Wharton School Research Articles

The Management of Identity-Based Conflicts: New Directions in Justice Research

This symposium explores a recently intensifying phenomenon of how actors manage their public identities in the #MeToo era – an era that highlights the tensions among those seeking distributive justice, due process, accountability, and endorsing psychological safety. We explore this phenomena through the lens of organizational justice, thereby broadening its application and relevance by raising new research questions and domains of study. In particular, we explore how one’s social identity shapes the aftermath of organizational conflicts, including how harshly (and why) actors’ actions may be judged and whether actors may (or may not) be forgiven, redeemed, and reintegrated. Three papers speak to these topics. Most of the symposium will be devoted to interactive discussions of each paper, then interactive discussion of the broad themes, questions, and challenges. Forgiveness in the Workplace: An Identity-Based Perspective Presenter: Michael E. Palanski; Rochester Institute of Technology Presenter: Laurie Barclay; Wilfrid Laurier U. Presenter: Nicholas Difonzo; Rochester Institute of Technology The Effect of Mindsets and Ex-Offenders’ Redemptive Narratives on Managers’ Willingness to Hire Presenter: Eunjeong Shin; Washington State U. Easier Lie the Heads: Evidence of a Gender Vilification Gap in Appraisals of Employee Misbehavior Presenter: Chuck Howard; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Ramona Bobocel; U. of Waterloo Presenter: Samir Nurmohamed; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Karl Aquino; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Maja Graso; U. of Otago

Bias, Barriers, and Behavior: Exploring the Mechanisms Behind the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship

Gender inequality remains an issue in entrepreneurship. Women are engaging in entrepreneurship at increasing rates, but they still lag behind men. Furthermore, women who do participate receive significantly lower levels of funding and support that keep them from experience the same success as men. Scholars have addressed these inequalities from a variety of perspectives. Some suggest that bias and stereotyping results in negative perceptions of women in entrepreneurship, while others suggest that female entrepreneurs behave differently than male entrepreneurs. Still others assert that men and women start from different places in their pursuit of entrepreneurial activities. They suggest that differences in social networks provide more opportunities to men than women. In this symposium, we present four studies that use real world field data to test different mechanisms to explain the gender gap in entrepreneurship. In support of the 2020 AOM theme, we hope to inspire conversations that consider how bias, access, and behavior may be simultaneously contributing to the challenges women face in entrepreneurship. Pitch and She Shall Receive: The Opportunity to Pitch Erases the Gender Gap in VC Funding Presenter: Angela Randolph; Babson College She Can’t Handle It: Emotional Stability and Women on New Venture Teams Presenter: Jessica Kirk; U. of Memphis Presenter: Stefanie Johnson; U. of Colorado, Boulder Hubris and Humility: Gender and the Interpretation of Signals in Crowdfunding Presenter: Jason Greenberg; New York U. Presenter: Venkat Kuppuswamy; Northeastern U. Presenter: Ethan Mollick; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Implicit Diversity Quotas for New Venture Teams Presenter: Stefanie Johnson; U. of Colorado, Boulder Presenter: Jessica Kirk; U. of Memphis

The Challenge and Opportunity of Navigating Multiple Identities at Work

How employees construct and manage their identities at work has important consequences for individuals and organizations (Ashforth & Schinoff, 2016). Yet recent workplace trends are blurring the boundaries between work and non-work domains, bringing increasingly diverse and interrelated sets of identities to bear on workplace dynamics (Ramarajan & Reid, 2013). Despite this, the management literature has little explored how individuals manage and construct multiple identities at work, particularly those that are seen as conflicting, counternormative, or misfit. The current symposium shifts the focus from investigating the effects of a single identity to considering a plurality of identities and the interactions between them. We explore how multiple identities and identity options are constructed and managed, examining how individuals negotiate seemingly incompatible identities; the consequences for individuals when conflicting identities cannot be reconciled; how nascent professionals choose between multiple identity options; and the potential benefits of identifying as a misfit at work. Constructing a Counternormative Work Identity in the Context of an Intrapersonal Identity Network Presenter: Elise Bair Jones; Boston College Managing Creative Working Mother Identities Through Identity Integration Narratives Presenter: Jennifer Lynch; London Business School Intractable Identity Conflict and Identity Conflict Management Burnout Presenter: Elisabeth Yang; Yale School of Management Presenter: Yun-Kyoung Kim; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Teresa Cardador; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Heather Ciara Vough; George Mason U. Coming into Focus: Navigating Identity Options in Professional Identity Construction Presenter: Njoke Thomas; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Owning Up: Occupational Misfit and Responses to Public Social Disapproval Presenter: Natalya Alonso; U. of British Columbia

Shame at Work: Multiple Conceptualizations of Shame and its Impact on Individual Outcomes

The role of shame in organizations is an increasingly interesting topic of study for scholars with high relevance to practitioners. Commonly defined as the feeling associated with self-criticism following failure, shame is likely a pervasive emotion in organizational environments. This is important because research suggests that shame relates to a number of outcomes - both adaptive and maladaptive - that relate to organizational life. Despite this, the study of shame in organizations is still in its infancy and a number of questions remain unanswered. We present four papers that each represent different contemporary approaches to studying shame. For example, across these papers we conceptualize shame as an element of organizational culture, an individual difference, and as a felt emotion resulting from one’s own behavior (direct shame) as well as from the behavior of someone else (vicarious shame). In addition, two of the papers seek to add clarity to the shame construct, specifically by developing a new measure and by differentially testing dimensions of an existing measure. Finally, these papers address both the antecedents to, and outcomes of, shame. Taken together, we believe that this session presents a well-rounded view of the state of shame research and will hopefully foster rich discussion on the role of shame in organizations. Shame Predicts Success: When and Why Shame Proneness Relates Positively to Job Performance Presenter: Rebecca Schaumberg; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Koji Chavez; Indiana U. To Accept One's Flaws or to Change Them: Shame Motivates First Steps Towards Self-Change Presenter: Kostadin Kushlev; Georgetown U. Presenter: Jason Proulx; Simon Fraser U. Presenter: Brian Lickel; U. of Massachusetts Amherst Presenter: Toni Schmader; U. of British Columbia “I am Ashamed of You!” Examining the Impact of Follower Unethical Behavior on Leader Outcomes Presenter: Rui Zhong; Sauder School of Business, U. of British Columbia Presenter: Michael Daniels; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Sandra Robinson; U. of British Columbia Organizational Affective Cultures of Shame & Guilt: A Scale Development Presenter: Giselle Elaine Antoine; U. of Washington, Seattle Presenter: Michael Johnson; U. of Washington

Organizational Control: New Perspectives and Future Directions

Control is “management’s most fundamental problem” (Van Maanen and Barley 1984: 290), and issues relating to control are apparent in many facets of organizational life such as organizational design, organizational culture, and everyday organizational routines. However, theory on organizational control has not kept pace with changes in both organizations and their environments. This may partially reflect the segmentation of control research from research on related theoretical concepts. Therefore, to advance our understanding of organizational control, this symposium aims to integrate a variety of theoretical perspectives — such as organizational learning, organizational change, and technology in the workplace – with more traditional organizational control theory. By integrating a variety of theoretical perspectives, we hope to both move forward current theory on organizational control while also encouraging scholars to broaden their understanding of what comprises and constitutes organizational control research. Co-Creation of Organizational Control Mechanisms as a Learning Process Presenter: Jillian Chown; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management When Change Agents Change Their Minds: Network Diffusion and the Failure of Organizational Change Presenter: Julien Clement; Stanford U. Presenter: Vibha Gaba; INSEAD Bringing Workers Back In: Employees’ Varied Responses to Strategic Change and Accompanying Controls Presenter: Vanessa Conzon; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Resistance in the Age of Algorithms: A Comparative Ethnography of Workers’ Resistance Presenter: Lindsey Cameron; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Hatim A. Rahman; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management

New Approaches to Understanding Harassment, Misconduct, and Reporting in Organizations

By examining organizational processes related to engaging in, experiencing, reporting, punishing, stigmatizing, and intervening in misconduct at work, this symposium uses a diverse set of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to advance our understanding of this important topic. Together, the four empirical presentations, corresponding discussion of the research, and the facilitated question and answer sessions are designed to develop new theoretical insights about the connections between individual, group, and organizational-level theories of harassment, misconduct, and reporting at work. By identifying gaps, commonalities, and differences across the four papers, this symposium is also intended to generate new theoretical insights, spark rich conversation, and motivate new research designs and approaches among session attendees and participants. Reporting Relationally: The Social Determinants of Whistleblowing Presenter: Patrick Bergemann; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Presenter: Brandy Aven; Carnegie Mellon U. Exploring Workgroup and Newcomer Dynamics in the Study of Workplace Harassment Presenter: Julia DiBenigno; Yale School of Management Race and Employee Misconduct in Organizations Presenter: Sanaz Mobasseri; Boston U. Questrom School of Business Presenter: Mabel Abraham; Columbia Business School The Risks of Representation: Spillover from Scandalized Clients Presenter: Mary-Hunter McDonnell; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Kaisa E. Snellman; INSEAD

New Perspectives on Developmental Sequences and Cycles in Creative Work

The purpose of this symposium is to bring together emerging empirical research that examine creativity highlighting new ways of theorizing the development of creativity over time. We present five papers that investigate (a) new ways of thinking about sequences and development within a creative project, (b) how personal history shapes engagement in creative work, and (c) how and when one creative project leads to another. The presentations cover how the team that built one of the world’s first social robot deals with ambiguity; how products made out of “dirty” materials are de-radicalized; how circus artists draw on their biographies as raw material; how creators in makerspaces switch from one project to another; and how “one-hit-wonders” affect cookbook authors’ creative careers. What’s a Social Robot to Do? Resolving Ambiguity Through an Emergent Innovation Process in Groups Presenter: Johnathan Cromwell; U. of San Francisco Dirty Innovation: How Gross, Disgusting, and Off-Limits Ideas Can Save the World Presenter: Spencer Harrison; INSEAD Presenter: Samir Nurmohamed; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania How Biography Shapes Creativity: An Inductive Study of Circus Artists Presenter: Mel Yingying Hua; U. College London Project Switches in Collective Creative Spaces: An Inductive Study of Makerspaces Presenter: Ozumcan Demir Caliskan; U. College London Presenter: Colin Muneo Fisher; UCL School of Management A Recipe for Success? Award Winners and the One-hit-wonder Effect – Evidence From the UK Cookbook Presenter: Dirk Deichmann; Erasmus U. Rotterdam Presenter: Markus Baer; Washington U. in St. Louis

How Do We Do Good While Doing Well? Studying the Consequences of Markets in Tackling Social Problems

As practitioners addressing issues related to international development, global poverty, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals move toward using market-based approaches to distribute financing, products, and services, management scholars seek to understand the potential consequences. In this symposium, four scholars explore the following questions: What are the manifest and latent consequences of utilizing markets and businesses to address development goals? How can management scholarship be used to think through ways to mitigate the negatively outcomes that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations while amplifying the positive ones? The Business of Health: Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to the Success of Health Enterprises Presenter: Emily Barman; Boston U. The Role of Interpersonal Interactions in Shaping Social and Economic Development Presenter: Laura Doering; U. of Toronto Meeting the Needs of the Poor Presenter: Aneel Karnani; U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor Understanding Impact Investing: A New Categorical Imperative Presenter: Tyler Wry; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania

Corporate Activism: Exploring an Emerging Field of Research and Practice

In the last few years, we have seen an emergence (or perhaps resurgence) of overt political activism on the part of companies and their leaders. Such activism clearly presents a range of risks as well as potential rewards for companies, depending on whether (and which) stakeholders respond positively or negatively to the stand taken, and the nature of the activism involved. Corporate activism also raises important, broader questions about the appropriate limits of powerful economic actors’ participation in political debates and the nature of democratic decision making. This symposium will feature current research efforts in this emerging area and map out a path for future work. The symposium will include presentations of new research by leading scholars engaged in exploring various facets of corporate activism, and offer the audience the opportunity for a rich discussion on the potential and drawbacks of research and practice in this new area. The Rise of Corporate Activism Presenter: Cory Maks-Solomon; George Washington U. When CEO Sociopolitical Activism Attracts New Talents Presenter: Christian Voegtlin; Audencia Business School Presenter: Andrew Crane; U. of Bath Presenter: Laura Noval; Imperial College Business School Can CEO Activists Shape Organizational Ideology? Presenter: Mary-Hunter McDonnell; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Michael Toffel; Harvard U. Corporate Activism: Establishing a Typology and Finding Common Ground Presenter: Anna Eileen McKean; Northwestern U. Presenter: Maurice Jerel Murphy; U. of Southern California

The Makunda Model: An observational study of high quality, accessible healthcare in low-resource settings

Background: Mission hospitals in low-resource regions of the world face significant challenges in providing high-quality, accessible care to patients. External funding is limited and can fluctuate significantly from year to year. Additionally, attracting and retaining well-qualified healthcare professionals for more than short stints can seem almost impossible. Located in a remote region in Northeast India, the Makunda Christian Leprosy & General Hospital has developed a model over the past 25 years that has enabled it to sustainably expand access to high-quality care for the region’s poor, which we evaluate in this paper. Methods: We combine an external assessment by a research team at the Wharton School of Business with internal insights from two leaders at Makunda Hospital to evaluate the Makunda Model. The external assessment included 31 in-depth, on-site interviews of patients, employees, and competitor hospital administrators; physical observation of Makunda’s facilities and operational practices; and an analysis of years of financial documents and hospital statistics. Results: We studied the impact of the Makunda Model on volumes, efficiency, quality, and community impact. In 2018-19, Makunda Hospital provided 109,549 outpatient visits, 14,731 hospital admissions, 6,588 surgeries (2550 major), and 5,871 baby deliveries in a 162-bed facility with a bed occupancy rate of 88%. The hospital operates with an annual budget of $2.7M ($1 = INR 75.70) and receives only 2.5% of its operating revenue from external sources. The hospital has developed a strong reputation in the community and beyond for providing excellent maternal care and catering to the poor. Discussion: The hospital’s business model revolves around two key business strategies: (a) poor-centric strategies and (b) thoughtful cost management. Innovative poorcentric strategies include “ability-to-pay”-based pricing, equal services for all (in contrast to a freemium model), hyper-tailored charity (using the “shared meals” and “vital assets” tests), and community engagement. Thoughtful cost management is accomplished by “revised gold standard” treatment protocols and recruitment and retention of an efficient workforce. Conclusion: We conclude that Makunda Hospital’s unique combination of poor-centric strategies and thoughtful cost management have enabled it to achieve the volumes necessary to sustainably improve access to care for the poor in Northeast India.

Некоторые языковые особенности современного англоязычного делового дискурса (на материале заголовков подкастов Уортонской школы бизнеса)

The article deals with the analysis of language means in modern business English discourse. The material under study is a set of the podcast headings borrowed from the Wharton business school collection of thematic groups such as «Leadership», «Management», «Innovation», «Finance», «Marketing». The results of the research show that persuasive headings constitute the main part of the total body of the headings. Their aim is to attract the addressees’ attention and encourage them to read or listen to the podcasts. Regardless of the thematic group, language means include the following: the use of a punctuation mark, such as the colon that specifies the information contained in the first part of the title, in combination with such stylistic devices as metaphor, antithesis, metonymy, allusion and alliteration. Affirmative and interrogative sentences with «wh – words» and a functional word «how» come second in the frequency of usage, they do not only put a question but also give an answer to it.

Pairwise judgments consistency impact on quality of multi-criteria group decision-making with AHP[S1

Presumably complex systems can be better understood when they are broken down into their constituent elements and structured hierarchically. Then, judgments about these elements can be synthesized on the basis of their relative importance at each level of the hierarchy into a set of overall priorities. By breaking down a reality into homogenous clusters and subdividing them into smaller ones, it is possible to integrate large amounts of information into the structure of a problem and form a more comprehensive picture of the whole system. There is a decision support methodology (DSM) which conforms to the above prescription. It is called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and was devised at the Wharton School of Business by Thomas Saaty (1980). Its contemporary applications can be found, for example in Lidinska and Jablonsky (2018), Abdelmaguid and Elrashidy (2016), Kramulova and Jablonský (2016), and Ponis et al. (2015).

The Review of Methods for Assignment of Elective Courses at Universities

Abstract In this paper we present a review of matching algorithms that are used for matching students with elective courses at universities. This is an example of a market where price mechanism cannot be used to determine the equilibrium allocation. In the Random Serial Dictatorship students select courses based on their position in a random queue. This mechanism is not ex post Pareto-efficient and its drawback is overcome in the Probabilistic Serial Assignment, although this mechanism is not strategy-proof. In the auction mechanism, students’ bids for courses do not represent their true preferences, since bids depend on their beliefs about the popularity of courses. The efficient allocation is obtained when Deferred Acceptance Algorithm is used - where the priority of students is determined based on their bids. Harvard draft mechanism is based on changing the order of students in the random queue from one round to another and this mechanism is not strategy-proof; however, it is, by all means, better for students than Random Serial Dictatorship. The Wharton Business School mechanism is based on the calculation of approximate competitive equilibrium.

Illustrating Progressive-Era Reform in Pennsylvania: The Anna Wharton Morris Papers

Illustrating Progressive-Era Reform in Pennsylvania: The Anna Wharton Morris Papers Celia Caust-Ellenbogen (bio) Keywords prison reform, Progressive era, Quakers, Eastern State Penitentiary, Thomas Mott Osborne, women social reformers “As we stood out on the pavement in the cool air, the smell that came from the jail door really frightened me.” Anna Wharton Morris gamely entered the jail at Scranton, Pennsylvania, on October 22, 1915. What she found inside confirmed her fears: a “young man lying on his bunk, blood-spattered & feverish, but receiving no attention. Each cell had a double bed for two prisoners; horrible!!”1 One of the most active Progressive-era prison reformers in the state of Pennsylvania, Anna Wharton Morris (1868–1957) was described by a contemporary newspaper article as a “tall, forceful woman” who was “keenly interested” in prison reform and well-informed, articulate, and outspoken on the issue.2 Hailing from Philadelphia’s social and cultural elite, she seems an unlikely person to have had an intimate knowledge of prisons. Her father, Joseph Wharton, was the prominent industrialist who founded the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her husband, Harrison S. Morris, was an author, magazine editor, and managing director at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She traveled to Europe, won horticultural awards, and rubbed shoulders with such artists as Violet Oakley. However, she was also an active member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), a sect noted for its members’ engagement in social reform movements and a history of imprisonment for their religious convictions.3 Much of Morris’s early prison work was done within the context of Quaker communities.4 [End Page 387] Morris served in leadership roles for such organizations as the National Society of Penal Information, Pennsylvania Prison Society, Pennsylvania Committee on Penal Affairs, Prison Reform Committee of the Public Charities Association of Philadelphia, and the Thomas Mott Osborne Memorial Fund.5 In about a twenty-year period, she spent nearly $100,000 on prison work.6 She published articles and letters and spoke on prison issues on dozens of occasions.7 Thomas Mott Osborne, one of the most influential prison reformers of the twentieth century, told her in 1921, “You are the only person I can trust in [Pennsylvania]!”8 The Anna Wharton Morris Papers at the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College is a wellspring of uncommonly well-organized sources on the Progressive-era prison reform movement. Morris kept diaries throughout most of her life, with mentions of prisons helpfully indexed and extracted into a “Journal of Prison Work” covering the first two decades of her efforts. The “Journal of Prison Work” features a list of nearly fifty prisons and jails Morris visited, with reports on the physical facilities as well as comments on the demeanor of guards, administrators, and inmates. Her visits were concentrated in Philadelphia but ranged across the country from San Quentin (California) to Sing Sing (New York) and beyond. These first-hand observations offer glimpses into a wide variety of carceral institutions. Morris was also a prolific letter-writer, and her prison-related missives are conveniently sorted together. She corresponded with a vast network ranging from local activists and nationally significant reformers to current inmates. Her letters are rich in discussions of goals and strategy. Her most extensive correspondence was with Thomas Mott Osborne, a renowned prison activist from New York who counted Morris as a fierce supporter, key collaborator, and trusted confidant.9 A highlight of the collection is a series of fourteen cartoons drawn by Eastern State Penitentiary inmate Frederick Funk while incarcerated in the 1920s (cover image, figs. 1–2).10 There are drawings illustrating the unsanitary and cruel conditions of prison life, as well as incisive political cartoons dramatizing the investigations into warden Robert J. McKenty. These [End Page 388] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Frederick Funk, “Boast-full Bob’s Defiance,” ca. 1920, Convicts and Ex-convicts correspondence, Anna Wharton Morris Papers, SFHL-RG5-106, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College (FHL). [End Page 389] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Frederick Funk “He is no doctor. He is a ‘Nut’ Doctor,” ca. 1920, Convicts and Ex...

Compulsory and Voluntary Annuity Markets in the United Kingdom

Opinions and conclusions are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect views of the institutions supporting the research, with whom the authors are affiliated, or the Pension © Pension Research Council. Copyright 2010 Research Council of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved.

Technical Review Panel for the PIMS Model: Final Report

In April of 2013, the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania convened a Technical Review Panel, comprising ten experts whose task it was to review the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC) Pension Insurance Modeling System (PIMS), including inputs, outputs, and model assumptions. The review was intended to provide a formal evaluation of the technical adequacy of the model by outside experts. Each expert participating on the Technical Panel was asked to review background material (see References) and focus on a particular aspect of the PIMS model. The list of panelists and topics was developed by the Council in discussion with the Social Security Administration (SSA). This report and the appended papers herein from our Technical Panel comprise the Final Report under this project.The Panel’s key findings may be summarized as follows:1. The PIMS models are an important and valuable tool in modeling the Agency’s liability risk. To the best of our knowledge, there is no other model that can do a comparable job.2. Nevertheless, some improvements could be integrated in the Agency’s approach to modeling. Those deserving highest priority attention in the experts’ view are the following:a) Incorporating systematic mortality risk (i.e., treat mortality and longevity as stochastic variables);b) Including new asset classes increasingly found in defined benefit plan portfolios (e.g. commercial real estate, private equity funds, infrastructure, hedge funds, and others);c) Developing a more complex model for the term structure of interest rates; andd) Incorporating an option value approach to pricing the insurance provided.3. The Agency could also do more to communicate the range of uncertainty and potential for problems associated with the PBGC’s financial status. This could include additional information including the Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR), and perhaps an ‘intermediate,’ ‘optimistic’, and ‘pessimistic’ set of projected outcomes, as well as the expected ‘date of exhaustion’ for assets backing pension benefits insured by the PBGC.

Book Reviews

Gerald R. Faulhaber of the Wharton School of Business reviews “The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy,” by Matthew Hindman. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the attention economy, focusing on the interplay between money and attention and how each is exchanged for the other.”

Meat Eating and the Transition from Plant-Based Diets among Urban Indians

Meat Eating and the Transition from Plant-Based Diets among Urban Indians

Editorial

Editorial

Auntie Anne’s: searching for the right recipe for China

Subject area International business. Study level/applicability Undergraduate level course in international business. Case overview Two fellow students at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Wen-Szu Lin and Joseph Sze, reconnected after finishing their MBAs and decided to launch a franchise together in China. The franchise they decided upon was Auntie Anne’s Pretzels. The company had experienced strong growth in Asia with over 85 stores in Thailand, 30 stores in Korea, 25 stores in Malaysia and 8 stores in Japan. Because of these successes, Win and Sze had forecast smooth sailing for their franchise in Beijing. However, things were not as smooth as they had expected. The first challenge was the impounding of their second shipment of pretzel mix for a few weeks. Other problems that they faced had to do with Lin’s inability to write Chinese, although he could speak the language, the lack of regulation of food and ingredients in China which led to their producing some poisonous products, and problems they had with their own employees. Lin and Sze were searching for ways to overcome the cultural and other challenges they faced in Beijing with their franchise. Expected learning outcomes At the conclusion of the case discussion, students should be able to identify the appropriate global strategy for Auntie Anne’s in China; identify whether Lin and Szu were intending to use a production orientation or the marketing concept in introducing Auntie Anne’s Pretzels into China; list and describe challenges the two entrepreneurs encountered in China; develop a list of actions that American businesspeople should follow in anticipating setting up a business in China; and outline a strategy for Lin and Szu to use in attempting to save the Auntie Anne Pretzel franchise in China. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 5: International Business.