The Importance of International Business to The Strategic Agenda of U.S. CEOs
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JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONALBUSINESS STUDIES, THIRD QUARTER 1994
on topics such as the skills [RodriguesandKaplan1989] neededfor international operationsand the type of educationor programs[Ball and McCulloch 1993; Beamish and Calof 1989] needed to convey such skills. However, the absence of any recently published survey of managers' opinions concerning the relevance of international business operations to their firms' performance and/orfuture appearsto representa gap in the currentliterature.Furthermore, concerns about the relevance of business research in general [Byrne 1990], and international business [Daniels 1991] in particular, might be better addressed if we seek input from business. Such input might seek to identify some issues of importance to practitionerswhich might then serve as topics for future research. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the importance and nature of international business (IB) issues to the strategic agenda of American CEOs. A secondary purpose is to explore the types and nature of IB issues as perceived by CEOs. THE STUDY Since this is an exploratory investigation, the following research questions were developed to provide a focus for the study and data analysis: (1) What strategic importance do CEOs place on international business issues? (2) What types of international business issues are of particularconcern to CEOs and how are these issues perceived? Survey CEOs were selected as the source of data for this study. Although the responsibility for setting the strategic direction of the firm usually rests with the entire top management team, CEOs play a major leadership role in this process [Hegarty and Hoffman 1987]. CEOs are, therefore, representative of top managers who influence organization strategy. After a pilot test, questionnaires were mailed to CEOs of the top 500 firms from Business Week's [1990a] list of 1000 most valuable firms, based on market capitalization. This list has the advantage of including successful U.S. firms from both manufacturingand service sectors and is, therefore,more representative of American business. To encourage responses, an advisory letter from the dean of the college sponsoring the study was sent one week prior to mailing the questionnaire with a cover letter.' Three weeks later, a follow-up letter with another copy of the questionnaire was mailed to the sample. Primary data were collected using a two-page questionnaire to assess the strategic concerns of CEOs over the next ten years. Of particular interest to this study were responses to the following: (1) an open-ended question concerning the two or three issues of critical importance for the successful performance of the CEO's firm and (2) CEOs' opinions of the relevance of ten issues identifiedby academics (e.g., Lyles [1990]) as relevant
LBIMPORTANCETO U.S. CEOs
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to strategic management in the future. Th
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