannerz (1992) introduces a conceptual model of cultural complexity in which he, by drawing on a classical work of Barth (1966), describes culture not as something already given, but something which is constructed and maintained - or challenged and denied. Thus, to study culture should not only encompass the measurement of relative differences in values, but also the active formation of ideas, experiences, and feelings, as well as the external forms that these may take in public. Such

Jakob Lauring and Charlotte Jonasson An Exploratory Investigation of Locally Constituted Challenges to Communication Management in Multinational Teams 27interaction oriented views on culture have lead anthropologists, such as Geertz (1973) and D’Andrade (1984), to argue that culture is best described and analyzed as collective meaning. By describing culture as social meaning, individuals and groups are perceived as being active in the sense-making process. However, the location of this shared meaning is not necessarily a nation. In consequence, researchers must be aware of the fact that there are many degrees of collectivity that regard the formation of cultural meaning. Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that the order of meaning that constitutes culture is not an apriory construct. Culture is always established and maintained in micro-interactions. A similar view on culture as being negotiated is also used by Brannen and Salk (2000). They found that national cultural traits brought to an organization, over time, were recombined and modified through ongoing interactions among team members. According to their study, it is possible to overcome cultural and linguistic differences and create common organizational cultures (Brannen & Salk, 2000). However, in this article it will be argued that even though general barriers to interaction are possible to overcome, and consensus can be established, there can still be considerable locally constituted challenges to communication. The locally negotiated organizational culture may include agreements in certain domains of interaction (e.g. working culture), while being characterized by conflict in other domains (e.g. social environment) (Spradley, 1980). In other words, multinational organizations may have succeeded to create shared perceptions of some elements of organizational life, while other elements may be more fragmented or contested. Consequently, communicative behavior in multinational teams is a highly complex and dynamic construct, influenced by the constant interaction between national cultural differences present in the organization and locally constituted organizational culture in different domains. Hence, in order to deal with communication problems in multinational teams, it is necessary to investigate the social processes of negotiating between general cultural and linguistic differences and locally constituted organization cultures. METHOD International business scholars have argued that a renewal of qualitative methodologies applied to international business studies can provide fresh insight to the field (Jack & Westwood, 2006). According to Marschan-Piekkari and Reis (2004), research has been focusing too much on attempts to generalize. This is not the best way to utilize the exploratory potential of qualitative studies. Instead, qualitative research methods can yield new and unexpected insights because of the open ended approach they may take. Drawing on the results of an ethnographic field study, this paper takes an exploratory attempt at gaining new insight in communication in multinational teams. The advantage of conducting an ethnographic field study is that it gives the researcher a deep understanding of social relations and interaction patterns in the local setting (Agar, 1986; Geertz, 1973).

Special Section on Communication Management 28In order to investigate communication in multinational teams, we chose an iterative approach that allowed the researchers to be open towards new and unexpected information. The approach is a circular methodological movement, in which new questions as well as answers are continuously integrated in observation schemes and interview guides (Marcus, 1998; Spradley, 1980). It departs from an ideal of generating questions as well as answers in close relation to the research field, adding flexibility to the collection, the analysis, and the writing process (Geertz, 1988; Marcus, 1986; Van Maanen, 1988). Through the application of the circular qualitative approach, the researcher was able to reach an understanding of issues, which were implicit in the setting or taken for granted by informants. This also entailed that research questions were developed, changed, or focused upon, in mutual interaction with the daily activities of the informants (Alvesson, 2003). To begin with, the research questions centered on the facilitation of knowledge sharing in multinational organizations. However, during interaction with the informants, it became clearer that the relationship between communication and social organization was a key issue for understanding the organizational practice. For this study, participant observation was a fruitful way to investigate organizational life on a micro level (cf. Kunda, 1992; Wright & Shore, 1997). An ideal is for the researcher to assume a position as an engaged participant and at the same time, a distanced observer (Tedlock, 1991). During this project, the researcher was continuously in the process of becoming a group - or team-member, understanding more and more, the implicit world view held by the informants. The transition to full membership, however, should never be complete. The researcher should at all times, be able to question the socially imbedded perceptions and assumptions of the local community. In this project, the lead researcher stayed in the organization as part of a team for a month (240 hours). Being situated physically, in the middle of a large open office made it possible to observe and note most activity taking place in the department. Listening to employees’ conversations became an exploratory angle to identify central themes relevant to communication management to be used in interviews (Spradley, 1980). To supplement participant observation, semi-structured interviews were used to discuss and document what had been observed (Alvesson, 2003; Kvale, 1996). Thereby, the interviews became an extension of the iterative approach, introducing new information and questions to the research cycle (Bernard, 1995; Spradley, 1980). Altogether, 30 interviews were conducted with both Danish and non-Danish employees in both the Danish and English language. 15 interviews were conducted with employees of Danish origin and 15 interviews were conducted with employees from other European countries, as well as Canada, USA, and China. Four interviews were with assistants, 16 were with regular employees, five were with team leaders, and five were with managers. Some informants were interviewed in their native language, while others spoke either Danish or English as a second language.

Jakob Lauring and Charlotte Jonasson An Exploratory Investigation of Locally Constituted Challenges to Communication Management in Multinational Teams 29 COMMUNICATION IN A MULTINATIONAL SETTING As a department in a large Danish organization, Amox International Marketing (AIM) is responsible for marketing pharmaceutical products. It has about 150 highly educated employees, organized in three large open offices, with around 50 employees on each of the three floors. The workplaces are arranged in such a way that individuals and teams can rapidly be moved around in the frequent restructuring of the department. Twenty percent of the employees are non-Danish and about half of the non-Danish organizational members are on a temporary contract, while the other half live in Denmark, on a permanent basis-- Employees are organized in teams of about five to six people. A global working environment has been created at AIM because the top management of the department wants to avoid employees’ making decisions that are overly influenced by the values and working practices of their native countries. The aim is to employ individuals from different countries with different competencies, knowledge, and perspectives, and have them work together. By strategically selecting an international team composition, the organization hopes to gain what is termed a global view on marketing. In other words, the organization hopes that the narrow minded or ethnocentric viewpoints are challenged before they have an impact on decision making in the organization. To support this strategy further, an international language policy has been implemented. As such, the use of English as a corporate language is an important precondition for all nationalities, in order to cooperate on a daily scale. No employee is excluded from everyday interaction or communication. This means that English, as the corporate language, is actually used consistently in all work related matters. It could even be observed that the English language is used in conversations, at occasions when only Danes are present. Furthermore, it became clear in some interviews that a number of Danes have difficulties expressing themselves in Danish when speaking about job related issues. In the interviews, they used many English terms and struggled to find the Danish words. By use of English as a corporate language, and the facilitation of cross-national team-corporation, the aim of the organization is to attain a truly international environment. And, according to most informants, the strategy of developing a global view has been a success in daily work situations. The strategy has resulted in differences in communication styles being overcome, both in relation to national culture e, as well as linguistic barriers. This means that communication and collaboration in the organization is by no means restricted to certain national groups. However, according to a number of informants, national, cultural, and linguistic differences do function as barriers to communication. We have a genuine international environment here. Like, if you walk around you will hear most people speaking English. I don’t think you will find many here that see internationalization as a problem. People want to come here

Special Section on Communication Management 30because we are international. And we only recruit the ones with international experiences and international education. Everybody here knows how to get along with other cultures (Manager, Denmark). Though informants agree that an international environment has been successfully created, there are some limitations to this accomplishment. For some reason, the local organizational culture seems ‘weak’, with little shared cultural meaning. This was registered during observations in the large open offices of AIM. Here, one met a rather soundless environment with many empty workstations. Almost no interaction was observed, not even so much as head nods, eye-contact, or small-talk. Many informants described a typical working day as sitting by the computer without talking much to each other. Even during lunch, a large number of employees could be observed bringing a sandwich to eat in their workstation, instead of going to the cafeteria. Such actions can be conceived of as being expressions of a fragmented organizational culture, where daily communication appears non-existent. Though means of communication are aligned, cultural meaning is asymmetrically distributed, and little effort is made to create a more coherent social environment. Locally constituted barriers to intercultural communication A number of informants mentioned that the relatively formalized task-oriented organizational culture was created as a result of internationalization. As a Danish Team leader put it: ‘Cultural differences will keep you focused on the assignment. It is due to not having to talk about what TV people watch - like if you were just a bunch of Danes. So, personal discussion doesn’t go very deep’. This way, it was clearly observed that to most employees, working practice is affected by the internationalization of the teams. Another Danish employee explained it this way: ‘Because of the diversity, you focus more on the professional’. Hence, according to informants, differences in frame of reference, creates a social disinterest among the organization members. In consequence, the international marketing department could be described as a rather somber workplace. As one of the Danish managers described it: ’It is a serious company. Such a thing as having a birthday cake does not happen very often. We very seldom take half an hour that is not work’. The somber character of the workplace could also be illustrated by the limited use of humor in communication. As a Polish informant described it: ‘There is not a lot of joking here. In the beginning, I was joking a lot but I noticed that nobody was playing back. Then I stopped’. An English employee conveyed a similar observation: ‘I must admit that I don’t think this is a very fun workplace. It is quite serious. In the beginning, I was telling many jokes. But, now I tell fewer jokes’. This illustrates that a consensus has developed on informal communication not being part of the domain of working interaction. Because of social disinterest and limited team work, employees seem only to be at the workplace in a relatively short period of time during the day. They work mainly individually, in a focused and efficient manner, often from nine to three-thirty, and then they leave to be with

Jakob Lauring and Charlotte Jonasson An Exploratory Investigation of Locally Constituted Challenges to Communication Management in Multinational Teams 31their families. Most informants, however, start working again at night after their children have gone to sleep. In addition, employees work from home several days a week. As it was observed: “I have learned that people here often go home at four to their family. That means there is not so much networking. Where I come from, the communication was much better” (Employee, China). An American informant described her first experience when she met the social environment at AIM: People don’t want to socialize. That actually shocked me. In fact, in the beginning, I would come and sit down with people I didn’t know - on purpose - just to get to know someone. But it is very hard to socialize with people here, so after a while I stopped because I could see how uncomfortable people felt about it. So, I would go sit with my own team, or I would only sit next to someone I already knew (Employee, USA). It was mentioned by one informant, that it was very uncommon for employees to meet after working hours. And, according to a Chinese employee, if it did happen, it was because of a formal work activity. Most employees simply had no interest in socializing with different colleagues from other countries. Many informants that had stayed in the organization for a while told the researchers that they had grown tired of speaking a foreign language in social contexts. In addition, they felt socially overburdened by the constant inflow of more or less temporary team members of different nationalities. A Canadian employee described how she, to begin with, felt uneasy dealing with the limited interaction in the workplace. However, after a while she herself became a product of the organizational culture. In the beginning, it bothered me a lot that I was never invited to an outing or to a drink. Here, it is just not the culture to do that. But, of course I also realized that in marketing, they get new people all the time and people just can’t bother every time. I even started to avoid some of the new people myself (Employee, Canada). A Chinese employee described a similar situation, stating that close relations never developed due to the highly formalized interaction form. As it was formulated: ‘People don’t talk so much to each other here. In China, we always went to meet each other - all the colleagues. There I was friends with my colleagues. Here it is more separate. I don’t think I have friends here – they are colleagues’. However, it is not only informal socialization that is impeded by the local organizational culture. As the following section will show, the modest interaction also hinders the work related communication flow. Work related communication Non-Danish members of the department are mainly employed to develop a global view through daily communication, across national cultural boundaries. However, it was pointed out that

Special Section on Communication Management 32assignments are often done twice because of deficient communication. An example, mentioned by a Chinese employee, is that in conferences, different teams will make the same presentation. A French employee brought up a similar observation: ‘Sometimes the same work is repeated because there is too little communication. Sometimes I use three hours working on something that one of my colleagues has already done before’. Or, as an American assistant stated: ‘Sometimes all the departments are using the same agency at the same time and the agency doesn’t really have the time to do a good job’. At other times, the material would be filed and stored and another team would create it once more from scratch. An English employee formulated it this way: ‘The wheel is reinvented on a regular basis here’. The Danish managers and team leaders generally agreed that communication could be improved. According to them, they know little about the knowledge and skills of their employees. As Danish team leaders put it: ‘If there is something we could do better, it would be to acquire a better understanding of people’s background. It is important to know about which competences are available to us’. According to a Spanish employee, these issues could be directly connected to the communication practices in the organization, and as he put it: ’I have decided that I will do like people are doing here and I have realized that people do not communicate so much’. The above statement indicates that in this particular organization, adjusting to the locally constituted organizational culture has a negative effect on communication, even though most barriers associated with international settings seem to be successfully overcome. Some of the non-Danish organizational members related the communication practice to Danish national culture. But, Danish members recalled that communication was different at previous workplaces and in other less international parts of the same organization. Furthermore, a number of foreigners admitted that they themselves had changed during their stay at AIM. The foreigners eventually withdrew from initiating social interaction, due to the loss of nuance when speaking in a second language, different perceptions of humor, and differences in personal interests. This way, the multinational environment seems to have affected communication negatively, even though direct misunderstandings and group conflicts could not be observed. Rather, it is the weak social ties and the limited shared cultural meaning in the department that seems to abstain individuals from communicating. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS Social fragmentation and incoherence of multinational organizations has been reported on by several studies (Bassett-Jones, 2005; Miller et al., 2000). However, very few empirical works have outlined the micro processes through which this takes place (Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000). Well functioning multinational teams are most often referred to as an organizational asset (Distefano & Maznevski, 2000). However, to handle daily collaboration, multinational teams need to have a good communication flow. When describing obstacles to communication in

Jakob Lauring and Charlotte Jonasson An Exploratory Investigation of Locally Constituted Challenges to Communication Management in Multinational Teams 33multinational teams, most studies refer only to differences in language and national culture, as leading to misunderstandings and group conflict. (e.g. Beamer & Varner, 2005; e.g. Hambrick, Davison, Snell, & Snow, 1998). However, the description of employees’ interaction pattern in AIM indicates that communication practices in multinational organizations may be more complex than some studies of culture and communication have indicated. This suggests that more attention should be given to the investigation of how communication may be impeded, not only by national cultural obstacles, but also from indirect obstacles concerning the social environment of multinational organizations. Furthermore, different domains of interaction may effect communication differently. In work related interaction, individuals may change their stance in relation to national culture from normal to marginal, i.e. adopt the local working practice, procedures, and values – and thereby, create a more integrative organizational or local culture. However, in their social life, previous norms and preferences may still prevail and guide interaction. Accordingly, individuals may be able to exercise a marginal cultural stance in work related issues, while at the same time, enacting a normal or, as a result of the confrontation with an unfamiliar environment, a hyper-normal stance in social life. Though this has not been described by Brannen and Salk (2000), acculturation can happen in different domains to different degrees of integration. The differentiation of organizational culture into different domains of interaction is necessary to take into account in the understanding of communication in organizations, consisting of multinational teams. Culture is used and recreated in these different domains of interaction by different individuals with different backgrounds. This makes the communicative behavior of multinational teams very difficult to predict. Furthermore, it seems that the relation between social fragmentation and communication can function as a vicious circle in multinational organizations. Social disinterest prevents organizational members from interacting. Sparse interaction can result in there not being enough shared cultural meaning, and not enough common stories for individuals to develop a social interest beyond work related matters. This conclusion is based on the argument that culture is created through communication and that shared cultural meanings can ease communication. To break vicious circles of social disinterest and poor communication, managers need to 1) encourage or reward communication, 2) facilitate communities of practice and group identity. To encourage communication in multinational organizations, managers need to reward not only measurable individual performance, but they also need to expand the concept of performance to include contributions towards strengthening the collective human resources of the organization. One way of promoting communication is for management to make the contribution to collective knowledge official. Thereby, individuals will start to see communication as valuable and valued contribution to the organizations productivity. This has to be backed up by unequivocal messages by the management regarding the value of interaction and teamwork. To create more social coherence in the multinational organization, managers need to provide a common platform for informal interaction, i.e. through social gatherings or teambuilding activities, etc. The objective would be to increase commitment, and sense of group identity. This should have a positive result on the frequency of interactions and expectations of

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Euro Asia Journal of Management Issue 35, Vol. 18, No.1, June 2008, pp. 37-50 THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK UNDERLYING THE QUALSTRATEGY MODEL ANTÓNIO TEIXEIRA1 and NELSON ANTÓNIO2 ABSTRACT The authors have been studying the relationships between Quality and Strategic Management since the early 1990s. Their recent development of an integrated model, QualStrategy, was preceded by the analysis of both areas’ roots, in order to accomplish a sound solution resistant to erosion agents created by the continued evolution of environmental complexity and management thought. Beyond the presentation of QualStrategy itself the authors consider useful to share the results of this preparatory analysis which puts into perspective the relationships between quality management and strategic thought, as a form to devise a theoretically sound way to build a strategic framework within quality management playing the role of a management paradigm. The authors found that the paradigmatic perspective is widely accepted and is an adequate tool to support this type of analysis and that the mainstream linking these two subjects is the concept of learning organization, a common root derived from the pragmatic philosophical current, although, in each case, the direct influence comes from different authors, Clarence Lewis in the case of quality management and John Dewey in the case of strategy. 1 UNIDE, ISCTE Business School, ISCTE, Av. Prof. Aníbal de Bettencourt, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal. Email: asft@iscte.pt 2 UNIDE, ISCTE Business School, ISCTE, Av. Prof. Aníbal de Bettencourt, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal. Email: nelson.antonio@iscte.pt

António Teixeira and Nelson António 38 INTRODUCTION We have been centering our attention on the conjugation between Strategic Management and Quality Management (Quality Research Group, 1995; Teixeira, 2002, 2002a; António, 2006; Teixeira & António, 2006; António & Teixeira, forthcoming). This article reflects some of our conclusions about the clarification of the relationships between both fields and the setting of a unifying framework to guide further research and courses designed for several disciplines in the business area at graduate and post-graduate levels. The process has already led to the design of a post graduation course on Strategic Management of Quality at ISCTE Business School, Lisbon. At the early stages (early 1990s) we were confronted with a situation characterized by the fact that the relationship between the strategic and quality management fields was in a confused state, after the beginning of a wide adoption of Quality Management (QM) in the US following its overwhelming success in Japan. The evolution of the situation since then has been great. It is still convenient to revisit the subject once in a while in order to solidify core concepts. By doing this we are applying the pragmatic concept of circular learning in general and Lewis’ (1929) conceptual pragmatism in particular as expressed in Shewhart’s and Deming’s cycles. Many perspectives under which we could look at each one of these two fields separately existed. Our first task was to find a common perspective that would allow an easy way to relate concepts in both fields, making cross referencing possible and easy to be understood by readers. The most comprehensive perspective to deal with this kind of situation is Kuhn’s (1979) paradigmatic framework for the practice and development of science. However, we considered that even if this framework could be applied to QM, it was doubtful if it was appropriate to all phases of the development of strategic management thought. In fact, it is possible that before reaching a paradigmatic stage, certain scientific branches pass by a pre-paradigmatic phase. Rumelt et al. (1995), for example, considered at the time that, although Kuhn’s model may not be considered the most appropriate to use with Strategic Management (SM), it was right to treat the situation in the field as pre-paradigmatic. This way, either because of the inappropriateness of the concept or the inexistence of a paradigmatic stage, it was not convenient to start our work by analyzing the SM field under this perspective. The alternative used was the consideration of Schools of Strategic Thought (SST), because it was widely used in the literature to deal with the subject, albeit with differences in what concerns the schools considered. The appropriateness of dealing with QM as a new paradigm of management thought is justified for being a perspective shared by several authors (Batten, 1993; Bounds et al., 1994; Delavigne & Robertson, 1994; Seymour, 1998; Thompson & Koronacki, 2001). For example, Bonstingl (2001) refers that ‘today, in Schools of Quality, a new process-oriented paradigm of continuous learning and improvement is beginning to replace the old Tayloresque, product-oriented, fear-driven paradigm …’

Theoretical and Historical Framework Underlying the Qualstrategy Model 39 PARADIGM AND SCHOOLS OF STRATEGIC THOUGHT The great difference arising from Kuhn’s paradigmatic in relation to previous perspectives is a switch from a normative and methodological perspective to a descriptive one. The demarcation of the scientific field should no longer be seen through a normative process of compliance with a set of principles stating what science should be, as defended by Popper (1934), but through cornerstones emerging from the observation of scientists at work, that is, how science is really carried out. Convention replaced methodology, as the criterion for the demarcation of the borders of the scientific body of knowledge. These two perspectives are at the base of what is usually called the science wars between defenders of each field. Although we cannot say that an agreement has been reached, Kuhn’s perspective has been gaining a wider acceptance. As Fuller (2003), a supporter Popper’s perspective, states, admitting the victory of the wrong side: ‘in the wake of Kuhn’s victory, science has come to be justified more by its paradigmatic pedigree than by its progressive aspirations.’ Leaving aside any detailed discussion about the relative merits of Popper and Kuhn’s frameworks, we will adopt the second as the instrument that sets the perspective and the language to the analysis we are carrying out, just because it is a widely accepted tool and the ground where most of the dialogs concerning management science take place. Besides, that, as said before, it is a more comprehensive perspective, according to which, a paradigm can be seen in simplified terms as the set of core principles widely accepted by a scientific community to preside over its activity. However, as we have said before, at the start of our research, SM could not be considered to have reached a paradigmatic state. If it does so meanwhile, that could have happened only quite recently with the growing visibility of the resource based and learning schools. Thus, the several perspectives on SM had to be looked at with a different conceptual framework. In the case of SM, the SST perspective has been a way to deal with the existing diversity, having the advantage of being widely present in literature. There are many classifications regarding the SST. We based our analysis on the one proposed by Mintzberg (1990) and Mintzberg et al. (1998) because we deem it is surely the most widely used and known. The analysis of paradigms and SST must be carried out taking into attention that the development of business theory in general took place along two extremes, one mechanist, characterized by reductionism and another holistic and behavioral. The several theoretical frameworks can thus be distributed along a scale reflecting a grade about those extremes, with the prescriptive frameworks standing nearer the reductionism extreme as the more prescriptive they are, and the descriptive ones following a similar treatment in relation to the holism extreme.

António Teixeira and Nelson António 40When analyzing relationships between management paradigms and SST, one must be aware of their positioning in the prescription-description scale. It is not wise to compare elements that are not in the same region along the axis representing this scale ignoring this factor. This mistake has been the source of most of the confusion in the air when the QM paradigm was adopted in the West and Porter’s strategic theoretical framework (Porter,1980,1985), integrated in the positioning SST, was dominant at the time. This framework could not be considered to be in the region of QM in what concerns the position in the prescription-description axis. It was precisely this incompatibility that drove us to the search for how to conciliate QM with SM. On the other hand, while it may be a common perception that new paradigms replace former ones, what must be considered is that new paradigms subsume them, once the kind of solutions generated under the former paradigm will remain valid for the same kind of situation (the same degree of complexity) for which they were devised. Thus, former paradigm frameworks are no longer acceptable for the actual degree of complexity of the environment (the total domain of management action), but they are acceptable for a subset of that environment (they were universal for the former environment, changing to local in the later environment). Let us now look at the way that paradigm shifts occur. Figure 1 illustrates this kind of process. FIGURE 1 Paradigm shift Shifts occur when the former paradigms undergo a phase of anomalies in which the framework conventionally accepted is no longer able to provide adequate solutions for all problems that need to be solved. A new framework must be devised, occurring replacement when one of them is chosen by convention between the interested parties. What is at stake is a competition between theoretical frameworks, new or already existing, for a positioning in the core of the new set of ideas adopted. What already exists can be used as it is or through synergetic combination. What happens to the former paradigm core? Is it nullified by the new paradigm, having no place in the new order? No! Its fate is illustrated in Figure 1. The core ideas generally migrate

Theoretical and Historical Framework Underlying the Qualstrategy Model 41to the periphery, being reinterpreted in terms of a reduced application domain and meaning, according with the new state of affairs reflected in a newer set of core principles. In principle nothing is forgotten, it is relearned and repositioned. In this kind of situation we must be aware of the wrong and right comparisons that can be made in light of Kuhn’s paradigmatic framework. Figure 2 illustrates the comparisons that do not make sense: (1) Directly comparing between peripheral values, ignoring the cores; (2) Comparing between the periphery of one of the paradigms and the core of the other. FIGURE 2 Wrong comparisons The hats our grandfathers which used to protect their heads from the sun and the wind were reshaped and were used at a minor scale for the same purpose, but most of the times for fashion driven dressing style. For example, if in the case of Figure 2 we have at the left the Neo-Tayloristic paradigm at the core with the prescriptive SST somewhere in the periphery and at the right the QM paradigm at the core and the new theoretical strategic framework at the periphery, what would the be the course of action to follow? The answer to this question is presented in Figure 3. No relationships must be sought without a reference to the cores that are at the only valid level of dialog acceptable. On the other side, besides the relationship periphery-core in each case, one must also be aware of the position of paradigms in the prescription-description axis that is correlated to the degree of complexity for which they were designed.

António Teixeira and Nelson António 42FIGURE 3 Comparison of cores and peripheries WHICH STRATEGY FOR QUALITY MANAGEMENT? Although we have already lifted a point of the veil, let us see how the previous considerations can be used to answer the question: which strategy for quality management? There are two possible trails to follow in order to look for an answer to this question. The observer situates himself in the SM place and looks at QM, or the inverse. As we said before, when QM was adopted as a new paradigm, the SM field was still at a pre-paradigmatic stage. At the time, if the researcher left aside paradigmatic considerations, it may have seemed to make sense the adoption of the first perspective. In reality, at the time Michael Porter’s theories, markedly mechanist and prescriptive, reigned In the SM field, QM was a new paradigm that broke with the Neo-Taylorism core values. Thus, according to what was said before, the adoption of the second perspective was the way to follow, adopting the paradigm devised for a greater environmental complexity and a wider scope within the set of organizations and bodies as the analytic base. Besides that, QM purports to be a paradigm concerning the entire field of management, while SM concerns only a subset of that field, justifying a positioning in the wider perspective. It must be noted that there has been some confusion about the ideas of the new paradigm in the initial stages of their discovery by the community of practitioners. The source of this confused state of affairs resulted from two type of situations quite common at these stages: (1) Old habits die hard; (2) Besides learning the new ideas it is necessary to unlearn or relearn the old ones in light of the new core values. What really happened is that there was some resistance of the old core to migrate to the periphery. This is a normal situation - resistance to change from the installed interests. Even in Japan, the adoption of what Deming (1986) called the new philosophy, was not a smooth process. Ishikawa (1985) reported hearing comments that ComplexityPrescription Description

Theoretical and Historical Framework Underlying the Qualstrategy Model 43many of us may think that appeared only in the West: ‘My company is in a different category of business, so it is difficult to engage in QC or TQC. We cannot do it’. As a consequence, instead of replacing the paradigmatic core, there was a tendency to interpret the ideas of quality management in light of the still reigning Neo-Tayloristic values, pushing QM to a peripheral position. Instruments like the control chart, for example, richly embedded with the values contained in the new perspective of prevention were seen as a tool to serve the traditional end of the line inspection processes based on meeting specifications. It can be used that way. The problem is that it looses entirely its philosophical richness. In the SM field, the position was something as to look at QM from Porter’s framework, looking at how it could be merged and how QM could enhance the starting framework. As said before, this position consisted analyzing a paradigm from within a school of thought, when the inverse should be done. On the other side, as Porter’s SST was integrated in a paradigm developed for a smaller environmental degree of complexity, it was not a position to understand fully a QM message developed for a greater environmental complexity. The result would either be to reduce the complexity to the maximum allowed by the SM reigning SST, reducing at the same time the potential of QM to deal with environmental complexity, or to try to enlarge environmental complexity leading to bursting of SM as in the story of the frog and the ox. However, when adopting this later posture, the results could not be conclusive if one chose the pair Porter–QM as the object of analysis, because this is one of the wrong ways indicated in Figure 3. The proper way to conduct the relationship analysis is to follow the path indicated in Figure 4, adopting the QM paradigm as the starting point. After situating himself within the borders of the QM paradigm, the observer must look at the SST in order to choose the one that is in consonance with the paradigmatic core values. That school will be chosen to be at the centre of the SM-QM theoretical strategic model. Once more, we must emphasize that the task is not the choice of one school, dropping the others, but to select the one that will be used as an integrator of the others that will assume the role of integrands. FIGURE 4 Comparison of cores and peripheries ComplexityPrescription Description

António Teixeira and Nelson António 44The right path to follow seems to be looking for the school to be elected in the range of description schools, once it is in this set that will be possible to find a school matching the degree of complexity of the QM paradigm, surely not in the prescriptive set. This task seems very easy at the start. The observer just has to look at the work of the authors whose ideas shaped the QM paradigm and adopt the strategic perspective found there. One cannot say that this path does not lead to the desired result, but it is true that the result cannot be found directly. In fact, if we concentrate our attention on the early American authors that dedicate more space to the subject (Juran, 1992; Feigenbaum, 1951), we can see that explicit references were made to strategic planning, although introducing the concept of feedback. Juran (1992) referred to Strategic Quality Planning as being ‘essentially a structured process for defining the broad mission and strategic goals for the company and then determining the means to be used to reach those goals. … Until the 1980s, strategic business planning seldom included planning for quality.’ Thus it may seem that QM advocates strategy as planning when in fact it is compatible with description associates. Although we cannot equate exactly Juran’s Strategic Quality Planning (SQP) to the planning school of strategic thought, especially if we see it integrated in his trilogy, it was to hope greater strategic management content in the QM paradigm. One must not be disappointed, it is there. It is precisely the key that opens the door to see it that we proposed to find. By doing this we are answering partially to the challenge posed by Anderson et al. (1994) when analyzing Deming’s work: ‘we disagree, however, with labeling the 14 points as theory … The challenge is to engage in systematic research to discover; and if need be invent, this underlying theory of quality management …’ When dealing with entities like the SST that are distributed along a wide range of the prescription-description axis one must take into account that schools positioned in a mainly prescriptive position correspond to a hard perspective of management and are put in place in a visible form. That is, they belong to the anatomy of the organization, showing themselves to the observer that has no difficulty to detect them. On the other side, the descriptive schools may not be apparent to the casual observer, because they are embedded in the physiology of the organization, being somehow a background process or underlying theory as expressed by Anderson et al. (1994). According to this, the apparent absence of a theoretical strategic framework in QM texts does not necessarily mean that it is not there. To detect any background strategic process one must go to the roots of QM and interpret what is seen under this light. To go to the deeper roots it is necessary to go beyond those generally considered the Western main authors (Deming, Juran and Feigenbaum) and even beyond Walter A. Shewhart (1931, 1939), the real paradigm shifter, although not always recognized as such. We must be aware that QM is, from the very start, well anchored in solid philosophical values that Shewhart took from Clarence Irving Lewis, an American pragmatic philosopher who developed conceptual pragmatism to explain the way we learn. Conceptual pragmatism is a mixture between empiricism and rationalism in what concerns a priori knowledge. Lewis (1929) considers that these two aspects of the same reality cannot be separated. For him, empirical knowledge is the result of a conceptual interpretation of experience.

Theoretical and Historical Framework Underlying the Qualstrategy Model 45The importance given by Shewhart to this aspect, also cherished later by Deming, is such that Lewis is the most quoted author in his book Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control. As a result, Shewhart considered the activities of the organizations as successive cycles of learning, shown in Figure 5. The learning process associated to conceptual pragmatism is dynamic, beginning and ending in experience, but never ending in the experience where it began. FIGURE 5 The new way to look at the activity of organizations. Deming (1982) would later add a fourth step to Shewhart’s cycle in a prelude to what would be the Deming cycle: 1. Design the product. 2. Make it; test it in the production line and in the laboratory. 3. Put it on the market. 4. Test it in service; find out what the user thinks of it, and why the nonuser has not bought it. The Deming cycle is known both as the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) and PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act). To emphasize the dynamic mode of the cycle, Deming (1982) also considered that ‘continuation of the four steps leads to a helix of continual improvement (shown in Figure 6) of satisfaction of the consumer, at a lower and lower cost.’ This helix of circle is a representation of the mechanism of knowledge which mirrors in a more accurate way the perspective of Lewis (1929) that knowledge does not end in the experience where it began. All these facts show that the QM paradigm has since its start been the genes of what would become known later as the learning organization, as Teixeira (2002) defends in his paper ‘Quality Management and the Learning Organization: Two Coins or Two Faces of the same Coin?’.

António Teixeira and Nelson António 46Thus, the search of the fitting SST must be made in the organizational learning framework. The same way this concept migrated to QM it also influenced the strategic management field giving way to the learning school. What happened is that, in the West, the learning organization as a theoretical framework for the management of organizations, took some time to be accepted and implemented in the daily practice of management. FIGURE 6 The helix of improvement On the other side, this framework was firstly accepted in general management through the QM paradigm. The learning SST would only achieve wide acceptance through the implementation of QM. The lack of a clearly defined strategic framework within the QM management paradigm can be explained by the fact that the evolution of strategic management from prescription to description was also accompanied by a transition from explicit to emergent strategies. In QM the core strategic move is the choice of the new paradigm. Everything else will emerge later from the application of its principles. QM can be seen more as a way to be in the world than a theory understood as a set of prescriptive ruling principles to follow. Thus, what is important at the start is to introduce nothing less than a revolution in the organization. This is surely the reason why the early authors focused their attention on planning as a way to implement quality in the organization, without meaning that this is their choice in what concerns the several perspectives under which strategic management can be looked at. Teixeira (2002a) shows the association between QM and the learning SST by pointing out their common origins. In fact, the principles of learning organization emerged from the same

Theoretical and Historical Framework Underlying the Qualstrategy Model 47philosophical current that is pragmatism. This time the main influence came from John Dewey (1938), who described in the following way the pattern of our thought about the world: • the presence of an indeterminate situation in our experience of the world to which we respond with subjective doubt, • our recognition of this situation as a problem to which the principles of inquiry may be applied, • our invention of various hypotheses as potential solutions that might (if viable) resolve the problem, • our careful reasoning about the meaning of these solutions in relation to the problem itself and to our other convictions, • the application of our results to the facts of the situation, understood by reference to the operation of our observations on them, and acceptance of a scientific or common-sense explanation of the situation that provisionally reduces the original indeterminacy Kemerling (2007) calls our attention for the fact that ‘at every stage of this process, Dewey emphasized the dynamic and tentative character of our knowledge of the world. The best outcome for which we can legitimately hope is what he called the ‘warranted assertability’ of a belief upon which we can successfully act, without any presumption of its independent, universal, or timeless truth.’ Besides, these pragmatic roots of learning are widely present in the literature. Snyder (1997) refers about this that ‘these propositions include several representative propositions related to each of the principal organization learning processes--discovery, invention, production, and generalization--as described by various researchers (Argyris & Schon, 1978; Bennis, 1987; Dewey, 1938; Handy, 1990; Senge, 1990; Shewhart, 1939).’ All these arguments support the choice of the learning SST as the foundation for building the strategic management module within QM seen as a global system for managing organizations, defining the language and values for the integration of the other schools according to processes illustrated in Figure 7. CONCLUSION The attention dedicated by the authors to the joint research of quality and strategic management has shown that Kuhn’s paradigmatic framework is an adequate tool to analyze the development of management theory in general. However its application to the study of strategic management was doubtful, at least until recently, because the field was in a pre-paradigmatic stage. To face this situation, the research can rely on the SST and look among them for the one to choose as an integrator of the others. This school must be aligned in terms of paradigm with QM. Using their common origin in pragmatism, that is a common root for the learning organization, one is led to choose the

António Teixeira and Nelson António 48learning school of strategic thought to supply the core language and values to integrate in a coherent whole the others schools through a process illustrated in Figure 7. FIGURE 7 Strategy formation and levels of complexity Source: Teixeira (2002a) Behavioural – Holistic More complexityMechanist - Reductionist Less complexityLower schools are reinterpreted Lower schools influence upper schools Behavioural – Holistic More complexityMechanist - Reductionist Less complexityThe school remains valid for this complexity The school remains valid for this complexity The upper school provides the language of description and analysis for the whole.

Theoretical and Historical Framework Underlying the Qualstrategy Model 49Based on these findings the authors developed the QualStrategy model. In broad terms, The QualStrategy model blends the organizational efficiency (obtained by implementing quality principles) with the strategic movement approach that emphasizes innovation. The organization must not defend the position held, but instead to innovate continuously. In order to innovate, the organization needs stability platforms, that is, the organization must be able to create organizational routines that correctly identify potential customers and anticipate their needs. The organization should also be able: (i) to create routines that translate those wants into design criteria and specifications for elements of service and product and (ii) to create organizational routines that ensure design criteria and specifications retained throughout the stages of organizational processing. In sum, the organization must be able to understand what is happening in the environment and to translate those needs into products and services. The organizations’ success is based on their ability to combine the construction of stability platforms and radars to observe the environment. It is not an easy task since at the same time that the organization must construct routines in order to improve organizational efficiency, it must be open to destroy those routines in order to accommodate new needs from the customers. REFERENCES Anderson, J., Rungtusanatham, M. & Schroeder, R. (1994). A theory of quality management underlying the Deming management method. Academy of Management Review, 19, (3), 472–509. António, N.S. (2006). Estratégia Organizacional, 2nd ed. Lisboa: Sílabo. António, N. & Teixeira, A. (forthcoming). QualStrategy: Estratégia e qualidade. In Saraiva, M. & Teixeira, A. (eds.) TQM – Gestão da Qualidade nº1. Lisboa: Sílabo. Argyris, C. & Schon, D. (1978). Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Batten, J. (1993). Building a Total Quality Culture. Menlo Park, CA: Crisp Publications. Bennis, W.G. (1987). Using our knowledge of organizational behavior: The improbable task. In Lorsch, J.W. (ed.) Handbook of Organizational Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bonstingl, J. (2001). Schools of Quality. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Bounds, G., Yorks, L., Adams, M. & Ranney, G. (1994). Total Quality Management: Toward the Emerging Paradigm. New York: McGraw-Hill. Delavigne, K. & Robertson, J. (1994). Deming’s Profound Changes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Deming, W.E. (1986). Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Centre for Advanced Engineering Study. Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Holt. Feigenbaum, A.V. (1951). Total Quality Control. New York: McGraw-Hill. Fuller, S. (2003). Kuhn vs Popper. Duxford: Icon Books. Handy, C. (1990). The Age of Unreason. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Ishikawa, K. (1985). What Is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Juran, J.M. (1992). Juran on Quality by Design. New York: The Free Press. Kemerling, G (2007). Dewey: Experience and Nature. Available at: http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/6e.htm Kuhn, T. (1979). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Lewis, C. (1929). Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge. New York: Dover. Mintzberg, H. (1990). Strategy formation: Schools of thought. In Frederickson, J. (ed.). Perspectives on Strategic Management. Boston, MA: Ballinger.

António Teixeira and Nelson António 50Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand B. & Lampel, J. (1998). Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management. London: Prentice-Hall. Popper, K. (1934). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Porter, M. (1980). Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York: The Free Press. Porter, M. (1985). Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. New York: The Free Press. Quality Research Group (1995). Quality Management: 100 Questions and Answers. Macau: Macau Foundation. Rumelt, R.P., Schendel, D.E. & Teece, D.J. (eds.) (1995). Fundamental Issues in Strategy: A Research Agenda. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Senge, P.M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: Five Practices of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday. Seymour D.T. (1998). Re-Engineering the Academy: The Quality Paradigm in High Education. Westport, CT: Oryx Press. Shewhart, W. (1931). Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product. Milwaukee, WI: ASQC Press. Shewhart, W. (1939). Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control. Dover: New York. Snyder, W. (1997). Communities of practice: Combining organizational learning and strategy - Insights to create a bridge to the 21st century. Available at: http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/cols.shtml Teixeira, A. (2002). Quality management and the learning organization: Two coins or two faces of the same coin? Paper presented at the International Meeting for Research in Logistics Conference, Lisbon. Teixeira, A. (2002a). Que Estratégia para a Gestão da Qualidade?. ISCTE, Lisboa. Unpublished PhD thesis. Teixeira, A. & António, N. (2006). Quality and strategy: An integration model for the schools of strategic thought. Paper presented at the Quality Management and Organizational Development Conference, Liverpool. Thompson. J. & Koronacki, J. (2001). Statistical Process Control for Quality Improvement: The Deming Paradigm and Beyond. London: Chapman & Hall/CRC.

Euro Asia Journal of Management Issue 35, Vol. 18, No.1, June 2008, pp.51-61 KEY CONSIDERATIONS IN ADOPTING TOURISM AS A DESTINATION DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY GLENN MCCARTNEY1 ABSTRACT Destinations in their quest to harness the economic benefits of tourism as rapidly as possible may do so not being fully aware of or with disregard towards the potential negative impacts that can accompany such development, particularly on the local community and environment. This paper highlights key destination planning and management issues, particularly highlighting moot factors such as sustainable tourism, tourism stakeholder collaboration, destination carrying capacity, impacts of tourism, as well as discussion on major tourism development models of the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC), Irridex and Visitor Impact Management (VIM). While some of the issues have been applied within the context of Macau, strategic planning and management for tourism development through the integration of these major tourism concepts in any destination will greatly assist in creating an optimum environment for the various tourism stakeholders, and in maintaining the destination’s continued attractiveness to visitors and qualify of life (QOL) for the local community. INTRODUCTION Widely claimed as the world’s largest industry (Middleton, 2001), the travel and tourism industry is also one of the world’s largest generators of wealth and jobs (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2003). Traditional industries of employment in the developed world such as 1 Faculty of International Tourism, Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macau. Email: glenn@must.edu.mo

Glenn McCartney 52mining (coal, iron, steel, textiles, shipbuilding and agriculture) are being re-established in the developing world with less costly labour and modern technology, being gradually replaced by the growth in particular of service based industries such as retail, education, creative industry, leisure, recreation and hospitality and tourism (Middleton, 2001). Key changes are occurring in the world travel market, a major reason being the transforming of socio-demographics, There is an active population living longer, with people working longer and managing only shorter breaks, a growing number of one or two member households with higher disposable incomes, better education and a ‘growing interest in holidays or short breaks which are a complete escape from the stress of everyday life and work, that promote fitness, health or an alternative lifestyle’ (VisitScotland, 2006 in McCartney, 2006). In the midst of this encouraging news of an increasing travel and tourism industry and the potential for destinations to capture and harness the direct and indirect economic benefits from tourism, it is increasingly evident that tourism has become a two-edged sword of positive and negative impacts (Jansen-Verbeke, 1994 in Murphy & Murphy, 2000) with a growing need to control and manage this development in order for the industry to effectively sustain itself. A lack of strategic planning for tourism may result in short term economic gains but at the detriment to the environment and quality of life (QOL) of the local resident population. Given the increasing global importance of the travel and tourism industry on cities and destinations, key capacity and impact scenarios will be constant challenges for tourism stakeholders. Gartner (2005:14) noted that ‘support for tourism as a ‘clean’ form of development faded during the 1980s as some of the negative influences of the phenomenon became better understood’. Each challenge to tourism destination development however can be intrinsically linked, with the success or failure of a tourism strategy being the result of a mix of influences. In what is an increasingly saturated travel marketplace, destination competitiveness and providing a quality travel product and experience to the visitor should be a major focus for tourism planners (Hassan, 2000), while at the same time adequately addressing negative impacts to the destination. With this is a need to gain an understanding of the motives and influences behind location selection which can assist in a more optimum marketing and destination positioning strategy. A person’s desire to travel can be the result of a series of ‘push and pull’ factors. The push factor can be socio-psychological inspirations from a simple wish to escape everyday surroundings and a need to relax and interact (Law et al., 2004). Pull factors are used to determine destination selection after the wish to travel has been made, which can include tangible resources and attractions at a destination such as heritage sites and beaches, or intangible desires such as the image perceptions the potential visitor may equate with the destination (Baloglu & Uysal, 1996). It has also been found that the success and failure of the tourism industry can also rest with how potential travellers perceive the destination and the effective management of these images (Sönmez & Sirakaya, 2002). Herein lies the paradox that what initially attracted travellers can as a consequence of inadequate and lackluster planning management lose its visitor appeal. Looking at Macau’s tourism industry there were nearly 27 million visitor arrivals in 2008 compared to 6.9 million in 1998 (Macau Statistics and Census Service, 2008) although essentially in 2008 from three main feeder markets of China (55.1% of total arrivals), Hong

Key Considerations in Adopting Tourism as a Destination Development Strategy 53Kong (30.3%) and Taiwan (5.3%). ‘Tourism is the backbone of Macau’s economy’ (Macau Government Information Bureau, 2006: 273) with gaming tax the major source of revenue for the Macau Government accounting for 70% of its total revenue (ibid). This huge leap in tourism arrivals, increasing dependency on casino tourism and the opening of more casino properties in Macau since the liberalisation of Macau’s casino industry in 2001, has brought with it greater challenges on destination management, from managing impacts to capacity limits. Macau’s success in gaming has been from a border-location strategy essentially feeding off the Hong Kong and mainland China outbound tourist markets, locations where casinos are illegal. This comparative advantage will start to erode though in the near future as more regional destinations, such as Singapore, are now legalising gaming and enhancing and introducing additional tourism attractions to widen tourism appeal, seeing the tourism and economic benefits that such a strategy can have. As destinations adopt and become increasingly dependent on the tourism industry this can be at the detriment of social and environmental factors ultimately effecting the local resident population as well as visitor arrivals. Acknowledging and adopting policies to effectively manage and plan tourism can lead to a more sustainable approach for destination development, resident support, investor interest and visitor experience. These key issues have been highlighted below. PLANNING AND MANAGING FOR TOURISM DEVELOPMENT Murphy and Murphy (2004) explain that tourism planning, particularly within a community setting, should be a five step strategic process of determining; a vision statement looking to the future and encompassing the views of the wide range of tourism stakeholders; mission statement assessing current and potential resources to state what type of destination you wish to reach; goals of the destination, being more specific than the mission statement such as to maximise the positive while to minimize the negative impacts of tourism development; objectives showing exactly what needs to be achieved by being quantitative and therefore measureable; and finally the actual step of strategic tourism planning, providing a roadmap on how to reach the tourism objectives. Within this quest to attract visitors to their destinations the location is fraught with various tourism planning and management challenges which can be overlooked or simply ignored in this pursuit to harness the apparent economic benefits. Macau has adopted casino tourism as its major industry but lessons have shown that this approach is not necessarily a panacea to a destination’s economic woes. This is particular apparent when examining the various social and environmental costs that can appear as a consequence of tourism development. Resident involvement is crucial in the development of the local tourism industry as tourism policy decisions will ultimately impact the local population. The presence of casinos will bring economic benefits to the jurisdiction and is often a well cited argument both by

Glenn McCartney 54governments and casino operators in developing a gaming industry (Eadington, 1996), with the issue that the benefits from employment to government subsidies in health and education can be equitably spread throughout the community. Examining resident attitude to tourism development Doxey’s Irridex (Doxey, 1976) suggests that as tourism develops community attitudes can change for the worse moving through the stages of euphoria, apathy, irritation, to antagonism. At the initial euphoria stage, local people are enthusiastic and very welcoming of tourism development seeing the economic benefits. This moves to apathy and taking the tourism industry for granted. Irritation sets in within the community as the industry reaches tourism capacity limits followed by antagonism toward the tourist with the resident seeing the negative impacts of higher taxes, littering and corruption. Finally development reaches a level were in the rush to develop tourism the landscape and environment has now changed and what attracted the original tourist has disappeared. The residents may need to live with the issue that the environment they knew before increased tourism development may never be the same again. Research has shown that resident perceptions and attitudes toward the impacts of tourism development can determine the degree of success of tourism planning (Ap, 1992) As ‘gaming has been and will remain the lifeblood of Macau, resident support for gaming development is important. Such support depends on how the host population perceive the impacts of gaming’ (Vong & McCartney, 2005: 178). Although legalised gaming has been in Macau since the 1850s, resident perception research towards gaming has been virtually nonexistent (ibid). In their benchmark study on Macau residents’ perceptions of gaming impacts Vong and McCartney (2005) found that by implementing a Gaming Impact Perception Matrix (GIPM) with the quadrants of residents being optimists, reserved optimists, skeptics and neutral towards gaming development, resident perceptions towards the impacts brought about by tourism and gaming development will be in a constant state of flux subject to perceived costs or benefits at certain points in time. By having a more comprehensive understanding of the perceived costs and benefits to residents, this could assist the authorities and gaming operators to design appropriate strategies to reinforce or alter resident perceptions about gaming. A tourism destination and attractions may have multiple ownerships from private to public bodies. Most tourism planning and management though can be made by elected representatives making political considerations rather than in the interest of sustainable tourism (Swarbrooke, 1999). Tourism stakeholders will have varying objectives, control and resources, from local resident groups to public and private sector organisations. Bramwell and Lane (2000) outline the various benefits and potential problems of collaboration and partnerships in tourism planning. From a pooling of resources, creative synergy and increase acceptance of policies should there be a more equitable diffusion of power and control among the multiple stakeholders, this could result in less adverse tourism impacts. However, the power could pass to those with better political skills, with those having less power yet important stakeholders being excluded from what is essentially a ‘window dressing’ partnership (ibid). The issue is in creating collaboration and cooperation where tourism participation, decision-making and control are by equitable consensus. As an example, Turley (2000) investigated visitor experience at Hadrian’s Wall in the UK and found that due to the sheer size of the site, there was a large number of ‘stakeholders’ owning or occupying various areas either through living and working on the land.

Key Considerations in Adopting Tourism as a Destination Development Strategy 55Taking into consideration the objectives of the multiple ownership of Hadrian’s Wall has made the management of the site increasingly complex and the debate on the sustainable management of the site, balancing issues such as the needs of the users, conservation, visitor access, while maximising the quality of experience and minimising the interruption of the site for the visitor. The issue of sustainable tourism is conditioned within the social context, and therefore the various stakeholders and their subjective needs must be identified in order for sustainable tourism to be met (Hardy et al., 2002). Given the rapid development of Macau’s casino and tourism industry the issues of impacts on the local community and environment have been particularly apparent in recent years. The Macau Government authorities have called for the strengthening of coordination between various stakeholders to help ensure the conservation of Macau’s historical and cultural backdrop (McCartney & Nadkarni, 2003) now with UNESCO World Heritage Sites. McCartney and Nadkarni (2003) point out that an overemphasis on the development of the gaming sector could have an adverse affect on heritage and conservation. Butler (1980) suggests that a tourism destination may go through a life cycle (Tourism Area Life Cycle, TALC), following the stages of exploration, involvement, development, consolidation and stagnation (Figure 1). A destination will initially experience small numbers of visitors due to perhaps limitation in access, facilities and limited knowledge on the travel industry, to an eventual growth experienced by the development of facilities, attractions and dissemination of destination information (ibid). Issues of resident discontent and carrying capacity begin to emerge during the consolidation stage due to an increasing number of tourists with the possibility of a decline in the rate of increase on visitor numbers. After stagnation with capacity levels being exceeded throughout the destination it may become less appealing to visitors with the possibility of destination decline if corrective action is not undertaken. While the TALC tends to see that the travel market as homogeneous (i.e. all travellers at the same stage) and difficult to predict when each begins with the possibility of uncontrollable factors influencing development, it does show the possibility of destination decline and the need to constantly plan for rejuvenation strategies (Swarbrooke, 1999).

Glenn McCartney 56FIGURE 1 Hypothetical evolution of a tourist area (Butler, 1980) Macau’s position along its tourism destination life cycle would warrant further research, although the introduction of new style casinos through the casino liberalisation process could be seen as assisting as a rejuvenation strategy of the tourism industry (McCartney, 2005). Destinations are challenged with reviewing core competencies and in selecting attractions that not only initiate tourism development in an increasingly competitive tourism environment but also in examining and strategically planning an attraction mix that can extend or revitalise its tourism industry. A destination may have a limited selection of natural or heritage attractions but can also manufacture attractions and visitor experience by building attractions such as theme parks or casinos. It is suggested though due to issues such as the perceived negative impacts that are generally associated with gaming, casinos may be introduced at a later rather than introductory stage of the TALC (McCartney, 2005). The decline of a destination can be signaled by economic losses or failure, although destinations in decline could still be generating revenues through tourism. Therefore defining decline as decreases in guest numbers and turnover would not be a sufficient indicator, but Immediate declineMarked decline Stabilisation Reduced growth Rejuvenation NUMBER OF TOURISTS Consolidation Stagnation Development Involvement Exploration TIME CRITICAL RANGE OF ELEMENTS OF CAPACITY

Key Considerations in Adopting Tourism as a Destination Development Strategy 57factors such as a decrease in what defined quality in the destination and competitive success of the destination (market share) or difficulty in maintaining sustainable tourism (Manente & Pechlaner, 2006). Swarbrooke (1999) in examining sustainable tourism suggests that the TALC is getting ever shorter due to the desire for tourists to constantly find new places and the growth in competing destinations, a implication being that tourism investments such as resort development not being repaid. Managing the visitor experience which will satisfy their needs but at the same time conserve the environmental setting of the location is a particular challenge for destinations. This sustainability approach to tourism management has been referred to as ‘carrying capacity’ with the development of Visitor Impact Management (VIM) schemes and summarised in Figure 2 from work by Glasson, Godfrey and Goodey (1997). Tourism carrying capacity will revolve around the dimensions of the destination’s ecological systems (quality of water, air and surrounding eco-system) physical structure (in supplying enough water, energy and accommodation to meet the needs of residents and visitors) and economic structure (cost of living and investment in the destination). The perspectives involve the level of visitor satisfaction (from service levels and hospitality received), tolerance of the community towards the tourist, and the political administration such as policies and priorities put in place to manage tourism development. Similarly to the TALC, there is an assumption within VIM that each destination has a threshold capacity for development and to exceed will lead to a gradual deterioration and destruction of the environment. Glasson et al. (1997) developed tourism carrying capacity within a network or web with quantifiable aspects concerning ecology, economics, physical space and infrastructure to more qualitative aspects such as resident qualify of life (QOL) and interaction and quality of exchange (QOE) between resident and tourist. The social exchange between residents and tourists will form a key component of ‘social carrying capacity’ creating the levels of tolerance and acceptance each has for one another and in determining the continued attractiveness of the destination.

Glenn McCartney 58FIGURE 2 Tourism Capacity Networks (Glasson et al., 1997: 52) Each of these capacity components are dynamic and will vary over time affecting the influencing significance of each. Yet ‘each destination is unique, and it is the type of activity, the timing of such activity, group size and composition, visitor expectations and the site’s own characteristics, which influence perceptions of crowding, satisfactions, or other negative impacts, as much as actual numbers. It is a combination of these factors which create site-specific responses, which in turn are not readily generalized to other settings’ (Glasson et al., 1997: 48-49). Hence no precise carrying capacity figure may exist. With the building of the COTAI Strip in Macau and recent opening of The Venetian, Macau, this for example will increasingly move a substantial visitor flow outside the highly congested city centre creating greater carrying capacity potential. McCartney (2004) highlights that for some of the heritage sites around Macau, such as St. Paul’s ruins, Macau’s major icon, PERSPECTIVES DIMENSIONS Ecological Systems flora fauna water air land TOURISM CARRYING CAPACITY Physical Structure water supply land supply energy supply transport/parking visitor amenities accommodation Economic Structure cost of living tourism spending investment labour costs technology Visitor Satisfaction volume behaviour service levels hospitality expectations Community Tolerance privacy/access involvement quality of life beneficiaries tourist behaviour Political Administrationgoals capability priorities jurisdictions policies

Key Considerations in Adopting Tourism as a Destination Development Strategy 59serve as ‘honey pots of visitor attraction’. The continually gravitation of crowds of tour groups to these selected sites have a negative impact not only on the tourism environment but surrounding resident populations as the visitors are not spatially dissipated. Creating and increasing other special interest markets to Macau such as the business traveller or leisure traveller (interested in other leisure activities beyond gambling) can create a greater visitor spread and widen physical carrying capacity possibilities. IMPLICATIONS In developing countries there can be a lack of monitoring and a largely unregulated travel industry with an eagerness to leverage the economic benefits of tourist arrivals as quickly as possible throughout their stay. These can be by unethical means starting with common taxi meter scams on visitors or various unexplained visitor ‘taxes’. This short term perspective only serves to limit and stunt tourism development as a result of the negative backlash from those visitors who experience this and pass on through word of mouth. This can have repercussions not only on future visitor arrivals and image perceptions but on factors such as investor confidence. In tandem with tourism development should also be strategic tourism policies, from implementing sustainable best practices, to effective monitoring and control mechanisms. The need to monitor tourism development is a continuous process. As can be seen, that along with the pressures of increasing tourism arrivals is the challenge for government and other leading stakeholders to provide a continuous quality tourism experience while not to the detriment of local residents or the environment. Macau with its highly developed and reliance on the tourism industry also faces challenges from carrying capacity issues to limiting negative social, environment and economic impacts on the local community. Macau like other tourism destinations strives to maintain a sustainable differential competitive edge over its neighbours. By not limiting the negative impacts these advantages can be gradually eroded. As the quality of life of local residents is perceived to worsen, the quality of exchange between residents and visitors can also go into decline. Destinations must increasingly compete in a global marketplace, and therefore given the array of choices available to travellers how these destinations are perceived in terms of image and overall attractiveness will determine future tourist visitation. Visitors are attracted to destinations by both functional (facilities, landscape, transportation) and psychological (service quality, resident’s receptiveness, relaxation) components (Gallarza et al., 2002) and therefore the local community play a pivotal role in the success of tourism development. The tourism area life cycle (TALC) examines social carrying capacity thresholds suggesting a requirement for strategic planning and management responses and solutions during the various stages of the life cycle to prevent tourism destination deterioration and stagnation. While governments and key tourism stakeholders (casinos in the case of Macau) can take leading roles this should be with the inclusion of all stakeholders in coordinating tourism

Glenn McCartney 60policies and actions, thereby giving greater understanding of the various impacts that could occur. Macau’s rapid casino and tourism growth in the pass few years has lead to an increasing metamorphosis in the surrounding environment as more and larger casino integrated resorts open. What this equates to in the longer term with regards to strategic planning and management issues such as impact assessment, critical levels of capacity and resident quality of life would require greater investigation. There are lessons to be learnt by destinations from the potential impacts and the ‘double-edged sword’ of tourism development. This inevitably requires consensus and an equitable partnership from all those involved in making and maintaining the destination as an attractive and preferred location for visitors. Given the increasing competitiveness of the tourism industry such an approach can only help in the successful development of the tourism destination for the long term. REFERENCES Ap, J. (1992). Residents’ perceptions on tourism impacts. Annals of Tourism Research, 19, (4), 665-690. Baloglu, S. & Uysal, M. (1996). Market segments of push and pull motivations: A canonical correlation approach. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality, 8, (3), 32-38. Bramwell, B. & Lane, B. (2000). Tourism, Collaboration and Partnership: Politics, Practice, and Sustainability. Clevedon: Channel View Books. Butler, R.W. (1980). The concept of a tourist area cycle of evolution, The Canadian Geographer, 24, (1), 5-12. Doxey, G. (1975). A causation theory of visitor-resident irritants: Methodology and research inferences. Paper presented to the 6th Annual TTRA Conference: The Impact of Tourism, San Diego, California. Eadington, W. (1996). The legalization of casinos: Policy objectives, regulatory alternatives, and cost/benefit considerations. Journal of Travel Research, 34, 3-8. Gallarza, M.G., Saura, I.C. & García, H.C. (2002). Destination image: Towards a conceptual framework. Annals of Tourism Research, 29, (1), 56-78. Gartner, W.C. (2005). A synthesis of tourism trends. In Aramberri, J & Butler, R. (eds) Tourism Development: Issues for a Vulnerable Industry. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Glasson, J., Godfrey, K. & Goodey, B. (1995). Towards Visitor Impact Management. Avebury: Ashgate Publishing. Hardy, A., Beeton, J.S.R. & Pearson, L. (2002). Sustainable tourism: An overview of the concept and its position in relation to conceptualisations of tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 10, (6), 475-496. Hassan, S.S. (2000). Determinants of market competitiveness in an environmentally sustainable tourism industry. Journal of Travel Research, 38, 239-245. Jansen-Verbeke, M. (1994). Tourism: Quo Vadis? From Business as Usual to Crisis Management. Rotterdam: Centre for Tourism Management, Erasmus University. Law, R., Cheung, C. & Lo, A. (2004). The relevance of profiling travel activities for improving destination marketing strategies. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 16, (6), 355-362. Manente, M. & Pechlaner, H. (2006). How to define, identify and monitor the decline of tourist destinations: Towards an early warning system. In Butler, R.W. (ed.) The Tourism Area Life Cycle Vol. 2: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Macau Government Information Bureau (2006). Macau Yearbook 2006. Macau: Author. Macau Statistics and Census Service (2008). Visitor arrivals by place of residence. Available at http://www.dsec.gov.mo/index.asp?src=/english/indicator/e_tur_indicator.html McCartney, G.J. (2004). Honey to the Bee. Macau Business, August, 34-35.

Key Considerations in Adopting Tourism as a Destination Development Strategy 61McCartney, G.J. (2005). Casinos as a tourism redevelopment strategy: The case of Macau. Journal of Macau Gaming Research Association, 2, 40-54. McCartney, G.J. (2006). Macau’s destination image in the East Asia region after the liberalisation of its casino industry. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Surrey. McCartney, G. & Nadkarni, S. (2003). Heritage versus Gaming: Odds on winning a piece of the tourism pie. Paper presented to the 2nd Dehaan Tourism Management Conference: Developing Cultural Tourism, Nottingham University Business School. Middleton, V.T.C. (2001) Marketing in Travel and Tourism. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Murphy, P.E. & Murphy, A.E. (2004). Strategic Management for Tourism Communities: Bridging the Gaps. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Sönmez, S. & Sirakaya, E. (2002). A distorted destination image? The case of Turkey. Journal of Travel Research, 41, 185-196. Swarbrooke, J. (1999). Sustainable Tourism Management. Wallingford: CABI Publishing. Turley, S. (2000). Hadrian’s wall (UK): Managing the visitor experience at the Roman frontier. In Shackley, M. (ed.) Visitor Management: Case Studies from World Heritage Sites. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. World Travel & Tourism Council (2003). Blueprint for New Tourism. Available at: http://www.tourismfortomorrow.com/images/WTTCBlueprintFinal.pdf VisitScotland (2006). Trends Affecting Tourism – The Changing Consumer. Available at: http://www.visitscotland.org/print/research_and_statistics/scenarios/trends_affecting_tourism_-_knowyourmarket_-_tourism-trends/the_changing_consumer_-_knowyourmarket_-_tourism-trends-consumer/the_changing_consumer_-_knowyourmarket_-_tourism-trends-consumerhealth.htm Vong, C.K.F. & McCartney, G. (2005). Mapping resident perceptions of gaming impact. Journal of Travel Research, 44, 177-187.

Euro Asia Journal of Management Issue 35, Vol. 18, No.1, June 2008, pp.63-76 MEASURING THE QUALITY OF THE REFERENCE SERVICES IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES: A MALAYSIAN PERSPECTIVE WAIL ALHAKIMI1 and ZAINAB KHALIFAH2 ABSTRACT Nowadays, customer satisfaction and customer focus are critical to the competitiveness of organizations. Therefore any organization interested in delivering quality services must begin with a clear understanding of its customers. In a perfect world, expectations and perceptions for customers would be identical. In practice, these indicators are often separated by some distances. A modified SERVQUAL instrument was used in this study to measure the quality of the reference services provided by a Malaysian academic library. To assess the gap between the expectations and perceptions of the five dimensions of service quality, a questionnaire was developed, validated, and distributed through face-to-face survey with 105 international students. Reliability and validity of the survey questionnaire were confirmed and proved to be high. The findings reflect a statistically significant gap between the international students’ expectations and perceptions of the reference services. Reliability dimension was identified as the most important in evaluating reference services and responsiveness was the least 1 Faculty of Management and Human Resource Development, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, U8C-504 Kolej Perdana, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia. Email: ws7kimi@yahoo.com 2 Faculty of Management and Human Resource Development, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.

Wail Alhakimi and Zainab Khalifah 64important dimension. This paper concludes by discussing the difficulties facing the international students and implications for the service provider. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, quality is among the most critical aspects for the strategic management of services in organizations. The pressures driving successful organizations toward top quality services make the measurement of service quality very important. In recent years, academic libraries as a service organization have given increasing attention on service quality as a model of management. The Malaysian Government and the institutions of higher learning are striving to attract international students, especially at the graduate level. The institutions make every effort to provide quality education (Safahieh & Singh, 2006). In 2005, it was estimated that there were about 40,000 foreign students studying in Malaysian public and private higher educational institutes (Clark & Sedgwick, 2005). Studying in a foreign country is challenging for many students, because their cultural-educational background may be different form the local students and university staff (Volet, 1999). The present paper could be regarded as one of the few studies in the field which focuses on international students as a niche group, it can be viewed as a call for decision-makers to give more attention to their expectations. Also it could contribute to fill the lack of studies that assess the reference services of academic libraries in Malaysia. The purpose of this study is to measure the quality of the reference services provided by academic libraries in Malaysia, from the perspective of the international postgraduate students. Through identify the gap that may exist between the expectations and perceptions, determine the relative importance of the five dimensions of service quality, identify if there are significant differences between demographic variables with regard to the gap scores that measure disparity between expectations and perceptions, and identify the problems faced by the international students when using the library services. The five dimensions of service quality can be defined as follow: Tangibles: appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and written materials. Reliability: ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. Responsiveness: measures the readiness and willingness of library staff in providing service, help patrons, and provide prompt service. Assurance: measures the knowledge and courtesy of the library staff and their ability to convey confidence. Empathy: caring, individualized attention given to customers.

Measuring the Quality of the Reference Services in Academic Libraries: A Malaysian Perspective 65 BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEW Understanding customer expectations is a prerequisite for delivering superior service. Customers compare their perception of the service - in terms of the quality and how satisfied they are overall with their experience - with their expectations when judging an organization’s services (Parasuraman et al., 1991). Some factors can influence the customer’s perceptions of service performance which include tangibles and the perceived competence and credibility of service providers for their responsiveness, reliability, and courtesy (Parasuraman et al., 1990). Customer expectations are beliefs about service delivery that serve as standards or reference points against which performance is judged. A thorough knowledge about customer expectations is critical to services marketers because customers compare their perceptions of performance with these reference points when evaluating service quality. Therefore, knowing what customers expect is the first, and possibly most critical, step in delivering service quality. Many expectations exist when dealing with academic libraries, Srisa-Ard (1997) mentioned these expectations such as improved computer facilities within the library, expand reading areas and library collection, automated library services to access to information in foreign databases, provide up-to-date information, and librarians’ attitude and enthusiasm. Moreover, Robledo (2001) demonstrated that expectations are integral part of service quality evaluations, and he offered a model for managing expectations to help the organizations to manage the expectations and match them with its performance. The literature on academic library services reveal a growing concern for the service quality experienced by users and the library’s degree of success in meeting or exceeding users’ expectations. A new trend in most academic libraries is that they focus more on user perspectives and intangible aspects that users expect the library to work more for them (Srisa-Ard, 1997). GrÖnroos (1984) defined service quality as a perceived judgment, resulting from an evaluation process where customers compare their expectations with the service they perceived to have received. The gap between customer expectations and perceptions may stem from librarians inaccurately perceiving the expectations of customers, from library services standards not reflecting customer expectations, from the library overpromising its services, or from the actual services falling short of customer expectations (Quinn, 1997). Service Quality in Academic Libraries The importance of the customer’s role in any organizational assessment of service quality depends on the conceptual framework describing the nature of quality. By the mid-1980s, academic librarians still had little interest in user input. However, support for the user perspective in assessing library quality has grown (Nitecki, 1996). In academic library, quality

Wail Alhakimi and Zainab Khalifah 66may be recognized by the customers in terms of prompt delivery, or timely and error freeness of the service. There are numerous definitions and characteristics proposed to understand quality and service quality in libraries (e.g. Hernon & Ellen, 1998). In Malaysia, a survey of 10 university librarians’ staff, 13 state public libraries, and six selected special libraries shows several definitions were given to the quality (Wan Aris et al., 1998): Access to well-developed collections, Prompt, efficient and courteous service, Fulfill information needs of users/clients, Conducive environment and facilities. Thapisa and Gamini (1999) conducted a study which aims to determine the perceptions of 243 University of Botswana Library clients as they relate to service quality. They concluded that there is a significant difference among various faculties in their perception of quality service. They justified the difference was dependent upon the clients needs. Calvert (2001) studied the customer expectations in the comparative research project ‘International Variations in Measuring Customer Expectations’ which examined the expectation between the library users in New Zealand and China (Library and information studies (LIS) students at Peking University in China and Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand). The data suggested that ‘academic library users have very similar expectations of services’ Three dimensions that concern staff attitudes, the library environment, and services that help the customers to find and use the library’s material efficiently are found in both studies. The library should make its service readily available when the customer wants them, and offering the collection in good order that matches the customer’s need. Reference Services in Academic Libraries Reference Services are the task of providing assistance to library users in finding information, answering questions, and otherwise fulfilling users’ information needs. The Reference and Users Service Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association, defines a reference transaction as ‘an information contact that involves the knowledge, use, recommendations, interpretation, or instruction in the use of one or more information sources by a member of the library staff’. According to Nitecki (1995), a reference transaction occurs when a reference librarian responds to a specific information query posed by user. The dialog may involve simple verbal exchange, use of automated resources, consultation of other reference materials elsewhere in the reference area, instruction on search strategy, or guidance in defining a topic for information retrieval. Service quality can be applied to specific departments within academic libraries, as Bicknell (1994) points out librarians need to stop equating quality reference services with the accuracy of answers provided to user’s questions. The manner in which librarians treat users,

Measuring the Quality of the Reference Services in Academic Libraries: A Malaysian Perspective 67and their behavior and communication style, may be as important to users as the accuracy of the answers they are given. Tyckoson (2003) argued that the role of the reference librarian will continue to evolve. In 1996, Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) proposed broad guidelines for effective reference services that recommended five evaluation criteria: approachability, interest, listening/inquiring, searching, and follow-up. The RUSA guidelines emphasize that effective services are not measured entirely by an answer’s degree of accuracy, but through the interaction between the librarian and user (Curry & Copeman 2005). By using a Reference Interaction Record in the University of British Columbia, Curry and Copeman (2005) in a field simulation study; pointed out 17 themes emerged from the data gathered, which determine reference interview quality: advise and suggestions, approachability, follow-up (invitation to return, asking if question answered), asking question, attentiveness, awareness of language barriers, early termination of interview, explanation/instruction, library jargon, listening skills, non-verbal communication, patience, referral, repeating and rephrasing, resourcefulness, showing interest in proxy’s query, and speaking clearly. International Students as Library Users Few studies have examined the specific needs and characteristics of international students as patrons for academic libraries services. Cultural diversity present unique benefits and challenges and many studies indicate that international students face more difficulty in using the library than domestic students do (Goudy & Moushey, 1984). A study of 197 students in Australian universities indicated that differences in culture were the most outstanding variables when tested for significance between local and international students (Bigdeli, 1996). Moreover, Baron and Strout-Dapaz (2001) surveyed 123 libraries and international program support offices, and they pointed out three major challenges faced by international students when using the reference services, which are language and communications problems, adjusting to new educational and library system and general cultural adjustments. Their research also recommends that reference and instructional services to help international students be made more effective through staff diversity training and collaboration with campus departments and international students themselves. Several authors have discussed about international students’ lack of conceptual awareness of library services. Kumar and Suresh (2000) found that the reference librarian role is unclear to most international students. They do not know that a reference librarian’s primary responsibility is to answer questions; international students feel they are troubling the librarian with their queries. Designing strategies to provide effective reference services for international students requires a considerable investment of thought and efforts.

Wail Alhakimi and Zainab Khalifah 68 METHODOLOGY The present survey was carried out at a large academic library within a Malaysian public university. Face-to-face survey method was conducted where the researcher met the respondents based on a given questionnaire, thus enabling the researcher to make valid judgments and increased their response level. The international postgraduate students were the targeted population in this study. Convenience sampling was followed due to ease and speed in surveying the sample. A 95% confidence level is the conventionally accepted level for most business research, most commonly expressed by denoting the significance level as p ≤ .05. According to Sekaran (2005: 294), to achieve the confidence level of 95%, 181 respondents is the appropriate sample size if the population is 343. At the end, a total of 105 questionnaires were completed by the respondents. Out of the 105 respondents, more than half were studying at the master degree level (69.6%) and the remaining were at the doctorate level (30.4%). A majority of them (77%) were senior students and 23% were new students. For the purpose of the analysis, the countries of origin were categorized into four categories: Indonesia, Arab countries, Asian countries and African countries. Almost half of the respondents were Arab students. Indonesian students were second with a percentage of 25%, while 17% of the respondents were from Asian countries, and 7% were African students. Gap analysis is an appropriate SERVQUAL methodology for examining customer expectations of a professional service. In this study, the instrument was adapted to measure the expectations and perceptions for the reference services. The SERVQUAL instrument consists of three distinct sections, which correspond to measurements of the customer’s expectations of an excellent organization, of relative importance of each service factor from the customer’s perspective, and of the customer’s perceptions of a specific service (Nitecki, 1995). Based on empirical tests with the instrument and various theoretical considerations, Parasuraman et al. (1991) claim that SERVQUAL is both a reliable and a valid measure of service quality. They also claim that the instrument is applicable to a wide variety of service contexts. SERVQUAL instrument can be used to measure customers attitudes toward the quality of services that library offers. Nitecki (1996) described a case study at a large academic research library in which 351 users were targeted, and the SERVQUAL was used. The validity and reliability of the SERVQUAL scale were both supported by the study suggesting that the instrument’s suitability applied to library settings. By reviewing the literature related to service quality, t-test was applied in many studies (e.g. Christy, 1997; Simpson, 1995; Haile, 2001; Zwelling & Anderson, 1996) to the five service quality dimensions (reliability, tangibles, assurance, responsiveness, and empathy) to determine whether significant differences existed between expectations and perceptions sum scores means and the magnitude of any differences. In addition, One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine if there were significant differences among the various demographic variables

Measuring the Quality of the Reference Services in Academic Libraries: A Malaysian Perspective 69in regard to the gap scores that measured disparity between services quality expectations and perceptions. FINDINGS The demographic variables were discussed according to the frequency of using reference services by the categories of the respondents in each variable. It included country of origin, level of study, study status (new or senior student), and faculties. The results show different usage rate according to each category. The higher usage rate for the reference services was: 35% of Indonesian students fell into ‘2-5 times’, 26% of Arabic students fell into ‘6 times and more’, 39% of Asian students fell into ‘6-10 times’ , and 58% of African students fell into ‘ 11 or more times’. In general, all students characterized themselves as heavy users. Out of the 65 master students by taught course, nearly half (48%) used the reference services more than six times per semester, and only 18% used it ‘one time’. Also, a majority of the 40 research students (master and doctorate) were regular users of the reference services with 67% for more than six times per semester. According to study status, nearly half of the 24 new students (42%) characterized themselves as heavy users of the reference services (More than six times). On the other hand, over half of the 81 senior students (59%) fall into the category of ‘More than 6 times’. Generally, a majority of the international students from all faculties have used the library’s reference services for more than two times per semester. Over half of the international students in Electrical Engineering Faculty (56%) did use the reference services more than six times per semester. Others faculties showed approximately similar results. Respondents’ Expectations for an Ideal Reference Services The instrument asked the respondents to indicate the extent to which an ideal library should possess the features described by the 22 SERVQUAL statements. The results were summarized in Table 1 (Likert scale was used: Strongly disagree ‘1’ to Strongly agree ‘5’). According to the five quality dimensions, ‘Reliability’ ranked high, followed in descending order by ‘Assurance’, ‘Empathy’, ‘Tangibles’, and ‘Responsiveness’.

Wail Alhakimi and Zainab Khalifah 70TABLE 1 Mean Score Ratings of Dimensions Expected for Ideal Academic Library Standard Deviation Mean Dimension .70 4.31 Reliability .78 4.29 Assurance .75 4.26 Empathy .77 4.18 Tangibles .78 4.09 Responsiveness The mean score for the 22 expectation statements arranged in descending order of importance. The highest-ranking statements were related to ‘employees have an accurately & efficiently satisfied user inquiries (4.43)’, ‘employees have the knowledge to answer user’s questions (4.40)’, and ‘the reference counter has convenient service hours (4.39)’. The lowest-ranking statements were related to ‘timeliness of information and response (3.96)’, ‘interaction exists between students and employees of the reference counter (4.03)’, and ‘encourage the user to come back for more assistance (4.07)’. The overall expectations’ mean score was 4.23, which is between ‘Agree (4)’ and ‘Strongly agree (5)’ of the Likert scale used. Respondents’ Perceptions of the Reference Services The instrument then asked the respondents to indicate the extent to which the Malaysian academic library has the features described by the 22 statements of SERVQUAL. The results are summarized in Table 2. According to the five quality dimensions, ‘Assurance’ ranked high, followed in descending order by ‘Tangibles’, ‘Reliability’, ‘Empathy’, and ‘Responsiveness’. TABLE 2 Mean Score Ratings of Dimensions Perceived for a Malaysian Academic Library Standard Deviation Mean Dimension .72 3.76 Assurance .67 3.69 Tangibles .68 3.68 Reliability .70 3.62 Empathy .76 3.54 Responsiveness

Measuring the Quality of the Reference Services in Academic Libraries: A Malaysian Perspective 71The mean score for the 22 perception statements arranged in descending order. The highest-ranking statements were related to ‘the reference counter has convenient service hours (3.91)’, ‘employees of the reference counter are consistently courteous and polite (3.89)’, and ‘when a user has a problem, the reference counter shows a sincere interest in solving it (3.88)’. The lowest-ranking statements were related to ‘the reference counter understands the specific needs of its users (3.37)’, ‘library staff encourage me to come back to ask for more assistance if I need it (3.43)’, and ‘the reference counter have timeliness of information and response (3.43)’. The overall perceptions mean score was 3.66, which is between ‘Neutral (3)’ and ‘Agree (4)’ of the Likert scale used. Gap Analysis The difference scores were computed as P (Perception) – E (Expectation). Each expectation score was subtracted from its counterpart perception score. A negative difference score indicates that expectation exceed perception; a positive difference score indicates that perception surpassed expectation. The results reveal that all quality attributes of reference services did not meet the international students’ expectations. In other words, international postgraduate students’ expectations exceeded their perceptions for the reference services provided by the Malaysian academic library on all of the 22 SERVQUAL statements. One of the reasons is as Srisa-ard (1997) mentioned: ‘It is natural tendency of people to wish for more than they have’. Table 3 illustrates five statements with greatest disparity between expectations and perceptions, and Table 4 illustrates five statements with least disparity between expectations and perceptions. TABLE 3 Five statements with Greatest Disparity between Expectations and Perceptions Sig. t-test Gap Score P-E ExpectationMean PerceptionMean SERVQUAL Statements .000* -.91 4.28 3.37 The reference counter understands the specific needs of its users 22 .000* -.82 4.43 3.61 Employees of the reference counter have accurately & efficiently satisfied user inquiries 9 .000* -.77 4.33 3.56 Reference services are provided at the promised time to do so 8 .000* -.70 4.33 3.63 Precision & accuracy of employees' response 5 .000* -.67 4.20 3.53 Materials associated with the reference services (such as brochures and information format) are visually appealing4 * Significant level at p ≤ .05

Wail Alhakimi and Zainab Khalifah 72 TABLE 4 Five statements with Least Disparity between Expectations and Perceptions Sig. t-test Gap Score P-E ExpectationMean PerceptionMean SERVQUAL Statements .000* -.44 4.12 3.68 Reference counter physical facilities are visually appealing 2 .000* -.44 4.32 3.88 When a user has a problem, the reference counter shows a sincere interest in solving it 6 .001* -.42 4.12 3.70 Reference services are performed right the first time 7 .000* -.40 4.11 3.71 Employees at reference counter have a neat-appearance 3 .000* -.34 4.23 3.89 Employees of the reference counter are consistently courteous and polite 16 * Significant level at p ≤ .05 A paired t-test was applied to all 22 SERVQUAL statements of expectations and perceptions. The results indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between expectations and perceptions of the international postgraduate students for all the 22 statements (all sig. < 0.05). The calculated SERVQUAL difference scores measure how well the reference services delivered match the student’s expectations. Those services quality measures offer an indicators for service providers of the degree and direction of discrepancy between perceptions and expectations. The Malaysian academic library can use these measures to identify specific areas requiring improvement (where the gaps are high). Table 5 shows that in terms of the dimensions of the reference services quality, empathy achieved the greatest gap with a score 0.64 whereas tangible dimension was the least gap with a score of 0.49. TABLE 5 Gap Analysis by Dimensions (ordered by gap size) Sig. t-test Gap Score(P-E) ExpectationMean (E) Perception Mean (P) SERVQUAL Dimensions .000* -.64 4.26 3.62 Empathy .000* -.63 4.31 3.68 Reliability .000* -.55 4.09 3.54 Responsiveness .000* -.53 4.29 3.76 Assurance .000* -.49 4.18 3.69 Tangibles * Significant level at p ≤ .05

Measuring the Quality of the Reference Services in Academic Libraries: A Malaysian Perspective 73The results of one-way ANOVA test indicated a significant difference between levels of the study for ‘Reliability’ dimension only; doctorate students achieved the highest gap scores. According to the respondents’ faculties, no significant differences between the gaps scores were found. Significant differences between new and senior students were found for ‘Reliability’ and ‘Responsiveness’ dimensions only; senior students achieved the highest gap scores. Finally, the gap scores for three dimensions (Reliability, Assurance, and Empathy) were significantly differed according to the country of origin for the international students. African students achieved the highest gap scores according to ‘Reliability’ and ‘Empathy’ dimensions. While, Asian students achieved the highest gap scores according to ‘Assurance’ dimension. Three common difficulties given by the respondents were language/communication (34.3%), adjusting to new library services (23.8%), and general cultural adjustments (17.1%). In addition, only 10.5% of the respondents specified others difficulties such as: slow response of the reference services staff to their queries, some information notices in Malay language only, and locating some library materials. Some international students suffer from the lack of experience with specific technology and resources in the Malaysian academic library. Others avoided using reference desk as they were afraid of asking stupid questions; afraid of their English not being good enough; and afraid of not understanding answers well. CONCLUSION The reference services interaction in the library can be an effective means of teaching international students not only about specific library resources, but also about the process of finding, evaluating and using information. Friendliness of the reference staff may also play a role in how confident students feel about their own abilities to find the information they need. The library can keep up with users’ growing expectations only through continued assessments of their service quality. Moreover, librarians should possess in-depth knowledge of the information seeking behaviours of international students as well as their use of various library services. According to the five dimensions of service quality, the results indicated that the ‘Assurance’ dimension was given the highest mean score not only with regard to the level of perceived service quality, but also achieved the second level of importance after reliability dimension. It relates to the knowledge and courtesy of the library's reference staff and their ability to inspire trust and confidence. It seems that the international students want the librarians to have knowledge to answer their questions. Reference services clearly can play a significant role in helping students become confident, and independent information seekers. On the expectations side, ‘Reliability’ was the most important dimension ranked by the respondents. It relates to the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. And surprisingly ‘Responsiveness’ was ranked as the least important dimension and the least perceived dimension.

Wail Alhakimi and Zainab Khalifah 74 IMPLICATIONS General recommendations have been suggested to improve the quality of the reference services. Similar to the literature, recommendations are given to reference librarians to become active educators, ‘not merely custodians of the world’s knowledge’ (Callahan, 1991), the need for reference librarians to be flexible in dealing with the unexpected and integrating reference work (Flinner, 1987), and provide special library orientation for international student (Jackson, 2005). It is acknowledged that international students have specific characteristics and difficulties. Therefore, the library needs to design a suitable program to this group to improve their academic achievements, offering a separate introduction session or program for international students with more printed material, less complicated and slower-paced speech, and a deliberate acknowledgement of special challenges that might be encountered by international students (Patton, 2002). Also follow up procedures in reference interview/ instructional services would be of great importance to international students (Curry & Copeman, 2005). In addition, general recommendations can be considered by the library executives such as: • Create a culture of excellent service quality. • Designing strategies to provide effective reference services for international students. • Reference and instructional services have to be more effective through staff diversity training and collaboration with campus departments and international students themselves. • Train the library's staff to be customer oriented, and retain them with new skills to perform services. • The data from students’ comments reveal that problems of books’ reshelving and interlibrary loan service are at a higher frequency. The library should seek a better way for improving these services. • Library tours are especially important to international students. It is a good chance for those students to familiarize themselves with the library environment, resources, and contact staff. • Create an online tutorial for international students to learn important library concepts. It could include a virtual tour of the library with descriptions of the library’s print and electronic holdings, and explains key library concepts, policies and services. • Introducing the searching process of the library resources and especially reading the terms such as ‘library classifications’, ‘call numbers’, ‘status of the books’, ‘hold item’, ‘in cataloging’, ‘on order’. • Positive contact with international students increases their social adjustment; relaxed contact with library staff contributes to lower library anxiety and enhances the ability to acquire skills for effectively using of the library services. • Train the reference librarians to become more aware of international students’ speech patterns, listen to their words rather than intonation, and that librarians be cautiously tactful in what they ask and say.

Measuring the Quality of the Reference Services in Academic Libraries: A Malaysian Perspective 75• With the growing number of the international students in Malaysian Universities; it is important that the problems faced by them be recognized and addressed in a positive manner. REFERENCES Baron, S. & Strout-Dapaz, A. (2001). Communicating with and empowering international students with a library skills. Reference Service Review, 29, (4), 314-326. Bicknell, T. (1994). Focusing on quality reference service. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 20, 77-81. Bigdeli, Z. (1996). Library services to overseas students in Australian universities. PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales. Callahan, D.R. (1991). The librarian as change agent in the diffusion of technological innovation. The Electronic Library, 9, (1), 13-16. Calvert, P.J. (2001). International variations in measuring customer expectations. Library Trends. 49, (4), 585-604. Christy, J.A. (1997). A comparison of students’ perceptions of selected measures of institutional service quality with excellence. PhD Dissertation, University of Iowa. Clark, N. & Sedgwick, R. (2005). International students: It’s a buyers market. World Education News and Reviews, 18, (4). Available at www.wes.org/eWENR/05july/feature.htm Curry, A. & Copeman, D. (2005). Reference service to international students: A field stimulation research study. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31, (5), 409-420. Flinner, B.E. (1987). A scenario of the reference librarian in a small university library. The Reference Librarian, 8, (19), 341-385. Goudy, F.W. & Moushey, E. (1984). Library instruction and foreign students: A survey of opinions and practices among selected libraries. The Reference Librarian, 10, 215-226. Grönroos, C. (1984). A service quality model and its marketing implications. European Journal of Marketing, 18, (4), 36-44. Haile, G. (2001). Measuring service quality of the better business bureau using the SERVQUAL model. PhD Dissertation. Texas Tech University. Hernon, P. & Ellen, A. (1998). Assessing Service Quality: Satisfying the Expectations of Library Customers. Chicago, IL: American Library Association. Jackson, P.A. (2005). Incoming international students and the library: A survey. Reference Services Review, 33, (2), 197-209. Kumar, S.L. & Suresh, R.S. (2000). Strategic for providing effective reference services for international adult learners. The Reference Librarian, 33, (69/70), 327-336. Nitecki, D.A. (1995). An assessment of the applicability of SERVQUAL dimensions customer-based criteria for evaluating quality of services in an academic library. PhD Dissertation, University of Maryland. Nitecki, D.A. (1996). Changing the concept and measure of services quality in academic library. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 22, 181-190. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. & Berry, L. (1990). Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations. New York: the Free Press. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. & Berry, L. (1991). Understanding customer expectations of service. Sloan Management Review, 32, (2), 44-53. Patton, B.A. (2002). International students and the American university library. ERIC Document No. ED469 810, 132. Quinn, B. (1997). Adapting service quality concepts to academic libraries. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 23, (5), 359-369. Quiram, B.J. (1995). Use of the SERVQUAL scale to measure expectations and perceptions of service quality in an ambulatory health care setting. PhD Dissertation, Texas A&M University.

Wail Alhakimi and Zainab Khalifah 76Robledo, M.A. (2001). Measuring and managing service quality: Integrating customer expectations. Managing Service Quality, 11, (1), 22-31. Safahieh, H. & Singh, D. (2006). Information needs of international students at a Malaysian university. In Khoo, C., Singh, D. & Chaudhry, A.S. (eds.) Proceedings of the Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice 2006. Singapore. Sekaran, U. (2005). Research Methods for Business: A Skill Building Approach. 4th edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Simpson, M.C. (1995). International service variants: A study of airline passenger expectations and perceptions of service quality. PhD Dissertation, Golden Gate University. Srisa-Ard, S. (1997). Users expectations and perceptions of library service quality of an academic library in Thailand. PhD Dissertation, Illinois State University. Thapisa, A., & Gamini, V. (1999). Perceptions of quality service at the University of Botswana library: What Nova Says. Library Management Journal, 20, (7), 33-383. Tyckoson, D. (2003). On the desirableness of personal relations between librarians and readers: The past and future of reference service. Reference Services Review, 31, (1), 12-16. Volet, S. (1999). Learning across cultures: Appropriateness of knowledge transfer. International Journal of Education Research, 31, 625-643. Wan Aris, W.H., Osman, Z. & Ann Good, C. (1998). Quality services: Policies and practices in Malaysia. Library Management Journal, 19, (7), 429. Zwelling, L.A. & Anderson, E.A. (1996). Measuring service quality at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 9, (7), 9-22.

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